Adele M. Stan writes:
It started with a phone-hacking scandal at a British tabloid, but the scandal now engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire encompasses several of his newspapers, including the once-venerable U.K. paper, the Sunday Times, and points to malfeasance by Murdoch’s top lieutenant, Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International who is now based in New York in his current role as CEO of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. News International is the News Corp division that comprises all of Murdoch’s British papers.
Although yesterday’s revelations are rich in new details, those details simply reinforce a narrative that has long defined the company ethos of News Corp, an ethos we describe in four points:
- The targeting of Rupert Murdoch’s political enemies
- Lying to public officials in official investigations
- Buying the silence of troublesome employees
- Lack of full disclosure of conflicts of interest
Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports:
Thousands of online protestors used Facebook and Twitter to urge others not to buy The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times or even to watch Sky.
One Facebook group called ‘Boycott News International’, which boasts nearly 8,000 members, insisted its members should to refuse to buy the company’s newspaper titles.
It added that cancelling subscriptions to Sky would also send a clear message to the troubled 80-year-old chairman.
Meanwhile, a similar twitter campaign registered the domain name boycottmurdoch.com yesterday, with the intention of creating a site to bring “anti-Murdoch campaigners together for effective action.”
Its home page claimed the media mogul’s companies “propagate a false image of the world, exaggerate news stories, and spin an agenda which fits Murdoch’s business interests.”
