Rupert Surrenders
As it has become obvious that it wasn’t going to happen, the BBC reports that News Corp withdraws bid for BSkyB
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has announced that it is dropping its planned bid to take full ownership of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
The announcement came as the House of Commons prepared to vote for a motion supported by all three major party leaders calling on Mr Murdoch to do so.
…Mr Cameron has asked Lord Justice Leveson to oversee a public inquiry into the News of the World scandal and media regulation.
In a statement to the Commons, he said the inquiry would begin as “quickly as possible” and would be in two parts – an investigation of wrongdoing in the press and the police, and a review of regulation in the press.
The judge will have powers to call media proprietors, editors and politicians to give evidence under oath, the PM said.
Mr Cameron said those who sanctioned wrongdoing should have no further role in running a media company in the UK.
The inquiry may end News Corp in the UK and lead to the collapse of Rupert’s empire. The Milly Dowler case was an epic mistake. The public generally doesn’t care what the media does to politicians and celebrities, but you don’t interfere with cases involving murdered children.
It is yet to be seen if this move causes Ofcom to stop looking at whether News Corp is ‘fit & proper’ to own 39% of BSkyB. Apparently it is has the power to force them out.
9 comments
And then his business judgement has been crap of late – Massively overpaying for Dow Jones, selling Myspace for a huge loss and the little matter of the $1bn paid for his daughter’s production company. I wonder how long before Rupert is given the bottle of whiskey and the revolver by the Newscorp shareholders
I couldn’t resist using the old Sun headline Gotcha (used when the General Belgrano was sunk during the Falklands war) for my blog post on the matter
The other big mistake was hacking into the Royal Family communications and getting private information. Most Brit’s still have a very high regard for the Royal’s, as was evident at the recent wedding. 🙂
TDS is back from a week off, and they of course did a sketch about it (quite well done I thought). 😉 😆
The UK public is howling for blood! And woe betide any Politician that get’s in the way (and they all know it, hence the highly unusual and fast bipartisan plan to vote against Murdock’s takeover of BSkyB). Murdock has spent too much time in the USA dealing with the sheeple and Politicians. I bet he got a shock!
The truly ironic part is that this wouldn’t have happened if not for Hugh Grant! 😆 NotW hacked his phone, and Hugh somehow got wind of it, and wore a wire and got a NotW Journalist to admit that they routinely hacked phones and paid Police. As John Oliver put it: “The guy who got car head from an L.A. Rose prostitute, is now the moral compass of my Nation.” 😆
But the USA has it’s own problems of course. What with China about to foreclose on the USA when you default in a couple weeks or so, because (apparently) Congress thinks it’s far more important to fight about (what the GOP sees as) the death of incandescent light bulbs (incandescent vs fluorescent) which was finally settled in 2007! 😉 😀 It also seems the GOP have no problem voting against raising the debt ceiling because Obama voted against it in 2006 when he was a freshman Senator. 🙂 Yeah… payback is such a bitch (and the GOP *NEVER* forgive or forget). 😉
Jams, US shareholders are starting to organize to take some action against New Corp, probably a law suit over the $5billion in value that has been lost since this started. The people who would buy the stock certainly don’t care about the ethics, except as it affects profits.
Kryten, it was the Milly Dowler case that tipped the balance. As far as the Royals go, my impression has been for some time that the only one no one ever dared to criticize was the Queen Mum. Annoying the Queen would cause trouble, but going after the Queen Mum would have gotten them lynched and burned out. Everyone else was fair game.
China is a bit player in the US deficit that can’t afford to do anything that hurts the dollar because they link their currency to it and they own such large sums of dollars. They are used as a strawman to scare people and stir up xenophobia.
They had better do something quickly, because they really are imperiling Social Security and armed forces checks. If those checks don’t get sent, the GOP will play hell recovering from the damage.
Well, Milly was the final straw, as was hacking the phones of relatives of British Soldiers killed in Iraq & Afghanistan. It was Prince William who started the ball rolling in 2006 which led to the arrests of Clive Goodman & Glenn Mulcaire, which was a complete sham. Andy Hayman who was then officer in charge of that investigation for the Met Police resigned and went to work for News International. That’s all being re investigated now. At the start of the year, there were over 20 civil suits in progress over the hacking, and they expect hundreds, even thousands, more. Hell, both Goodman and Mulcaire even won unfair dismissal suits! The Guardian (and even the NYT) have been good so far at bringing all this into the daylight. I hope they continue to do so.
There are still a hell of a lot of skeletons buried under this whole thing! We haven’t seen the big bang yet m8! 😈
BTW, regarding China… Yeah, I know. 😉 I hate to say it, but I hope the GOP do stop the debt ceiling being raised. Maybe that will be the final straw that wakes the great unwashed masses! Sadly, people these day’s usually only react when it hurts their wallets. But then you are in the same situation as we are come the next election. Screwed either way! *sigh*
Obama was a knee-jerk reaction when he was elected. Sure, he was a smooth snake-oil conman, and obviously most voters didn’t bother actually checking his credentials, or didn’t care if they did. *shrug* There isn’t anyone on either side of the great divide, as far as I can see, worth voting for. Same here. 😐
On the debt default thing, we’ll see what happens when the Social Security checks stop going out on August 4. Somehow I doubt it’ll be what the Republicans hope for.
Anyhow, back to the Murdochs — they’ve been summoned to a Parliamentary panel, and refused the summons, basically giving Parliament the middle finger “F you, we’re American citizens so we won’t attend and you can’t make us.” Well, true… but then Parliament can declare them to be in contempt and force the sale of their UK media properties. Apparently the Murdochs fear jail more than the loss of their properties. There’s a saying that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Well, there’s a whole lot more than smoke here… there’s flames licking out of the windows and fire alarms blaring.
– Badtux the Fire Penguin
There are a bunch of reports on ‘Business Insider’ in a section they call “Debt Nation” about what’s happening. Here’s a few:
And Now One Of America’s Biggest Creditors Is Getting Nervous
Jamie Dimon Explains Why No One On Wall Street Cares About The Debt Ceiling
The Whole Debt Ceiling Debate Explained In 60 Seconds
And I think this one sums it all up:
*emphasis mine.
Anything that even resembles a default will be used as an excuse to raise the interest rate on US bonds. That increase will have significant impact on the deficit in the long term, so if anyone really had any actual concern about the deficit, they would have pushed through a clean bill to raise the limit, and then had the battle over cuts and taxes during the budget negotiations.
This was set up to be a crisis, and they are playing in a mine field.
If the government shuts down, there will be serious disturbances in the US.