Archive for July 12, 2011

Hacking the mobile phones of British families who had lost loved ones to sexually depraved violent criminals, al-Qaeda inspired “terrorists” and Taliban insurgents proved the tipping point that led to the closure of Britain’s most popular Sunday newspaper The News of the World, first published in London in 1843 and printed for the very last time on Sunday July 9, 2011.

To adopt a current media idiom, hacking these telephones at times of deep family grief became toxic for Rupert Murdoch’s News International media empire because public support for precisely these victims sits at the heart of all Murdoch’s political strategies. As a result, Murdoch has been forced to mount a damage limitation exercise on an unprecedented scale in an effort to protect his global media empire from the fallout.

Hugh Grant, a famous British actor turned investigative journalist, himself a victim of News International phone hacking was the first to acknowledge the extent to which the invasion of celebrities and politicians’ privacy paled into insignificance compared to the unpardonable intrusion into the lives of the newly bereaved. Grant is absolutely right, but it is the fact that Sunday’s News of the World – like its daily sister The Sun – sets itself up as the champion of these victims that hoisted it by its own petard.

In fact, the “Sarah’s Law” campaign that named and shamed convicted paedophiles following the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne was spearheaded personally by Murdoch’s now beleaguered lieutenant Rebekah Brooks. When confronted with criticism that the campaign encouraged vigilantism and threatened the rule of law she responded that she did not “regret the campaign for one minute”. The same well attuned ear for the popular mood led The News of the World and The Sun to launch and promote the popular charity Help the Heroes that supports British troops.

Damaging reputations

Safe in the knowledge that Murdoch’s News International phone hacking scandal will now be subject to forensic examination and extensive analysis, I will delve instead into the News of the World toolbox of dirty tricks to see what dark arts of the modern hacks’ trade have been deployed against supporters of the Palestinian cause in recent years. In doing so I believe I will get closer to the heart of Murdoch politics - an important topic that will almost certainly remain untouched by any official inquiry into the criminality and immorality that has dramatically engulfed his media business in Britain.

I believe it is especially enlightening to reflect on the damage done to the reputation of Palestinian supporters by News International journalists in a week when David Cameron has been seriously compromised by his close association with the disgraced former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, yet has come under no pressure in parliament for keeping the prominent Palestinian peacemaker Sheikh Raed Salah in prison for no good cause. Moreover, it is no coincidence that the handful of British politicians who might once have voiced their concern over Sheikh Salah’s ill-conceived arrest have been silent in the face of the ongoing power of uncritical pro-Israel politics nurtured by Murdoch’s journalists over a long period.

As Samira Quraishy observes in an article for Middle East Monitor, this silence has been most conspicuous in the case of leading Liberal Democrats including party leader Nick Clegg, Sarah Teather, Ed Davey and Simon Hughes.  Take the case of Sarah Teather – before she became a junior minister to the Murdoch-friendly neo-con cabinet hawk Michael Gove, she was an outspoken supporter of the Palestinians. Not only is her present silence on Sheikh Salah’s plight a tribute to Murdoch’s unbroken grip on government security policy, it is also a slap in the face for the many voters who put a tick in the box next to her name at the last general election in the mistaken belief that she would show consistency of conduct in or out of government.

Smear tactics

True to form, The Sunadopted a tried and tested smear tactic by juxtaposing moral outrage aimed at Salah - an alleged “hate preacher” – entering Britain unchallenged with an unconnected story about Britain being hindered from deporting “hundreds of foreign killers, paedos and rapists” by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. This follows the same successful formula adopted against a wide range of Palestinians and Palestinian  supporters, especially Muslims, such as the academic Tariq Ramadan and Sheikh Yusef al Qaradawi. Whether low brow tabloids or their upmarket counterparts in the UK, US and Australia, all Murdoch newspapers have a consistent policy of targeting and denigrating active supporters of the Palestinian cause whenever and wherever they can.

Before considering two notable instances where the journalist’s dirty tricks toolbox has been used against British campaigners for Palestinian justice I should first illustrate day to day News International reporting in this arena. Typically, just days after terrorists inspired or directed by al-Qaeda bombed London in July 2005, The Sun explained to its readers how this atrocity was linked to Palestinian resistance by seizing on a planned visit to Britain by the academic Tariq Ramadan to make its case. It is worth highlighting extracts from The Sun’s front page to remind ourselves of the tabloid style deployed so effectively in support of a global strategy in support of Israel that masquerades as support for Britain and the West:

“Extremist Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, who backs suicide bombings, is to address a London conference part-funded by police”.

“…in our bomb-hit capital he is being given a platform to speak - while the victims of Britain’s worst terror atrocity wait to be buried”.

“The police must pull the plug without delay. And Home Secretary Charles Clarke must move swiftly to ban Professor Ramadan from our shores”.

Tales of hacking and bribery

In addition to the targeting of specific “extremists” such as Ramadan, Murdoch’s tabloids regularly stigmatise Muslim communities in Britain. According to research published last week on the sixth anniversary of the London bombings, the News of the World and The Sun have contributed to the creation of “suspect communities” through reporting that fails to distinguish between terrorists and the communities in which they live.

According to The Guardian’s exemplary ongoing investigation, phone hacking and police bribery appear to have been relatively cheap and frequently used tools to elicit information for news stories of all kinds, whether political in nature or not. Interestingly, however, when The News of the World wanted to exert maximum pressure on its chosen targets, it would resort to a more invasive and pro-active tactic - the deployment of undercover investigators, most notably the notorious Fake Sheik, Mazheer Mahmood, in what are often described as “sting” operations.

Doubtless Mahmood’s book Confessions of a Fake Sheik, published in 2008 by Harper Collins, is the least reliable kind of evidence – but it does at least provide some compelling if unwitting testimony about the political motivation and machinations behind his undercover deployment against two notable Palestinian supporters in the UK, former Labour Party and Respect Party MP George Galloway and Mohamed Ali, CEO of Islam Channel TV in London.

Mahmood ruefully admits failure in his sting operations against both Galloway and Ali. Characteristically, when he became fully appraised of the News of the World sting operation, Galloway exposed Mahmood in parliament as an “agent provocateur”. Subsequently, it came as no surprise when Galloway joined the long list of phone hacking targets being offered large sums of money by News International in an attempt to silence them - an unlikely ambition in Galloway’s case.

Supporting corruption

What Murdoch’s tabloids sought to obscure was the reality on the ground. Their portrait of Galloway as an appeaser of terrorists was shown to be well wide of the mark in London, where he was twice attacked by al-Qaeda cheerleaders for successfully persuading young Muslims to channel their anger against British foreign policy in the Middle East into democratic politics. Not a story that fit with Murdoch’s agenda.

Most telling, is the credence that Murdoch journalists gave to corrupt dictators – such as Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt - happily now deposed and discredited. Indications of Murdoch’s personal interest in discrediting Mohamed Ali became apparent when considering the role of journalist Richard Kerbaj, who was transferred by Murdoch from The Australian to The Times in London - not least because of his contacts with corrupt security regimes in North Africa and the Middle East.

Suffice to say, Kerbaj supplemented Mahmood’s dirty work on behalf of The News of the World with his own supposedly authoritative reporting for TheTimes. Much the same kind of synergy can be seen between Dean Godson’s eloquent or “anti-Islamist” commentaries in The Times and Richard Littlejohn’s belligerent versions of the same message the columns he wrote for The Sun.

In Ali’s case, Mahmood was clearly briefed that his intended victim was a former “terrorist”, ultimately on the discredited word of a corrupt dictator. Had the Fake Sheik succeeded in his sting against Ali, News of the World readers would doubtless have been treated to an account of Ali’s “terrorism” that echoes Kerbaj’s version – and is now wholly discredited.

Retaining dignity in the face of such provocation, Ali writing for Open Democracy, explains the unexpected and beneficial impact of the Arab Spring in his case:

In the circumstances, Ali, who as a young man was tortured by Ben Ali’s regime, might have directed his words to Murdoch as well as to Western leaders.

On a lighter note, and again unwittingly, Mahmood’s book reveals weaknesses in his tradecraft that might suggest he will now be seeking more conventional employment. More seriously, it was a similar failure of tradecraft by the corrupt investigator Glenn Mulcaire, employed by the News of the World, that led him to delete voicemail messages on a mobile phone belonging to murdered teenager Milly Dowler, and thereby leave an audit trail that would provide the trigger for the worst week in the history of Murdoch’s global media empire.

It is therefore noteworthy that setting up elaborate sting operations against supporters of the Palestinians, such as Galloway and Ali, would not cause Rupert Murdoch to lose a minute’s sleep - even today. To the contrary, it remains central to the political journalism he has nurtured.

Dr Robert Lambert is Co-Director of the European Muslim Research Centre at the University of Exeter, Lecturer at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews and author of Countering al-Qaeda in London which will be published by Hurst in September 2011.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

via Murdoch’s dirty tricks against Palestinians – Opinion – Al Jazeera English.

Politicians from Britain’s three main political parties have called on Rupert Murdoch to abandon his bid for full control of British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), due to the deepening investigation of phone hacking at his newspapers.

The decision, announced late on Tuesday, followed furious accusations from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown that Murdoch’s British newspaper business employed criminals to illegally obtain private information about his family.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said the government would vote with the opposition Labour Party on Wednesday to support a motion calling on Murdoch and his News Corporation media conglomerate to withdraw the $12bn bid for the highly profitable satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said that the motion, which is not legally binding but is a powerful expression of sentiment, would be the simplest way to ensure that the bid is not considered until the criminal investigations are complete.

A senior British police officer, questioned in parliament on Tuesday about the phone hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World newspaper, said he believed he himself had been the victim of phone hacking.

In 2007, a reporter and a private detective working for News of the World were sent to prison for hacking the voicemail messages of royal family employees.

Before Tuesday’s hearing, opposition Labour politicians called for the resignation of John Yates, assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

He decided in 2009 that there was nothing more to investigate at the paper. Yates says he relied on advice from colleagues.

The widening investigation also includes allegations that Murdoch’s reporters paid bodyguards of Queen Elizabeth II for sensitive phone numbers and travel plans.

As the scandal intensified, Murdoch, his son James, and Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, the British newspaper publisher owned by News Corporation, were on Tuesday summoned to appear before a parliamentary committee to answer questions about the phone hacking charges.

Brown blasts ‘criminals’

In an interview with the BBC, Brown said on Tuesday that it appeared the Sunday Times – part of Murdoch’s News International group – had obtained confidential information on his bank account, legal files and possibly other material during his tenure as Britain’s finance minister.

“My tax returns went missing at one point, medical records have been broken into,” he said in the BBC television interview.

I don’t know how all this happened but I do know … that in two of these instances there is absolute proof that News International was involved in hiring people to get this information.

“And I do know also that the people that they work with are criminals, criminals with records, criminals who sometimes have records of violence as well as records of fraud.”

Murdoch-owned newspapers are also alleged to have targeted Brown’s voicemail messages and obtained his family’s health records.

Brown told the BBC he was devastated in 2006 when News International’s Sun newspaper informed him it planned to publish a story that his newborn son had cystic fibrosis, an often fatal disease.

Brooks, who was editor of The Sun at the time, Murdoch and his son have reportedly agreed to the request from parliament’s influential Culture, Media and Sport Committee to come before a panel next Tuesday for questioning.

“I think in some ways this is the first sensible thing they have done,” John Whittingdale, chairman of committee, told BBC television.

“They are going to take on their critics and account for themselves in parliament and that is what we wanted them to do, and I am very pleased that they have accepted that invitation.”

Public pressure

A final decision on the BSKyB takeover was delayed after Murdoch withdrew a promise to spin off news channel Sky News, inviting the British government to refer the bid to authorities charged with enforcing anti-monopoly laws. That is expected to delay any decision on the deal for months.

Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, reporting from London, said that Murdoch “may have sacrificed the News of the World to save his BSkyB deal, but with public and political pressure mounting, doubts over whether it will go through are increasing day by day”.

The scandal has highlighted the unparalleled political influence of Murdoch’s collection of newspaper titles – and touched Cameron and his former communications chief, Andy Coulson, who was arrested last week in connection with allegations of payments to police when he was editor of the News of the World.

The newspaper was finally closed down on Sunday amid a flurry of public indignation over allegations it hacked into phones, including that of a murdered 13-year-old.

via UK MPs to call for Murdoch to drop BSkyB bid – Europe – Al Jazeera English.

A key US senator has called for an investigation into whether reported hacking by News Corporation targeted any US citizens.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said the authorities should consider whether journalists working for the media giant had broken US law.

He warned of “serious consequences” should that be found to be the case.

Then 168-year-old News of the World shut down on Sunday after numerous accusations of phone hacking.

Other papers owned by Rupert Murdoch have faced similar allegations.

Mr Rockefeller, a Democrat, was the first major voice in the US Congress to call for an investigation into the scandal, which has gripped Britain.

The BBC’s Steve Kingstone in Washington says these are the first signs that the hacking story is extending across the Atlantic.

‘Breach of ethics’

In a written statement, Mr Rockefeller said he was concerned that hacking by News Corporation journalists may have extended to American targets, including victims of the 11 September attacks.

He did not present any evidence to support that claim, but called on the authorities to look into any possible wrong-doing.

“I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated,” he said.

“The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals – including children – is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics. This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken US law,” he said.

Mr Murdoch’s American assets include Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Harper Collins publishers.

In the UK, the 80-year-old has been under mounting pressure to drop his bid for TV giant BSkyB.

He has now been asked to appear in front of British MPs to answer questions on the phone-hacking, while police accused his newspapers of blocking their original investigations in 2006.

via BBC News – Phone-hacking: US senator requests probe.

News International tried to “thwart” the original inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World, senior Met police officers have told MPs.

Ex-Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said there was “prevarication and what we now know to be lies”.

Assistant Commissioner John Yates said the firm “appears to have failed to co-operate” during his review of the case.

Commons Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz said Mr Yates’s evidence was “unconvincing”.

Current Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, who was seen emerging from 10 Downing Street on Tuesday evening, said Mr Yates had his “full support and confidence”.

A police investigation began in 2005 triggered by stories in the News of the World (NoW) about Prince William’s health.

News International closed the paper last week amid continued outrage over reports of hacking including revelations that the mobile phones of murder victim Milly Dowler and relatives of dead soldiers had been accessed.

In his evidence to the committee, Mr Clarke said: “We pursued it as far as we could through the correspondence with the News of the World lawyers.”

But he added: “This is a major global organisation with access to the best legal advice, in my view deliberately trying to thwart a police investigation.”

In other developments:

• News International (NI) denied that the Sun accessed the medical records of former prime minister Gordon Brown’s son Fraser, explaining a 2006 story about him having cystic fibrosis “originated from a member of the public”. Another NI paper, the Sunday Times, denied it broke any laws when investigating the purchase of a flat by Mr Brown
• Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, who is leading a new investigation into phone hacking, revealed to the committee that only 170 out of more than 4,000 potential victims whose details were stored by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire had been contacted by police
• Labour leader Ed Miliband met David Cameron and Deputy PM Nick Clegg to discuss the fall-out of the scandal
• MPs will vote on Wednesday on a Labour motion urging News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch to withdraw his bid for BSkyB – and the government said it would back the call
• News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch, its chairman James Murdoch and News International’s chief executive Rebekah Brooks have been invited to appear before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee next Tuesday
• Mr Miliband had a meeting with the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose phone was allegedly hacked, and told them his “heart goes out” to them
• The final edition of the News of the World on Sunday sold 3.8 million copies, 1.1 million more than the previous week
• The websites TheSunOnSunday.co.uk and SunOnSunday.co.uk are transferred to News International amid speculation a seven-day edition of the Sun is being planned
• News International said it would offer new positions to the “vast majority” of former News of the World staff

via BBC News – Phone-hacking police round on News International.

The half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been assassinated in Kandahar.

Ahmad Wali Karzai, a leading power broker in the country’s south, was shot dead at his home in a blow to Nato’s battle against the Taliban in the area.

He was shot twice by his long-time head of security, Sardar Mohammed, who was himself killed almost immediately.

The Taliban said they carried out the attack, calling it one of their top achievements in 10 years of war.

But Khaled Pashtun, a Kandahar province politician, was sceptical about the Taliban claims, saying the Islamist group had claimed responsibility for many attacks in the past without much evidence of their involvement.

The White House condemned the assassination “in the strongest possible terms”.

Sardar Mohammed’s motives remain unclear, but the killing will raise questions about securing Afghanistan’s top officials.

via BBC News – Afghan president’s brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, killed.