Rupert Murdoch

(World Economic Forum/Wikimedia)

There is a certain familiarity in the accusations against Rupert Murdoch's news operations in Britain. While News Corp. defenders (and News Corp. outlets themselves ) insist that probes into News Corp actions in America are unwarranted, we already know that the illegal practices did cross the Atlantic, in the form of attempted intrusions against 9/11 victims here

There are two parts to the scandal in Britain. First, that News International used illegal practices to obtain private information from individuals and members of government. Second, that the company used its power as a major news outlet to obstruct justice and even threaten uncooperative members of government with retaliation.

These things are hardly unique to Murdoch's British outlets. There have been accusations of similar behavior in Murdoch's American companies for years, here as in Britain always brushed away as the actions of a few bad apples or the grumblings of disgruntled ex-workers. There, though, the accusations were eventually proven true, and have at this point led to the decimation of Murdoch's senior ranks, as executive after executive is forced to resign, gets arrested, or both.

So what of the accusations against News Corp. in America? Claims of illegally obtaining phone records date back to 2008:

Has Roger Ailes been keeping tabs on your phone calls? A disgrunted former Fox News producer claims he has the capability thanks to a secret "brain room" that the network uses for "counterintelligence and black ops." [...] And how did Ailes learn that [Cooper was Brock's source]? Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. [...] A Fox News spokeswoman says there's no truth to the claim that the network has the capability to snoop through phone records.

Accusations that Murdoch used his American "news" outlets as factories for smearing his political opponents, while doing favors for political friends, also have come from ex-workers:

“There were people you were not supposed to mess with,” says the former reporter for the gossipy Page Six, if they were “friends” of executives at the [New York] Post or its parent company, News Corp. At the same time, “word would come down through your editor, ‘This is someone we should get, should go after.’ The people high up had people they just didn’t like.” [...] In a 2007 affidavit, Spiegelman said “accepting freebies, graft and other favors was not only condoned by the company but encouraged as a way to decrease the newspaper’s out-of-pocket expenses…and that News Corp. attorneys had been instructed to ‘look the other way.’” There was a policy of “favor banking,” the affidavit said, “practiced on a much larger scale by Rupert Murdoch.”

As for Fox News, the crown jewel of News Corp, both accusations apply. Their president, Roger Ailes, was implicated in an attempt to obstruct justice himself (the coincidences with Britain never cease, apparently). Their function as an outlet for partisan talking points is well known, as is their similar willingness to bend facts or invent new smears. There isn't even any serious question at this point on whether such actions are coordinated from the top.

In 2004, to protect his pal Rudy Giuliani, Ailes apparently interceded in the case of Bernie Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who had been nominated on Giuliani’s recommendation to head the Department of Homeland Security. [...] The records reveal that Ailes “advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik.” The allegation featured prominently in a wrongful-termination lawsuit brought by Regan, which reportedly cost News Corp. more than $10 million to settle. [...] From the time Obama began contemplating his candidacy, Fox News went all-out to convince its white viewers that he was a Marxist, a Muslim, a black nationalist and a 1960s radical. In early 2007, Ailes joked about the similarity of Obama’s name to a certain terrorist’s. [...] References to Obama’s middle name were soon being bandied about on Fox & Friends, the morning happy-talk show that Ailes uses as one of his primary vehicles to inject his venom into the media bloodstream. According to insiders, the morning show’s anchors, who appear to be chatting ad-lib, are actually working from daily, structured talking points that come straight from the top. “Prior to broadcast, Steve Doocy, Gretchen Carlson – that gang – they meet with Roger,” says a former Fox deputy. “And Roger gives them the spin.”

There are several questions worth answering here. First, whether the News Corp. practice of hiring private investigators to do less-than-legal snooping on chosen targets is also practiced by American outlets: that accusation was specifically leveled against News Corp. years ago. Second, to what extent the policy of obstructing justice on behalf of the company or its allies also exists in its American operations. Third, to what extent are the "journalistic" outlets of the company regularly manipulated in order to serve as a front not for reporting on government, but threatening it or bending it to the ambitions of company owners. Denying that the last point happens regularly would seem a comical position at this point, but investigating how deep that manipulation goes, how it is organized, and whether it has gone so far as to violate U.S. law would certainly seem to be warranted.

We have accusations of serious wrongdoing in both America and Britain. The difference is that the British have, at long last, begun to investigate in earnest. We in America have not; in fact, we have studiously ignored each and every report of wrongdoing from News Corp. companies, invariably because the companies themselves have insisted that there was nothing to see.

Now News Corp. outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are once again engaged in a campaign to complain about how offensive and terribly partisan it would be start investigating such accusations now. It remains to be seen whether we're fool enough to still buy it.

