Re: CNN Breaking News.......oohhhhhhhhhhhhh.....flash back News of the World

[MsJo...@aol.com]

Ooohhhhh didn't now he owned it. As a little girl in Africa, my Mom used to tell me stories from News of the World that sounded like Soap Opera materials. While in London, as students, she said getting the latest edition was almost a religion. While at that, her favorite musician was Tom Jones.

 

Ohhhhhh, sorry to hear the institution is folding but not sorry for Rupert Murdoch, a viral purveyor of literal mischief and yellow journalism on Fox.

 

MsJoe.

 

In a message dated 7/7/2011 11:00:45 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Breaki...@mail.cnn.com writes:

Britain's embattled News of the World, the world's top-selling English-language newspaper, will shut down after Sunday's edition. The scandal-hit tabloid, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has been at the center of phone hacking charges.

Victims of the alleged phone hacking, where reporters are said to have obtained PIN numbers and listened to voicemails, include a teenage murder victim, celebrities, royalty and at least one man killed in the 2005 London bombing.

Murdoch has condemned the allegations against News of the World as "deplorable and unacceptable." Murdoch's media empire extends to the U.S. to include Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

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[Prof. Alfred Zack-Williams]

MsJoe,

 

Sorry to disappoint you. The News of the World your mother adored is not the same paper it is today, as its demise has indicated. Its owner Rupert Murdoch is nasty piece of work and a threat to democracy. He is notorious for bullying workers, particularly trades unionists; he was a corrupting influence in Australian politics, by convincing Premier Bob Hawke not to enforce legislation about ownership of major dailies in Australian in return his paper supported Hawke in the election. British politicians from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown and  David Cameron are frightened of him. He hates the BBC because it is state owned and as such he cannot lay his fingers on it. Both him and his son want the BBC privatised, presumably, so that they can use his billions to buy controlling interests.  For any publisher to claim as his other soft-porn daily, The Sun has claimed that they now choose the government in Britain by using their massive circulation to convince voters to tow their line on election day and vote for party that is sympathetic to Murdoch’s agenda including anti-European agenda, anti-immigrant stance and anti-BBC.

 

I can go on, but hopefully you get the essence of why we should celebrate, though I imagine, the NOW will re-emerge in different guise in a few months’ time.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/History-Of-News-Of-The-World---From-Hard-Hitting-Undercover-Investigations-To-Celebrity-Gossip/Article/201107116026423?lpos=UK_News_First_Home_Page_Feature_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_16026423_History_Of_News_Of_The_World_-_From_Hard-Hitting_Undercover_Investigations_To_Celebrity_Gossip


In my view we should not lose sight of The News of The World's self-
censorship and the management's unprecedented reaction resulting in
its self- termination. It was the paper's management that complied
with and facilitated the investigations. And it was the paper's
management that made the unprecedented decision to stop publishing/
printing after Sunday, bringing the paper’s 168 years of existence to
an end. They were not closed – they closed themselves. As someone
observed, from a business perspective it's unprecedented that a good
business terminates a profitable brand name, let alone the News of
the World which since 1950 with a circulation of 8.5 million has
enjoyed being the most widely read newspaper in the world. Can you
imagine the Financial Times or the New York Times or Cola-cola which
is kosher or Mr. McDonald Hamburger saying he was going to change the
brand name for ethical reasons such as that there was blood found to
be in the meat?

Watergate aside, and the known/ unknown methods of electronic/ psychic
surveillance/espionage we ought not be blinded to the devious methods
employed by many an investigative journalist in many other newspapers
and the conflicts that have occasionally surfaced with regard to
sources/ disclosure of sources and the methods known or unknown of
obtaining news scoops....

Unfortunately the News of the World – like the Sun being a tabloid,
have always thrived on sensationalized even sexed-up news and the page
3 girlie....

The problem of media monopoly and democracy is ever on-going and the
Murdochs cannot be faulted for ever wanting a bigger portion of the
media pie or for building a media Empire ....only Legislation could
be put in place to regulate that.

The problem of media monopoly in a democracy is a real problem:

http://www.google.com/search?q=The+problem+of++media+monopoly+in+a+democracy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a

In connection with this sort of problem in once upon a time Sweden, I
think of Arne Ruth:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Arne+Ruth+-+media+monopoly&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a

Is there even a glimmering of any such problem as media monopoly and a
free press in any part of Africa?


On Jul 8, 1:59 am, "Prof. Alfred Zack-Williams"

> BreakingN...@mail.cnn.com writes:
>
> Britain's embattled News of the World, the world's top-selling
> English-language newspaper, will shut down after Sunday's edition. The
> scandal-hit tabloid, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has been at the
> center of phone hacking charges.
>
> Victims of the alleged phone hacking, where reporters are said to have
> obtained PIN numbers and listened to voicemails, include a teenage murder
> victim, celebrities, royalty and at least one man killed in the 2005 London
> bombing.
>
> Murdoch has condemned the allegations against News of the World as
> "deplorable and unacceptable." Murdoch's media empire extends to the U.S. to
> include Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
>
> >+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
>
> A bad Credit Score is 600 or below.
> Click here to get your 2011 score instantly for $0!

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> To unsubscribe from Breaking News e-mail alerts, go to:http://cgi.cnn.com/m/clik?l=textbreakingnews
>
> One CNN Center Atlanta, GA 30303
> (c) & (r) 2011 Cable News Network
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa
> Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
> For current archives, visithttp://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue

> For previous archives, visithttp://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html

[G. Ugo Nwokeji]

What really is your point, Cornelius -- that we should clap for the NOTW management?

There seems to be nothing altruistic in their action. Cover up is the more likely motive.

They were complicit in the outrageous fraud every step of the way. The fraud first came to light years ago, two of the accomplces were jailed, police were reportedly bribed to suppress the case, and the fraud apparently continued unabated. By the time it came to a head, thousands of phone lines had been bugged and people's private voice messages altered. Lord knows what else they did with those phones!

If the management were not complicit, they would have nipped the fraudulent practice in the bud. They took action VERY belatedly -- albeit a decisive one -- and you are showering praises on them.

Do you praise accessory or accomplice to serial murder for arresting the serial murderer only after other people have unmasked the murderer?

The management have administered medication only after the patient has been stone-cold. The fraudulent practise they condoned for too long, if not encouraged, undermined people's basic privacy rights, destroyed lives, marriages and careers, obstructed justice, gave the paper undue advantage over the competition, and was instrumental to the profitability you are now praising its management for giving up in closing the paper.

Ugo

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Criminal investigative ethics is reprehensible on all counts, and I
certainly do not condone such journalistic ethics nor was I holding
brief for the Murdoch Media Empire. But it is not likely nor have the
bosses in higher management been charged and found guilty of the
duplicity or complicity that you accuse them of.

You say that, “ If the management were not complicit, they would have
nipped the fraudulent
practice in the bud” without verifying that they actually had such
knowledge. Fortunately these odious malpractices have now been
uncovered not a minute too late and we may well wonder: How long has
this been going on ? And also wonder long your line in print along
which you exclaimed, “goodness knows what else they did with those
phones! “

Meanwhile in some parts of our Africa the struggle goes on for some
Freedom of Information Legislation, which will hopefully render phone
tapping etc, unnecessary.

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Freedom+of+Information+Legislation+in+Africa&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

On Jul 8, 7:33 pm, "G. Ugo Nwokeji" <u...@berkeley.edu> wrote:
> What really is your point, Cornelius -- that we should clap for the NOTW
> management?
>
> There seems to be nothing altruistic in their action. Cover up is the more
> likely motive.
>
> They were complicit in the outrageous fraud every step of the way. The fraud
> first came to light years ago, two of the accomplces were jailed, police
> were reportedly bribed to suppress the case, and the fraud apparently
> continued unabated. By the time it came to a head, thousands of phone lines
> had been bugged and people's private voice messages altered. Lord knows what
> else they did with those phones!
> If the management were not complicit, they would have nipped the fraudulent
> practice in the bud. They took action VERY belatedly -- albeit a decisive
> one -- and you are showering praises on them.
>
> Do you praise accessory or accomplice to serial murder for arresting the
> serial murderer only after other people have unmasked the murderer?
>
> The management have administered medication only after the patient has been
> stone-cold. The fraudulent practise they condoned for too long, if not
> encouraged, undermined people's basic privacy rights, destroyed lives,
> marriages and careers, obstructed justice, gave the paper undue advantage
> over the competition, and was instrumental to the profitability you are now
> praising its management for giving up in closing the paper.
> Ugo
>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 5:27 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> corneliushamelb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/History-Of-News-Of-The-World...

> >http://www.google.com/search?q=The+problem+of++media+monopoly+in+a+de...

>
> > In connection with this sort of problem in once upon a time Sweden, I
> > think of Arne Ruth:
>

> >http://www.google.com/search?q=Arne+Ruth+-+media+monopoly&ie=utf-8&oe...

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

It's the equivalent of an African president resigning when facing
similar charges.....
Should that ever happen such a president / head of state/ prime
minister would be worthy of some congratulations/ clapping....

On Jul 8, 7:33 pm, "G. Ugo Nwokeji" <u...@berkeley.edu> wrote:

> What really is your point, Cornelius -- that we should clap for the NOTW
> management?
>
> There seems to be nothing altruistic in their action. Cover up is the more
> likely motive.
>
> They were complicit in the outrageous fraud every step of the way. The fraud
> first came to light years ago, two of the accomplces were jailed, police
> were reportedly bribed to suppress the case, and the fraud apparently
> continued unabated. By the time it came to a head, thousands of phone lines
> had been bugged and people's private voice messages altered. Lord knows what
> else they did with those phones!
> If the management were not complicit, they would have nipped the fraudulent
> practice in the bud. They took action VERY belatedly -- albeit a decisive
> one -- and you are showering praises on them.
>
> Do you praise accessory or accomplice to serial murder for arresting the
> serial murderer only after other people have unmasked the murderer?
>
> The management have administered medication only after the patient has been
> stone-cold. The fraudulent practise they condoned for too long, if not
> encouraged, undermined people's basic privacy rights, destroyed lives,
> marriages and careers, obstructed justice, gave the paper undue advantage
> over the competition, and was instrumental to the profitability you are now
> praising its management for giving up in closing the paper.
> Ugo
>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 5:27 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> corneliushamelb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/History-Of-News-Of-The-World...

> >http://www.google.com/search?q=The+problem+of++media+monopoly+in+a+de...

>
> > In connection with this sort of problem in once upon a time Sweden, I
> > think of Arne Ruth:
>

> >http://www.google.com/search?q=Arne+Ruth+-+media+monopoly&ie=utf-8&oe...

[G. Ugo Nwokeji]

I hope that we are having a serious discussion. For some reason, you chose to ignore the points I made and to divert attention to African leaders, perhaps forgetting that most of those African leaders have not -- to use the same words you used in defense of the management of NOTW -- "been charged and found guilty" of whatever it is you are accusing them of! Why apply a different standard on them? Anyway, let us refrain from chasing shadows and keep this conversation focused on the fraudulent behavior of the NOTW.

Cornelius wrote:

"... nor was I holding brief for the Murdoch Media Empire. But it is not likely nor have the

bosses in higher management been charged and found guilty of the duplicity or complicity that you accuse them of."

It almost sounds that you are "holding brief for the Murdoch Media Empire."

These are among the established facts:

1. NOTW has bugged thousands of phone lines -- 7,000 according to victims' lawyers.

2. The fraud was first uncovered problem uncovered in 2006.

3. The newspaper's editor Andy Coulson resigned and landed a job (image maker, no less!) with Murdoch protege then-British Opposition Leader and current Prime Minister David Cameron. Dude got a real soft-landing! Meanwhile, royal correspondent Clive Goodman pleaded guilty and was jailed in 2007.

We now know that the history of this criminal misconduct goes as far back to 2002. We have also known since the beginning of this year that the paper's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire told British investigators that the newspaper's leadership hired him to do just what he was doing, tapping phones. Was all this being paid for by the correspondents from their private pockets or from company's payroll?

For you now to say that there is no evidence that the management knew until a few days ago about a practice that even the office cat is said to have known is disingenious. Even if you refuse to see acknowledge the evidence that does not warrant heaping praises on the newspaper's parent company for closing it down.

Ugo

[Ayo Obe]

Let me instead divert attention to l'affaire DSK so that i can discuss the NotW matter.  As we know, before his arrest, he had in any case intended to resign as head of the IMF so that he could go after the greater prize of the French Presidency.  As things stand, he has indeed resigned as IMF head but with his reputation in such a state that the French Presidency on a Socialist ticket looks like a shaky proposition.  Having covered up previous examples of such behaviour, it now transpires that what he is now accused of appears to be habitual practice.  Some of his fellow men, knowing their own weaknesses, offer only faint condemnation ...

Now NotW.  The big prize here is BSkyB whose revenues of about 400 billion dollars dwarf those of News International and NotW in particular.  Murdoch may have decided to bin NotW since the organisation knows just how toxic the brand has become.  They know that what was passed off as an aberration by rogue reporters is in fact habitual behaviour.  And News International's attempt at complete control over BSkyB - by far the greater prize - is hanging in the balance.  In the circumstances, rather than let the infected limb remain to spread gangrene throughout the body corporate, News International has taken what is not only a bold decision to lop it off sooner rather than later, but one which has even fooled some into thinking that it was a principled, rather than an expedient one!  Some fellow media houses, knowing their own weaknesses offer only muted condemnation ... 

As for Rebekkah Brooks, I think that rather than see everything as being done to protect her, you should rather switch to the analogy of the Russian troika speeding through the night pursued by wolves.  Some minor passengers have been thrown out to delay the wolves, but safety is a long way off. You don't in those circumstances throw every dispensable passenger out at once.  Bearing in mind that Brooks has as good as stated that there is more and worse to come, it doesn't take a lot of foresight to conclude that there will be more food for the wolves before too long.  The important passengers are the Murdochs.

Ayo

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oga Ugo,

What are we arguing about? Is there any disagreement between us? Not
that I'm aware of.

NOTW is not and has never been my cup of tea. Too low brow. Usually a
scandalous piece of trash. England’s newspapers for me : The Times,
Telegraph, the Observer, the Independent, yes, the Guardian too –
for many decades now.

I was mostly in London during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and wiped
out by the high moral tone of the British Sunday papers which devoted
an average of about eight pages each per major paper, foaming at the
mouth, unctuous Archiepiscopal type of moral indignation - the
hypocrites, about the reprehensibility of what had allegedly been
goin' on in the White House Oval Office, but not at Oxford and
Cambridge.

One who knows pointed out what is not known by all: that about 300 of
the US's most influential papers are owned by GB people. ( GB= Great
Britain) My source even went as far as to say that the USA was
formally still a British colony, now providing the muscle whilst Great
Britain continues to remain the brain. I went home to a then famously
topical British Hacker( Brian x – a Jewish guy) and wasn't much
impressed, a flight of stairs up to his workroom and wires all over
the place connecting about three- four computers, almost tripped and
fell over one of his many cats meowing all over the place. No cat
piss. Otherwise clean, hygienic and the smell of hyacinths.

I might be an idiot just because you are not, OK?

So, you may have the last word on the matter, since you like pointing
out the obvious (and by the way Sky News of the UK is in no way like
Fox news of the USA – the Sky TV news coverage of Saddam's adventures
in Kuwait for example surpassed that of even the BBC and CNN, for all-
roundness and not just the old middle-of-the-road commentaries. I'm
referring to the Sky TV news era of people like John Suchet – and as
said previously we also now have people like Adam Boulton and Tim
Marshall …..

The media - the source of all your information - is full of the
sorry details at the centre of the storm and still swirling around
NOTW. I am fully aware of those details, so you are not saying
anything new - and please note that it's not my passion to be
flogging a dead horse.

President Rupert Murdoch is on his way to London, perhaps to take the
bull by its horns, in any case, to help sort things out.

Here's a some deliberation on the issue by one of my favourite
journalists. Mark Steyn:

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/federal-307529-news-gun.html

and you must understand that apart from reading books I also go
through some of this:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/

and Foreign Affairs, after which some of the opinions I am likely to
encounter here, hashed or rehashed about the ICC or about what
Gaddafi said in plain and not ritual Arabic may be either redundant,
irrelevant or an anticlimactic.

At this point I do not feel like adding anything to what I have said
previously. You may have the last word but the wheel's still in spin
or as Wole Soyinka quipped. “ You are right, I am dead” and you
should not try to resurrect me , to respond to what more you may have
to say about NOTW

> >http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=Freedom+of+Inform...

> ...
>
> read more »

[G. Ugo Nwokeji]

Ayo,

You called it right in every respect, the DSK "diversion" notwithstanding!

Closing NotW at this time is not an altruistic measure to be held up as an example of corporate responsibilty on the part of a management outraged by what they have just discovered, but a well-calculated step by the Murdoch machine.

Ugo

[G. Ugo Nwokeji]

Dear Cornelius,

Though you seem to think otherwise, I too detest rehashing the obvious, but when the obvious is disregarded and even questioned, as you have done, leading to a conclusion antithetical to the one that should normally emanate from the facts, reiterating those facts become inevitable.

Ugo

--

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dear Ugo,

Let us agree then :

I think that we synchronise all the way, from premise to conclusion;
what separates us is perhaps a slight difference in our definition of
“higher management” by which I mean the super Ogas of the consortium,
the NOTW after all only has a staff of about 200 people whilst the
media Empire in question is much larger than that and no one in the
hierarchy of that organisation is to be found in NOWT.

To tell you the truth the NOTW has only slightly captivated my
interest exactly once and that was during the days of the Profumo
Scandal with those titillating, salacious pictorial details about
Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies – at a time when, still in my
short trousers, I had long ago read Lady Chatterley's Lover and
Chapter 13 of Ulysses.... and so you see the NOTW has it's own special
function and speciality : exposés mostly of a scandalous sexual
nature, be it about the IMF boss or OJ Simpson & Mike Tyson, thanks to
the NOTW it becomes every nosy Parker’s business and now the hungry
reading public is so used to being satisfied that they will sorely
miss the NOTW and this means that some other paper will have to
exploit the commercial potential of serving such special stories.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=MI1&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&biw=1280&bih=809&q=The+Profumo+Scandal&btnG=S%C3%B6k&oq=The+Profumo+Scandal&aq=f&aqi=g-L1

I'd like to get tomorrow's edition as a souvenir.

As Mark Steyn points out in that article, the tragedy is that this
journalistic espionage has now been extended - unethically - to “a
missing schoolgirl subsequently found dead, as well as those of family
members of the July 7 Tube bombing victims and of British servicemen
killed in Afghanistan.” - and this is what has caused revulsion to
ripple through the same reading public that is titillated by the page
3 girl.....

The same kind of revulsion we all felt when Dele Giwa was blown up by
a letter bomb.......

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/

Amicably yours,

Cornelius.

> ...
>
> read more »