Murdochistan: where pursuing the truth can be dangerous

[the_archfiend]

I didn't get to hear the entirety of Terri Gross' interview with Lowell Bergman (the producer of the Frontline documentary Murdoch's Scandal) yet , but the bulk of what I did hear was a catalogue of the lengths News Corp. went to in corrupting practically everything it touched in the UK's national political landscape in order to perpetrate the illegal cell-phone wiretapping that Murdoch's News of the World  used to gather potential front-page material:

Labour MPs Tom Watson and Chris Bryant questioned Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, an executive and former newspaper editor at Murdoch's News International umbrella corporation, during parliamentary hearings. And Nick Davies is the reporter for The Guardian, the paper that originally broke the phone-hacking story. Some of them were put under surveillance by private investigators hired by News International. Others were intimidated, says Bergman, through a process called "monstering," in which Murdoch's papers singled out individuals and attacked their character on a daily basis.

"[Chris Bryant] tells the story that at some time [after questioning Brooks in Parliament in 2003] he runs into her at a party, and she starts to say unkind things to him, that she knows that he's gay," says Bergman. "Then soon after, he gets 'monstered' by the tabloids, where they single out an individual and go after him day after day.

"They began to show pictures of him in his underwear — any pictures they could find of him being somewhat compromising — talking about him being a member of Parliament, being gay, etc. And leaning on him, and, he thought for a while, endangering his political career."

Bergman later states the following concerning the question of News Corp./News bribery of the police:

"I think the most important part of all of this was that there was no police investigation after a public admission [by Brooks in 2003] that '[The paper] pays the police.' We know from News Corporation, and its answers to various questions back in New York, they did not launch any investigation to find out what was going on inside. And when we asked a veteran editor about it — about whether or not he knew that his paper paid the police — he said no one ever told him."

I was going to stick a zinger at the end of this post concerning the complete lack of honesty shown by Murdoch and his minions in this scandal, but I don't need to. The unadorned truth is bad enough as it is.