posted                      

quote:

---

The phone hacking scandal that has enveloped the British press for more than three years took a damaging--and expensive--turn this week for Rupert Murdoch.

The News Corp. chairman now is tasked with trying to lead the News of the World, his high-circulation Sunday tabloid, out of harm's way. The long-simmering scandal over the paper's hacking into voicemails of private citizens took a gruesome turn over the past week, when new reports indicated that staffers with the tabloid accessed the voicemail of a murdered teenage girl and families of the July 7, 2005 subway and bus bombings in London.

Several advertisers, including the Ford Motor Company, have pulled their advertising from News of the World in the wake of reports that its employees hacked more than just the phones of celebrities.

The UK Guardian reported Tuesday that News reporters targeted Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old who went missing in 2002 and was later found dead. (According to the Guardian, News of the World reporters deleted messages on Dowler's phone to "free up space," giving her family the false hope she might still be alive.)

"I can't think of any jam that Murdoch has gotten into that's tighter than this one," Slate's Jack Shafer wrote. "As long as the victims of the phone-hacking were rich people and big shots, Murdoch didn't have to worry too much about public opinion dragging him and his newspapers down. But Dowler's parents are neither rich nor big shots. "

But the news has gotten even worse for Murdoch--with reports that the paper may have engineered payoffs to police authorities. Vanity Fair reported that Andy Coulson, the paper's editor from 2003 to 2006, admitted that "he condoned payments from members of his staff at the News of the World to Scotland Yard," according to e-mails the company has handed over to the police.

The paper acknowledged that "new information" was turned over to police, but would not comment further. The police acknowledged receiving the e-mails.

---

posted                      

quote:

---

So you know how News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid illegally accessed the voice-mail boxes of the victims of crimes, including a missing girl who'd been killed? There was another missing girl, whose mother was befriended by then News-editor Rebekah Brooks, whose name was not in the notes of News of the World's private detective: Sarah Payne, who later turned up murdered. Payne's mother, Sara Payne, was so grateful for the friendship of Brooks that in News of the World's farewell issue, she wrote a column thanking the staff of the paper.

Whoops:



Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter Sarah was abducted and murdered in July 2000, has been told by Scotland Yard that they have found evidence to suggest she was targeted by the News of the World's investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who specialised in hacking voicemail.


The evidence relates to a phone given to Sara Payne ... by Rebekah Brooks. So, this is, astoundingly, a brand-new low.

Meanwhile, the former staffers of News of the World, all of whom were forced to take the fall for Rebekah Brooks before she resigned (and was arrested), have been offered new News Corp. jobs. In IT, and Siberia, among other unglamorous places.

---