This video from the USA is called Rupert Murdoch Pressured Tony Blair Over Iraq.
From daily News Line in Britain:
Thursday, 12 July 2012
MURDOCH-THATCHER WAPPING DEAL
Rupert Murdoch sought assurances from prime minister Thatcher in the 1980s about policing of print union strikes, the Leveson Inquiry has been told.
In a written statement, ex-Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil disputed Murdoch’s claim to Leveson that he had ‘never asked a prime minister for anything’.
Neil also wrote that former prime minister Blair and Murdoch had reached ‘an understanding’.
That ‘relationship became closer, more extensive and deeper than anything . . . during the Thatcher years’, Neil claimed.
‘There was at least one time . . . when Mr Murdoch’s support for Mrs Thatcher paid business dividends and undermines the accuracy of his claim to the Inquiry that he has never asked politicians for anything,’ wrote Neil.
‘In the run-up to the Wapping dispute he made it clear to me one night in late 1985 in my office that he had gone to Mrs Thatcher to get her assurance – to “square Thatcher” in his words – that enough police would be made available to allow him to get his papers out past the massed pickets at Wapping once the dispute got underway.’
Murdoch received assurances from Thatcher, Neil said, ‘on the grounds that she was doing no more than upholding the right of his company to go about its lawful business’.
In his statement, Neil suggested that the ‘seminal development in relations between British politicians and the media’ during his career had been the Murdoch papers’ vicious treatment of Labour leader Neil Kinnock in the 80s and 90s.
‘This seared into the minds of a future generation of Labour leaders, especially Tony Blair and those closest to him, what could happen if they ended up on the wrong side of the Murdoch press.’
The result was New Labour’s desire to come to an arrangement with the newspaper group for mutual interest, Neil said.
Neil claimed that in 1996, a year before Labour was elected, Blair told him: ‘How we treat Rupert Murdoch’s media interests when in power will depend on how his newspapers treat the Labour party in the run-up to the election.’
As it turned out, Neil said, Labour enjoyed more than a decade’s support from the News International papers, while the media group in turn benefited from relaxed media ownership rules.
‘This was something Mr Murdoch’s people lobbied hard for, with his support, and they had unique and extensive access to the levers of power at the heart of the Blair government to make this lobbying effective,’ Neil wrote.
‘When Mr Murdoch testified before this Inquiry that he had never asked government for anything, it gave me cause to wonder if he had forgotten this – or forgotten he was testifying under oath.’
See also here.
Two Ex-Editors for Murdoch to Be Charged for Phone Hacking: here.
Disgraced media baron Rupert Murdoch has been hobnobbing with the Tories yet again: here.
The Church of England said today that it has sold its shares in the Murdoch-owned News Corporation over concerns about the company’s response to the phone-hacking scandal: here.
Observers were neither shocked nor horrified when Rupert Murdoch’s tattered media empire News Corporation – under fire in a massive phone-hacking scandal – broke news of a £1 billion loss today: here.
The News of the World journos accused of hacking more than 600 people’s voicemails were silent today as they appeared before a London courtroom: here.
Paedophilia and the Thatcher administration: here.
Reblogged this on NonviolentConflict.
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Murdoch turns back on print
MEDIA: Rupert Murdoch bailed out of his scandal-hit British print empire to spend more time with his billions — and his firm’s Fox TV and film operations.
The mogul resigned from 12 directorships including the Sun and the Times as his Newscorp conglomerate packages up book and newspaper operations into a separate division.
Campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson said: “He’s leaving those people that stuck with him for many decades behind.”
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/content/view/full/121735?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
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Rupert “Fox News” Murdoch is in meltdown mode. Three of his aides face sanctions from Parliament for lying, another has been charged by UK prosecutors with “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice,” and Murdoch himself is accused of having instructed then-Prime Minister Tony Blair to block the phone-hacking investigation.
In the U.S. there is no Congressional investigation yet, but over 30,000 of us have demanded one. Please demand an investigation of Rupert Murdoch – and then forward this to everyone you know who puts truth and justice above Fox News.
Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
—
A law-breaking U.S. company shouldn’t be held accountable only by the U.K.
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Dear Activist,
For decades, Rupert Murdoch has been the most powerful media mogul on earth – anointing, manipulating and intimidating political leaders across the globe, including U.S. presidents.
Headquartered in the U.S., Murdoch’s News Corp. owns dozens of American outlets including Fox News, Fox Broadcasting, Wall Street Journal and New York Post. His outlets are powerful opinion-shapers; no one pushed harder for the Iraq invasion than Murdoch and his media.
A British Parliamentary committee recently declared Rupert Murdoch “not a fit person” to run a major company. The committee found that Murdoch had “turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness” while his London newspapers massively hacked into private citizens’ phones and computers – and bribed police officials.
When a U.S. company bribes foreign officials, it violates the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Let’s urge the U.S. Senate to investigate and hold public hearings on the corrupt practices of Murdoch and News Corp.
For almost a year, while this scandal involving a U.S. company dominated the news in England, our Congress looked away. Weeks ago, the British attorney whose lawsuits broke open the scandal alleged that Murdoch’s journalists committed the crime of phone-hacking against victims in the U.S.
The Senate Commerce Committee has oversight of American business and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While British broadcast regulators today investigate whether Murdoch is fit to hold a broadcast license in England, the American FCC shows no interest in Murdoch’s fitness to possess 27 U.S. TV licenses.
Urge Senate Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) to initiate an investigation of News Corp. corruption and law-breaking.
After it starts investigating News Corp., we will urge the committee to probe why the FCC has taken our public property – the broadcast airwaves – and turned them over, for free, to a handful of giant conglomerates (Murdoch, Disney, General Electric, Comcast, etc.)
Please forward this email to friends and family.
It’s time we “occupy the airwaves.”
Onward,
The RootsAction team
P.S. RootsAction is an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, and many others.
Resources:
The Independent: Rupert Murdoch Executives Face Sanctions Over Hacking ‘Lies’
Daily Mail: ‘Rupert Murdoch DID Tell Tony Blair to Stop Me Pursuing Phone-Hacking Claims’
The Economic Times: Murdoch Aide Rebekah Brooks Charged in Phone-Hacking Scandal
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