Rupert Murdoch's Journalists Accused Of Hacking Into Murdered Girl's Voicemails, Deleting Some

from the classy dept

Well, this is rather horrific. We've mentioned in the past the story about how reporters for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, one of the many publications in his News Corp. empire, were accused of hacking into the voicemails of hundreds of people. Every few weeks, it seems, more reports surface of people who have had their voicemails hacked. But the latest may be the worst of the bunch. Apparently, after teenager Milly Dowler disappeared in 2002, but before her murdered body was found, reporters hacked into her voicemail. Not only that, but they deleted some messages in order to make more room for new messages. Apparently, the deletions were part of what gave her parents hope that Dowler was still alive, believing that perhaps she was checking her voicemail. Most of the earlier reports on Murdochs' journalists hacking into voicemail had focused on politicians and celebrities. But this sounds like they may have actually destroyed evidence and tampered with an actual police investigation. The company has been paying off some of the celebrities whose voicemail was hacked, but this takes things to an entirely different level.

Filed Under: eavesdropping, milly dowler, news of the world, rupert murdoch, voicemails
Companies: news corp.

Hugh Grant: Investigative Reporter

from the funny-how-things-work dept

You may have heard of the big scandal story, that's been going on for a bit in the UK, concerning reporters from Rupert Murdoch's News of the World listening to voicemails of all sorts of people, in the course of their reporting. There had been earlier reports that it just targeted the royal family, but, last fall, reports came out that it was widespread and covered all sorts of famous people and people in the news. There have been questions about how much the government or law enforcement officials have been investigating this whole thing... so leave it to an unlikely investigative reporter to turn up some news: actor Hugh Grant, one of the people whose voicemail was accessed.

Grant has a somewhat entertaining story in the New Statesman concerning his own secretly recorded interview with one of the ex-reporters who "blew the whistle" on the privacy breaches. Apparently, Grant had randomly met the guy when his car broke down and this guy stopped to help him... while also taking some photos of him that later appeared in the news. When asked to write an article for the New Statesman, Grant thought that he might as well interview the guy, and since he wasn't at all pleased about the photos appearing in the paper (and the whole thing about his voicemails being listened to), he decided to record the interview without letting the guy know.

While there's some general amusement from the fact that Hugh Grant is acting as an investigative reporter, there really is a larger point here. One of the things we commonly hear concerning arguments for paywalls or government support of newspapers is that, without the professionals, no serious investigative reporting would be done. Now, I'm not saying we don't need professionals. I believe professional investigative reporters are important and are likely to remain in business for quite some time. But, you can't discount the fact that they're not the only game in town, anymore. Anyone can be an investigative reporter, if the situation presents itself. Yes, it may involve people who are somehow "connected" to a story and want to get to the bottom of it, but that doesn't make what they turn up any less "news." The key point: if there's a market for it, there will be a way to get it done. There's definitely a market for investigative journalism, and I have no fear that it will continue to be done... even if it occasionally includes random surprises like Hugh Grant bugging a former reporter.

Filed Under: hugh grant, journalism, news of the world, rupert murdoch, spying

A Look At Rupert Murdoch's History Of Internet Failures

from the what-do-they-have-in-common dept

Ross Pruden points us to a neat little graphic that Mediaweek put together, highlighting all of News Corps.' internet failures over the years (pdf) as it gets ready to launch its iPad only publication called The Daily. If you look at the image (or click it to go to the original Mediaweek pdf), you begin to sense a pattern: The downfall in almost every case is about Murdoch focusing on using the internet as mainly a broadcast medium, rather than a communications medium. Delphi was all about community... and then News Corp. tried to turn it into a place to sell his magazines and newspapers. Fox Interactive was all about pushing content, and had little community. MySpace, of all things, which was really about community from the beginning, has completely faltered under News Corps' control, because they tried to focus on using it to sell music and stopped investing in any sort of real community features -- as services like Facebook and Twitter totally leapfrogged them on that front. It's the same story over and over again, and given that The Daily is so focused on platform, rather than users, it seems likely to be a repeat of the same mistake all over again.

Filed Under: broadcast, community, content, internet, rupert murdoch
Companies: news corp.

Why Murdoch's iPad-Only Newspaper Misses The Point

from the leaves-out-interaction dept

There's been lots of talk about how News Corp. is developing an iPad-only newspaper called "The Daily," but the more I read about it, the less sense it makes. The general thinking behind it seems to come from the same reasoning which explains why so many iPad publisher apps are so bad. They're approaching it as a way to bring back the old scarcities, which are now artificial scarcities. They're looking at the platform as a savior based on what it does not allow, rather than based on what it actually enables.

Creating a platform specific publication in a day and age when platforms have less and less meaning seems like a recipe for disaster. It's based on the idea that the Murdochs want to go back to an age of control, rather than embracing the age of enablement.

Filed Under: ipad, james murdoch, journalism, magazines, rupert murdoch, tablets
Companies: news corp.

Rupert Murdoch's Paywall Disaster: Readers, Advertisers, Journalists & Publicists All Hate It

from the and-it's-working-for-who-exactly? dept

We had already seen the early indications that Rupert Murdoch's paywalls from The Times and The Sunday Times in the UK were a dismal failure, but as more information gets leaked about how the paywalls are working out, it's looking worse and worse. Beyond the fact that not too many people are signing up to pay, the move has upset advertisers who don't want to advertise to such a small audience:

Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, "We are just not advertising on it. If there's no traffic on there, there's no point in advertising on there." Lynam says he has been told by News International insiders that traffic to The Times site has fallen by 90 per cent since the introduction of charges.

On top of that, various PR people and publicists are keeping their sources away from Times reporters, preferring to provide access to news organizations where the story might actually get seen by people, rather than locked up behind Murdoch's paywall:

Publicists have told me that clients are increasingly reluctant to give interviews or stories to The Times, on the grounds that they would not be made freely available via search engines.

Oh yeah, and because of all of that, journalists at the papers aren't very happy either. None of this should be a surprise, of course. Many folks, including us, warned that this would happen. Murdoch and his supporters keep trying to spin a happy story about the paywall, and are expected to release some official data soon, but the feedback coming out already suggests that rather than "saving" his newspapers, this action may have sped up the troubles they face.

Filed Under: paywalls, rupert murdoch, the times

Murdoch's Reporters Allegedly Listened To The Voicemails Of Hundreds

from the the-sort-of-journalism-that-needs-protectionism? dept

While there had been earlier reports of how some reporters for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had spied on members of the royal family by listening to their voicemails, new reports suggest this activity was endemic, impacted hundreds -- and that Scotland Yard failed to let many who were victims of such spying know about it (and even focused their investigation on just one reporter, rather than looking into whether or not it was a widespread practice, as it apparently was).

Although Coulson has long insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity, sources who worked at the tabloid told the Times Coulson not only knew about it, he actively encouraged it. A dozen former reporters said the hacking was so pervasive at News of the World that everyone knew about it. "The office cat knew," one longtime reporter said.

This is the kind of "reporting" that needs to be protected?

Filed Under: eavesdropping, rupert murdoch, voicemails

Rupert Murdoch's Anti-Fair Use Comments Used Against Him In Court Yet Again

from the careful-what-you-wish-for dept

Remember back when Rupert Murdoch acted like fair use was a myth that would be "barred by the courts" when challenged? Yeah, that's been coming back to bite Murdoch. Earlier this year, we noted that a former advisor to Michael Jackson was suing News Corp. over Fox News' decision to air interview footage without a license, and the complaint highlighted Murdoch's anti-fair use statement. Of course, when it came time to defend itself (guess what?) News Corp. lawyers relied heavily on fair use.

Looks like that's happening again. News Corp. has been sued yet again for copyright infringement, this time for airing a video (without licensing the clip) of Brad Pitt having trouble driving a motorcycle. Instead, Fox News folks simply downloaded it from TMZ, a property owned by AOL. Wait a second... so with Rupert Murdoch running all over the place claiming that Google News linking to his content is "theft," yet Fox News has no problem downloading a video from a competing media organization and using it? Fascinating.

And, of course, the folks suing waste little time before bringing up Murdoch's comments on "fair use" in the complaint itself (bottom of page 2): I actually agree with Fox News that this should absolutely be considered fair use, but it's astoundingly hypocritical of Murdoch to mock fair use, claim that courts won't recognize it, accuse others of "theft" for merely linking to your content... and then step up and claim fair use when you downloaded an entire video off another site and used it on your TV station.

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, fox news, rupert murdoch
Companies: news corp.

Rupert Murdoch, Pirate? Gave Away Jimi Hendrix CD Without Clearing The Rights

from the oops dept

Rupert Murdoch has been one of the more outspoken media industry folks about how evil "piracy" is in destroying his newspaper industry, usually pointing his anger towards Google, which almost certainly doesn't infringe on Murdoch's copyrights. So, it's interesting to find out that the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times in the UK has apparently been found guilty of pretty widespread copyright infringement, in distributing a Jimi Hendrix live CD to readers without first obtaining the requisite rights from the Hendrix estate (thanks to PeteProdge for sending this over). There's been an ongoing legal fight about this, and the Sunday Times has now lost. The article suggests that the paper may be facing damages of about $250,000, which seems pretty low, considering that we're used to seeing numbers like that thrown around for sharing just a few songs online, and in this case, over 1.3 million copies of the CD were given away.

Filed Under: copyright, jimi hendrix, rupert murdoch

Early Indications Say Paywall For The Times Is A Dreadful Failure

from the no-surprise-there dept

Well, this will hardly surprise anyone, but as we predicted, Rupert Murdoch's new paywall for the Times is not looking so hot right now. Of course, there are no official stats (in part because Murdoch is hiding them, Michael Wolff (who is well connected in the Murdoch world, and wrote an entire book about the guy) says that his sources are reporting that almost no one is signing up to pay for the new site, and even those grandfathered in thanks to a paper subscription aren't using the site. As one of his sources explained, the new site is "an empty world."

Wolff's piece makes a few other important, but not surprising, points. He notes that journalists won't like being in such a world (and we've already seen some jump ship. But, he also notes that this makes The Times a lot less attractive as a place for folks to go with breaking stories:

A Murdoch and Fleet Street veteran with whom I've been corresponding about the paywall reported to me on his recent conversation with an A-list entertainment publicist: "What was really interesting to me was that this person volunteered a blinding realization. 'Why would I get any of my clients to talk to the Times or the Sunday Times if they are behind a paywall? Who can see it? I can't even share a link and they aren't on search. It's as though their writers don't exist anymore.'"

Of course, some reporters might note that they don't need or want publicists anyway. But, from the standpoint of reporters being able to get a good quote from someone, it seems like most PR people/publicists will go where the traffic actually is, rather than an empty walled garden.

The other point that Wolff brings up is a point that we've raised numerous times before: the way many people interact with news these days is they want to "interact" with it. They don't want to just passively "consume" it. But the whole concept of the paywall is to passively consume it. I was thinking about that as I watched this promo video that The Times put out to try to get people to subscribe to the paywall. As the person who sent it to me noted, you keep waiting for the reporters to turn to the screen and say "Please! Help me! Subscribe or Rupert will shoot me! I have a family!" But the other telling thing is that many of the reporters focus on how they can use this new-fangled "web" thing to deliver news in interesting ways. There's very little mention of actually interacting with the community at all (one reporter mentions it, but that's it). To everyone else, it's still very much about "we are the experts, you take what we give you."

We already know that with a similar experiment, the newspaper Newsday in New York got all of 35 outside subscribers. You have to believe that The Times is doing at least somewhat better than that. The question is how much... and (more importantly) how will they adjust? In the meantime, I'm curious if folks from The Times are still standing by their prediction that newspapers who don't follow in their footsteps will go out of business.

Filed Under: paywalls, rupert murdoch, the times

Guardian Picks Up Blogger Who Escaped From Murdoch's Paywall

from the just-want-to-be-free dept

This is amusing. The UK's The Guardian has been a strong advocate of keeping online news free and has pointed out how paywalls are generally a very, very bad idea. Of course, its competitor, Rupert Murdoch's The Times of London has famously put up a paywall. Right when that happened, we noted that a blogger for The Times had chosen to part ways with The Times, as he had no interest in having his own work hidden behind a paywall where it harmed his own, personal brand. It seemed likely that other top journalists would look for positions that were better for their own careers as well.

Now, in a bit of a snarky move towards The Times, the Guardian has agreed to start hosting the blogger who left The Times. Yes, the Baby Barista blog has jumped from The Times, to its own site, to The Guardian in the course of a month.

Filed Under: bloggers, paywall, rupert murdoch, tim kevan, times
Companies: news corp., the guardian