If your only source of information is Rupert Murdoch‘s New York Post or Foxnews.com, then here’s some news you have missed: Murdoch has been forced to close his London based 168 year old News of the World tabloid. The reason is that the editors and reporters are involved in a huge scandal that involves them having hacked into the phone calls and messages of celebrities as well as regular people and even some dead ones. They may have also hacked the former prime minister Gordon Brown, and enlisted the help of the Queen’s Police. In the UK, Murdoch’s Times of London is covering the story right up to the minute.
But here in New York, the Murdoch owned Post is simply ignoring the whole thing. There was a brief mention the other day that News of the World was closing. But today’s story about the scandal is written passively with an oblique headline and found on the Post website only by doing an advanced search. That leads to buried links to stories from other sources, even the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal and papers in Australia. There are some video links on the Post site to Reuters.
On Foxnews.com: mentions in the World News section, but nothing on the front page.
Readers of The Post and Foxnews.com may not know, for example, that Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks have been summoned to Parliament to explain what’s happened. And Post readers don’t know that current prime minister David Cameron is now encouraging Murdoch to step back from his bid to take full control of BSkyB. According to the AP: “Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said the government would vote with the opposition Labour Party on Wednesday to support a motion calling on Murdoch and his News Corp. to withdraw the $12 billion bid for highly profitable satellite broadcaster BSkyB.”
On the other hand, local police reporter Jamie Schram has a good story in the Post today about a Warner Music employee who’s charged with ripping the record company off for $700,000. So you can’t have everything!
