13 Questions on the Murdoch, News Corp Scandal
Rupert Murdoch is all about control. After a near-decade of trying to control, and contain, the wiretapping scandal, it’s now spreading like wildfire. The next question is how far it will spread. How big will the scandal grow, and what will it touch. Thirteen questions of the fast-changing moment?
- Who knew what and when did they know it? This is no longer hacking-the-royals affair, but a major criminal case. So the questions, up and down the News Corp/News International (parent of all UK newspapers) becomes which execs knew what, when. That’s from Rebekah Brooks to Rupert Murdoch himself, including Les Hinton, now publisher of the Wall Street Journal and head of News International for 12 years and James Murdoch.
- Can’t the cover-up be worse than the crime? That’s often the case, and as the Guardian’s destroyed email cache story (“millions of emails”) shows, there’s lot to to be questioned about. As in any case, the cops, Scotland Yard in this case, will turn the little guys trying to find out what the big guys knew.
- For news and corporate execs, isn’t it a question of complicity or negligence? Either a person in the chain of command knew something amiss was going on (or found out about it in a subsequent investigation) or was at least negligent on having a spate of crimes happen on his/her watch.
- Can News Corp maintain a firewall between its illegal/unethical newspaper activities and the rest of its entertainment/information businesses, which bring in 83% of it revenues and more of its profits?
- Can News Corp maintain the firewall between its quality (Times of London, Sunday Times and Wall Street Journal) and its popular/tabloid titles (News of the World, The Sun, New York Post — and Fox News)? It’s been successful at that in the past, but the pervasiveness of this scandal will raise questions.
- Won’t investors, the next generation of Murdochs and other News Corp execs now push harder to exit the declining news industry even faster? We saw that controversy as Rupert bulled through the Dow Jones purchase. Now, he’s the first to see news is a declining business; so why — especially with the tawdry business this scandal has unearthed — be part of it? The rest of the company is big, profitable and has a clear future.
- If in a rational world, the New York Post — with its losses– might be shuttered and the Wall Street Journal’s attempts to kill the New York Times scaled back, will this scandal — with restrategized company focus — do that?
- How much room is there under the bus? Prime Minister David Cameron is busy tossing people under from Rebekah Brooks (who will soon try a third resignation) to James Murdoch. The widening scandal is enveloping several handsful of people and that could grow to dozens.
- Might the closure of News of the World be a smart economic move in the bigger picture? Go with one brand — the Sun — keep most of the post-boycott advertising, slim staff and save money.
- What do Americans make of this story? It’s the ick factor (similar to Anthony Weiner affair) of Milly Dowler’s phone being hacked and the wider criminal charges that are getting some attention. It will be the big personalities — Cameron’s and Murdoch’s — that keep it alive here.
- Doesn’t the BSkyB question now gloriously reinforce the concerns about media concentration? From Britain to the U.S.’s renewal of cross-ownership controversies, the question has never been more alive. (Newsonomics: “The Murdoch Fallout“)
- Will Rupert become chairman, making a clean break of sorts, and hand the CEO title to James, or someone else? First, News of the World was dispatched in a couple of days, so what’s the next move to make a public “clean break”? Of course, with James Murdoch now the subject of questioning, which Murdochs will survive this scandal?
- Where would this story be without the Guardian? A month ago, CEO Andrew Miller said the paper had 3-5 years of survival unless it radically changed. So, in this scandal, we can see — brightly — the value of a strong, independent press, and the great worry that changing business models should cause all of us.
