Fox & Friends lash out at News of the World critics

People keep accusing Fox News of running a blackout on the hacking scandal that recently buried the News of the World, a fellow subsidiary in Rupert Murdoch's media empire. Not true! In fact, it just had on a PR man, Bob Dilenschneider, to explain how NoTW was the real victim, subjected to an inexplicable "piling on" by its enemies.

Bob: The NOTW is a hacking scandal, it can't be denied. But the real issue is, why are so many people piling on at this point? We know it's a hacking scandal, shouldn't we get beyond it and deal with the issue of hacking? Citicorp has been hacked into, Bank of America has been hacked into, American Express has been hacked into, insurance companies have been hacked into, we've got a serious hacking problem in this country, and the government's obviously been hacked into, 24,000 files. So we've got to figure out a way to deal with this hacking problem. Host: The company has come forward to say that it happened a long time ago, at a tabloid, in London, someone did something really bad and the company reacted. They closed the newspaper, all those people got fired, even though 99 percent of them didn't do anything. Bob: And if I'm not mistaken. Murdoch, who owns it, has apologized, but for some reason, the public and the media going over this, again and again. Host: The piling on! Bob: It's a little bit too much. The bigger issue is really hacking and how we as the public going to protect our privacy and deal with it. I would also say, by the way, Citigroup, great bank. Bank of America, great bank. Are they getting the same attention for hacking that took place less than a year ago, that News Corp is getting today. [They recap other news; China, martians, debt default, etc.] Host: ... We're teetering on default, and what to they do? They're talking about this. Bob: ... and we're dealing with something that happened in London over a decade ago. I don't quite understand it.

Indeed not. But I'm happy to explain it to you, Bob. Murdoch's newspaper, the News of the World, was the perpetrator in its hacking scandal, whereas the Pentagon and the banks were victims in theirs. Whereas the Pentagon hack is claimed to be an example of state-sponsored espionage conducted by foreign spies, the News of the World's hack was a simple caller ID spoofing trick used to listen in on a murdered child's voicemail messages; one among countless similar events so exploited. Though we all use the term "hacking" broadly, punching in a default PIN number isn't quite the same thing as the skills required to hack into banks and governments. You can't pretend these are the same class of problem, unless you're happy being ignorant of the crisis management issues on which you are being presented as an expert. Also, it's about more than "someone who did something really bad", and it did not end "over a decade ago." These are the specific lies, told to investigators, that have now ensnared Murdoch executives. The discovery that these claims are untrue is why the scandal flared up again! It's why three former editors of the newspaper (forgive me if I have lost count) have been arrested. Fox's smarmy whitewashing of its sister company's escapades will get a lot of flack, but Bob also embodies an approach to PR that's failed Murdoch so spectacularly these last few weeks: "All the right things have been done from a crisis point of view," he says, so immaculately clueless that you have to wonder if Murdoch's fall, such as it is, was precipitated by spending too much time in rooms full of Bobs. Video Link [Newshounds] More evidence about News Corp. on News Corp. [Washington Post via The Atlantic]

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cortana

An interesting aside: Anyone who has been convicted of a felony cannot hold a TV or Radio station broadcast license, by FCC rules. So were NewsCorp/Fox found guilty of a felony, then by regulation they must divest all TV and radio ownership.

ouch.
Anonymous

So he is shifting blame from the perpetrator to the actual crim itself. That’s like saying ‘Hitler isn’t the problem, it’s genocide that’s the problem.’
donniebnyc

Fox news lies about every important story they report. Why should this be any different?
Deidzoeb

Expecting Fox & Friends not to whitewash a story pertaining to conservatives would be as silly as staying in a bar in Dublin until 4 AM and expecting not to get propositioned. ;)
- Gulliver
  
  Expecting Fox & Friends not to whitewash a story pertaining to conservatives would be as silly as staying in a bar in Dublin until 4 AM and expecting not to get propositioned. ;)
  
  What conservatives? Fox News is full of Republicans.
- Anonymous
  
  Incidentally, bars in Dublin close at 12.30AM
- strangefriend
  
  Expecting Fox & Friends not to whitewash a story pertaining to conservatives would be as silly as staying in a bar in Dublin until 4 AM and expecting not to get propositioned. ;)
  
  The last part refers to a brouhaha in the atheist community where Rebecca Watson aka Skepchick revealed how she was propositioned in an elevator at 4am after leaving the hotel bar suring an atheist conference in Dublin. http://skepchick.org/2011/06/about-mythbusters-robot-eyes-feminism-and-jokes/
  http://furiouspurpose.me/2011/06/21/rebecca-watson-has-a-new-video/
  http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/07/always_name_names.php#more
  So let me reply to Deidzoeb by saying: Chrst, wht n sshl.
- blueelm
  
  “Expecting Fox & Friends not to whitewash a story pertaining to conservatives would be as silly as staying in a bar in Dublin until 4 AM and expecting not to get propositioned. ;)”
  
  God fucking damn it can I not even get on boingboing without that shit?
dculberson

Shoot, I didn’t realize that apologizing got me out of any fallout from wrongdoing. “I’m sorry officer, I did speed, but now that I’ve apologized you can’t possibly write me a ticket!” I’m completely baffled as to why he proceeded to write me a ticket. Sigh.

I also love, as you point out, their conflation of victim with perpetrator. That would go over great in, say, a rape case.
- BookGuy
  
  Apparently, a good alternative strategy is to say, “Yes officer, I was speeding, but why are you focusing on MY speeding? We’ve got a real speeding problem out here on the highways, and we need to focus on that speeding, not what I did…which was speeding.”
  - pAULbOWEN
    
    Beautifully put.
  - Skep
    
    “Apparently, a good alternative strategy is to say, “Yes officer, I was speeding, but why are you focusing on MY speeding? We’ve got a real speeding problem out here on the highways, and we need to focus on that speeding, not what I did…which was speeding.”
    
    No, it is far worse than that. It is like a speeder claiming to be just like the *victim* of a drunk driver–because both involve cars. :-o
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah, I know, “I’m sorry” just don’t cut it….I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hide all that bribery money in my freezer…….I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit that Capitol Police Officer when he was doing his job and stopped me…..I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to not pay taxes on my vacation home in the islands, I didn’t know I had to even though I write the laws….yeah that never works!
Kosmoid

Where’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher on this?

Drinkin’ da purple Kool-Aid.
Pip_R_Lagenta

So… If I understand what Bob Dilenschneider is saying here, the News of the World’s ‘hacking’ is equivalent to the Citicorp, Bank of America and American Express ‘hacking’. Since News of the World is the perpetrator of the ‘hacking’, then Bob Dilenschneider is admitting that News Corp also hacked into Citicorp, Bank of America and American Express here in America. THAT is news… or at least it is as much “news” as ever appeared on Fox.
Anonymous

It sounds like there’s more than one kind of hacking (or should I say hackery?) at issue in this conversation.
Anonymous

Must be great to own your own progoganda organization. A stable of whores to service you when you need to get the stain of your crimes cleaned off you quickly.
pAULbOWEN

Wow. These are not stupid people, they know the difference between hacking and being hacked, between hacking the Pentagon and hacking the voicemail of a murdered child. And yet they’re prepared to sit down in a room, in front of a camera, and perform this evil pantomime for their masters. Just fucking WOW.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah! Bob’s a reprehensible coward. No spine. No integrity. Kharma is gonna catch up bob. When Murdoch is done with u. And someday, he will be.
Anonymous

News of the World critics like Parliament, Scotland Yard and the Federal Bureau of investigation?
Anonymous

“Host: … We’re teetering on default, and what to they do? They’re talking about this.”

Next up let’s talk about Casey Anthony getting out of jail. Way to go staying on the news that matters Fox.
ocschwar

This is a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that NewsCorps is facing criminal liability IN THE US for what happened in London.

(Repeating to boost the signal:)

Everyone, remember that under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, every wrongful act committed in Britain is also a violation of American law, because NewsCorps is a US chartered company.

Write your congressman to insist these acts be prosecuted in the US too.

Don’t let any news organization ignore this fact. But it in the comments. Inform your friends. Keep the pressure up.
anansi133

…half the problem is seeing the problem
And only an expert can deal with the problem

-Laurie Anderson
tad604

That was the most surreal thing to watch. They’re conflating their act of hacking to other companies being hacked into.

That’s more like saying hey four houses on this street were robbed, why are you so interested in the fact that you caught me breaking and entering.

Seriously that’s the most disgusting attempt to distort the truth I’ve seen. They want their viewers to believe the issue is news corp was hacked, not hacking.
Anonymous

Why keep calling it “Fox News.” Let’s call it like it is: Fox Propaganda Network.
Professor Peewee

It goes way beyond the phone hacking; we’re talking about bribery, corruption and intimidation…
thebelgianpanda

It pains me that the much bigger issue–paying off the police–is getting so little coverage. http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/9664442-news-of-worldevidence-of-police-corruption-not-handed-over
- cratermoon
  
  Scotland Yard chief resigns: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14180043
  - thebelgianpanda
    
    Crater, yeah I just saw that as well. It’s unclear how connected they are, but this is where heads–for a more honest species–would really roll.
- Nadreck
  
  Yes, the police corruption in this case is truly stunning. The whole initial investigation was handed over to the Anti-Terrorism Squad, supposedly because of the connection with the Royals, who couldn’t have cared less about it. They went through one list of victims on one notepad from the P.I. involved and left the other ten garbage bags of evidence rot in an evidence locker. They never even opened the bags. The pathetic excuse was that they were too busy tracking down purchases of huge amounts of bomb-making fertiliser and so on.
  
  Meanwhile, in the office across the hall, the Special Crimes Unit, run by a hard-ass who doesn’t care whose toes he stomps on, has a few hundred idle detectives. What an amazing co-incidence! Last year, when SCU finally was called in, due solely to the New York Times articles, they put a few dozen detectives onto it who report that it’ll be years before they’re able to go though the whole list of victims.
  - thebelgianpanda
    
    Just noticed there is a newish article on the New York Times saying almost exactly what you just said. The TFA:
    
    During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident.
    
    And…
    
    At best, former Scotland Yard senior officers acknowledged in interviews, the police have been lazy, incompetent and too cozy with the people they should have regarded as suspects. At worst, they said, some officers might be guilty of crimes themselves.
    
    Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/world/europe/17police.html?_r=1&hp
RenaldoSugarbush

Foxnews does weeks of coverage about a Muslim Rec center with a prayer room in Manhattan as an assault on the memory of 9/11 victims yet the alleged hacking of the cell phones of 9/11 victims is not even outrage worthy.
Hypocrites piss me off.
HandsomeDevilry

Yes, there was obviously a burglary at the Watergate hotel, that’s undeniable. But instead of casting blame, shouldn’t we be more concerned with this terrible epidemic of burglaries?
gothicgeek

The Bastards!

I’m too awe-struck to comment constructively on this farce….
Anonymous

I disagree, Mr. Bob – it looks to me like we have a hackER problem, not a hackING, problem – and prime among them, Mr. Bob, is you, who are a total HACK.
Mycroft

The piling on! Won’t somebody please think of the world wide media conglomerate! It’s just not fair!
Genteel Bartender

In fact, look, I’m gonna have to ask you to just go ahead and come back another time. I got a meeting with the Bobs in a couple of minutes.
Sagodjur

“in rooms full of gentlemen like Bob”

That explains why Murdoch exhales so much bullshit. He’s been breathing it second-hand in from the meeting rooms filled with Bobs.
Nadreck

I bet Rupert Murdoch wishes he’d never been born by this point in the debacle!
ryanrafferty

This whole so called ‘scandal’ is just one giant rouse to regulate news media in the U.K. … I can’t wait to see the sanitized boingboing.co.uk

http://www.thestar.com/article/1025562–english-who-watches-the-watchdogs
- drunken_orangetree
  
  Yea, good point. When is Cory going to do some time for his hacking into Disneyland’s computers?
- anansi133
  
  Brilliant! Because self-regulation has worked so well up to now…
  - ryanrafferty
    
    You don’t remove a wart by cutting off your arm.
    
    If you get in to the debate of ‘self-regulation’ versus ‘regulation’ you miss the point completely…’
    
    Even if self-regulation produced a few embarrassing and rude failures you need to counter-balance those failures with the triumphs of a self-regulated news media… e.g.: democracy, some deal of prevention from government and corporate corruption, and a great deal of good reporting that over-shadows the failures.
    
    Anyone calling for regulated news media are anti-democratic, corrupt bastards.
    - Snig
      
      It’s really not drawing a new line against the media. It’s pretty well understood hacking into someone elses phone is illegal. Doing it to someone who’s going through crisis or is a crime victim makes it especially ghoulish. Bribing police undermines society. It decreases public trust in cops and rewards the corrupt among cops. Great news stories could likely be done with breaking and entering too, but I don’t really think the press has a mandate to go and do that. If a media company is routinely breaking the law this way, that is really organized crime, by definition. I don’t think most journalists feel it’s neccessary to break the law to get stories.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Anyone calling for regulated news media are anti-democratic, corrupt bastards.
      
      Anyone calling anyone else anti-democratic, corrupt bastards is a doodyhead.
      
      Your turn.
      - ryanrafferty
        
        I will happily take the title of doodyhead as a defender of democracy in this world.
        
        @drunken_orangetree: the misappropriation of anything should be illegal, and if some news-media organization is breaking the law for some shallow purpose of reporting on the trivialities of others’ misfortune– then of course, they should be strung out to dry… but on the other hand, if they use this power to expose great corruption… then I think the line becomes less clear.
        
        The road to hell is paved with good-intentions… but there are already many laws on the books that protect abuses in a more general way… independent of news mediaâ€“Â laws that apply to all of us.
        
        It’s unfortunate that so many politicians feel they are smarter than they are… and feel they can pull of a scam so large. The idea of punishing news-media for reporting something that ‘is not true’… is so absurd! 2,500 years of philosophy are not enough to deal with such a stupid claim, and these politicians should be called out for what they are: corrupt bastards.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        Positing yourself as ‘a defender of democracy’ and those who disagree with you as ‘corrupt bastards’ is lacking in nuance, to put it as mildly as possible. Particularly when your arguments are in defense of corporate oligarchs.
      - Brainspore
        
        The road to hell is paved with good-intentions… but there are already many laws on the books that protect abuses in a more general way… independent of news mediaâ€“ laws that apply to all of us.
        
        “All of us” includes the news media. And Murdoch’s empire broke those laws- thus the scandal. What about that is so hard to understand?
      - Anonymous
        
        Dude, could I get your phone number and voicemail PIN? I swear I won’t use it to regulate any multi-billion dollar corporations.
      - thebelgianpanda
        
        that made me laff :D
        
        on topic, government regulation of news outlets does give me the heeby jeeby’s, which is all the more reason why the rule of law must especially be applied correctly when news organizations break the law. and that’s probably the root of why i am so angry about the police corruption–if we can’t trust that the government will enforce the law in regards to these individuals, then free press as a check against government power is near worthless.
        
        (calms himself down)
        
        okay, now I *really* must clean my kitchen.
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        government regulation of news outlets does give me the heeby jeeby’s
        
        The problem here seems to be that the Murdoch machine is regulating government.
        
        The two interests need to be balanced. Preferably in a healthy way. From what I can see, the UK allows media bigwigs to get away with a lot of shenanigans and then hires them into the government, while at the same time, rather strict libel laws and gag orders are used to suppress individuals and smaller power players.
    - drunken_orangetree
      
      Ryan, will you at least grant that a news organization hacking into private phone lines should be illegal, and that bribing police officers should also be illegal? Or is that too much regulation?
    - ocschwar
      
      “You don’t remove a wart by cutting off your arm.”
      
      I will quite happily help Rupert Mordoch control his warts by cutting off his arm.
      
      Seriosuly, dude, this isn’t a matter for regulation. It’s a matter for criminal prosecution.
private2

This is PR 101. Create a ruse and paint yourself as a victim. Fox News is a master at this technique.

I only hope this shows them in their true light and brings down Fox News, The WSJ, and Murdoch’s other platforms of propaganda. They make a mockery of the news.
noen

The only thing worse than this pile of trash is the fact that Fox is amazingly popular. America loves being spoon fed it’s shit. “Real America” gets served big steaming plates full of shit every day and they sit there with a big shit-eating grin, loving every minute of it.

I’ve know those people. People for whom high school was the achievement of their lifetime and it’s been all downhill ever since.
- Brainspore
  
  Be fair- it’s not just Americans. Murdoch’s media empire spoon-feeds bullshit to eager audiences in plenty of countries.
- Gulliver
  
  The only thing worse than this pile of trash is the fact that Fox is amazingly popular. America loves being spoon fed it’s shit. “Real America” gets served big steaming plates full of shit every day and they sit there with a big shit-eating grin, loving every minute of it.
  
  Yeah, I know what you mean. Those fat stupid broke ugly piece-o-shit ‘merican white trash. I know I feel much better when I can vent my anger at a homogenous demographic.
  
  The only thing as bad as this pile of trash is their opposite number zealots on the false choice Us vs. Them binary-choices-only gang mentality political spectrum that’s running democracy into the ground.
  
  “Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.”
  ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Arch Stanton

Please don’t take this as any kind of support for that News corp mess, but maybe BoingBoing can remind us how they handled their own hacking problem? I can’t recall the exact day it happend but it was sometime in the last year. In my own mind I refer to it as “BoingBoing Penis Day”, because I don’t have any friends to discuss BoingBoing with.

BoingBoing tends to talk plenty about the various hackings and slipups by and to other outfits, what did BoingBoing do about Penis Day again?

Seriously, this isn’t a rhetorical question, but an actual question. I’d love to know how that all worked out.
- Kosmoid
  
  Penis Day? Is that like a new holiday? Do you dress up or eat special food? Do you get presents or candy? Does Macy’s give 20% off coupons for this? What would you expect to see in a Penis Day parade? Should we celebrate those who exemplify our penis heritage?
- Glippiglop
  
  I wasn’t here for penis day, but it sounds very much like the hen party that my sister threw for her best friend. The penis piÃ±ata was a real highlight as I understand things.
  
  Perhaps the hackers just wanted to attract a more feminine audience to BoingBoing? That’s not all bad is it? Perhaps we should invite them back again, you know, adjust the html and create a few wide open holes for them to insert their p-
  
  OK, I’ll stop now.
- freshacconci
  
  Did boingboing do the hacking or were they the victims of hacking? That’s the difference.
- enkiv2
  
  They removed the penises, presumably patched the security holes, and posted pictures of unicorns and kittens for the remainder of the day. However, I only got in after the fact, during the unicorns and kittens phase, and never saw the penises, so I might have missed something.
  
  (Alternately, perhaps control was never gotten back from the vandals, and they are merely posing as our trusted bloggers. It would explain the sudden Cool Tools merger)
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  We took the evening off while our IT guy fixed it.
TEKNA2007

> “All the right things have been done from a crisis point of view,”

.. other than not doing the things that create the crisis in the first place.

The Corporatocracy speaks.

> staying in a bar in Dublin until 4 AM and
> expecting not to get propositioned

Would you happen to have a street address for that?
irksome

Rob: You could have easily illustrated this thread with a Naked Mole Rat image.
afs97209

How can intelligent people still be surprised at how low Fox News staff will go?

What part of “corrupt to the core” are you not understanding? They do not stand for anything other than enriching themselves.

Neo-cons will do or say anything for money.
Mr. Winka

Faux News is a kind of intelligence test. If you can’t see that it’s “Unfair and Unbalanced” (TM) then you fail the test.

When I hear the phrase “The piling on”, I don’t think of the mounting criticism, I think of “the piling on” of BS onto an already large steaming pile they have erected.

Their attempt to spin NewsCorp from perpetrator to victim is as bright as their audience.
knoxblox

Is anyone here old enough to remember the days when Steve Doocy was a lovable kids news sideshow clown, rather than a stormtrooper who swore fealty to the Emperor?

Seriously, I think he’s a doppelganger.
Anonymous

The problem is that calling what NotW “hacking” isn’t really accurate. They interfered in the investigation of a missing 13 year-old girl by deleting voice mail messages. They listened illegally to the voice mails of the British Prime Minister. They broke numerous laws. Let’s stop calling it “hacking” and call it what is was- illegal wiretapping and surveilance.
Anonymous

“Bob also embodies an approach to PR that’s failed Murdoch so spectacularly these last few weeks…”

That strategy has failed mostly in the UK. I hope it will fail here too, but here in the US, where critical thinking is labeled treason, the slackjaws keep right on lapping up this Kool-aid from Fox news.

Fox News is like a religion. Murdoch and Ailes could walk right into the viewer’s living room and steal his big screen television set right in front of his eyes, telling him Obama did it. Not only would he believe every word, he’d thank them for it.
ill lich

Yes, the media keeps piling on, let’s get over this, shouldn’t we be talking about the Casey Anthony case?

Whenever Fox News seems to have sunk to the lowest possible, it finds a new way to get lower. This really amazes me. I can imagine loyal Fox viewers already believing that Murdoch is actually the victim here (I’ve already heard right-wing insinuations that George Soros, their one-size-fits-all scapegoat, is to blame.)

But seriously, there are a lot of loyal Fox viewers who will eat this up, who don’t know the details of the scandal because they get all their news from Fox, so this little sleight-of-hand is a clever (albeit truly offensive) way of inoculating those loyal viewers against something they might accidentally hear elsewhere.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will have a field day with this footage.
indigoblur

Why is that old guy from “The Honeymooners” on Fox News? ;)
Rob Beschizza

BEHOLD! The official DilenshneiderPower website.
- highlyverbal
  
  â€œDilenschneider strongly illustrates how being a true power player-now more than ever-means accepting responsibility, taking the heat, and keeping your word.â€
  -Father Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus, University of Notre Dame
- Anonymous
  
  I am totally getting my hands on a copy of Moses C.E.O.
CastanhasDoPara

Yes we really do need to defend ourselves from these ‘hacking’ scandals. One way to do that is to increase security or actually have some in the first place. The other alternative is to investigate, prosecute those that are responsible and report on the proceedings. Wait, one more time for Faux’s benefit, REPORT on the proceedings and yes PILE on if need be (which is certainly well warranted in this situation.)

Or, once again, to hell with you Fox, slither back into that rancid pit from whence you came.
highlyverbal

Dear Fox:

Since we all know that conservatives are the party of personal responsibility, we have been dwelling on this story in order to allow them to excel in taking full responsibility. It’s a story right in their wheelhouse, right?

The media circus about this story should be a blessing in disguise, since it will clearly document some serious responsibility ownership in troubling times. Should be a big bump for conservatives, right?
Rob Beschizza

We’ve been hacked a few times over the years. Standard procedure is to make jokes about it on twitter and take the day off.
niktemadur

Utterly, numbingly predictable. Just last night on Dangerous Minds, a video was posted of Dennis Potter commenting on the execrable Murdoch machine, back in 1994. The only thing that has changed since then is the extent of the infection.
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/dennis_potters_parting_shot_at_rupert_murdoch/
Anonymous

Absolutely disgusting. Im not sure how these people can live with themselves. The only thing I can see is they want to win at any cost.
Anonymous

Hey, be nice to these guys. Remember ACORN, and how they said that the real problem was voter disenfranchisement? We’ve got to focus on how people aren’t being allowed to vote, and not anyone who is alleged to be committing voter fraud…er something like that.
Anonymous

Years ago, Fox was sued for knowingly making false statements by two of their own reporters. Fox’s lawyers argued that just because their TV shows were called ‘news’ didn’t obligate them to tell the truth. They claimed that being forced to only make true statements would be a violation of their ‘right to freedom of speech’ – the judge found in the billionaire’s propagandist’s favor.

Fox was barred from having a ‘news’ channel in Canada because to call yourself news in Canada you can’t knowingly make false statements.
Anonymous

wow, talk about F.U.D. And Fox News’ target audience will be fooled. They will go away thinking the problem was that News Of The World was hacked into, and we need to do something about hackers. The PR jerk deliberately implied this, and the anchor backed him up. This is the most pathetic “journalism” I’ve seen. What a bald-face lie and total joke. Unbelievable.
Anonymous

“Bob: And if I’m not mistaken. Murdoch, who owns it, has apologized, but for some reason, the public and the media going over this, again and again.”

Well in case you’re still confused, this is the reason Bob:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/part/I/chapter/I
Anonymous

Reminds me of the “War on Drugs.” The consumers drive the whole thing.
Thought Grime

Taking advantage of the public’s ignorance to twist this situation is the antithesis of good journalism. However, if they discredit themselves like this enough, someone will eventually make a convincing argument against them in language their supporters will have to understand.
Anonymous

However insinuated that the News of the World scandal is somehow connected to the 9-11 attacks is a genius. So much epic win potential.
Wait until they find out that News Corp hacked the phone messages of dead US soldiers killed in iraq and a/stan…..
Just going to sit back and enjoy the show :)
Great BB post by the way!
petsounds

News Corp (and Fox in particular) isn’t much different than the Egypt or Libya State TV apparatuses. The only difference is, the state agent News Corp works for is its own corporate interests. It is, like most global corporations, in effect a rogue state which often works against the interests of citizens in the countries it leeches from.

However, in the interest in not playing into BoingBoing’s partisan pile-on machine, I will agree with this Fox segment in terms of companies continuing to shrug their collective shoulders at user security. Rob’s comment about BB hacks leading to making jokes and taking the day off is probably not much different than how execs at companies react to being hacked. Even the Sony PS3 hacking meltdown resulted in zero legislation to force companies to treat user security more seriously. Probably because corporations are the ones calling the shots in Congress anyway.
Anonymous

This is big. It proves that broadcast companies that call themselves “News” cannot be privately owned, because at some point the owners are going to be the news, which is a conflict of interest.
social_maladroit

My question is, how hard is it to hack into peoples’ voice mail if you can hire a P.I. to do it?

Anyway, the Guardian newspaper’s having a field day with this scandal.
(expletive deleted)

The real issue is not what should happen to murdoch and his minions for their part in this criminal enterprise. Taking apart the structure that he assembled by means fair and foul is probably the best approach.

No, the real problem is what to do about the people he was able to access through corrupt means. I am talking about the people that were willing to contravene the public welfare they were supposed to uphold. These are the people we hire to sniff out the murdochs of the world and instead they look the other way. I see how this can play out, and unless police and politicians end up on the dock with the others that belong there, then nothing has really been done at all then, has it?

My internal cynic says to me that what is going to happen will be a failure of the investigation to progress far enough to effect any real change in the status quo, and a furthering of the mindless babble that I saw on several clips of fox news propagandists trying to deflect this away from the issues of corruption and deceit at every level.

I am now convinced that the people that have given murdoch the access that he has attained in the political, financial, and societal sector have done so to the detriment of all of the citizens of their respective countries, states, cities and other designations that apply, all the way down to their children.

But then again, corruption, deceit, criminality and societal collapse are a recurring theme in human history, are the not?

If only we had some way of remembering these mistakes at a cultural level so that we could avoid them in the future…
Anonymous

As an aside for anyone who doesn’t know, the “News of the World” was a Sunday weekly paper on the level of the National Enquirer, but worse. It was always a soft-porn, lurid, trashy rag and was never considered to be a reputable newspaper. And yes, I read it every week.
Anonymous

The FBI probe was triggered by a report in Britain’s Daily Mirror, sourced only to an unnamed former New York police officer, that News Corp tabloid the News of the World had asked him to retrieve phone records belonging to victims of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 terror attacks.
Anonymous

Whilst their attempt to deflect responsibility is shameful, they’re right about one thing: this hacking problem (as well as the others) does need to be addressed. The fact that the hack was trivial doesn’t make it less serious: perhaps more. For over a decade a wide-open hole in voicemail services has allowed a huge number of people’s privacy to be compromised. NOTW are almost certainly not the only people to have exploited it. Should the telcos not have some liability for not identifying or addressing the problem? What if your ISP provided you with a router with a gaping remote root exploit in it?
greedoe

Citibank and Bank of America aren’t getting the same attention as News Corp because they got hacked INTO, they didn’t intentionally break the law by actually doing the hacking.

These two are dolts if they think this non-argument can fly.

Phone hacking is against the law and the perpetrators must be made accountable. This really has absolutely nothing to do with any of the other hacking issues they talked about.

It was quite funny hearing them say we need to get off this case and deal with the issue of hacking, which is what News Corp are accused of.

Idiots.
billstewart

This reminds me a bit of the Enron scandals – not the part where Enron themselves collapsed, but the part where the Arthur Anderson accounting firm, who’d been telling everybody all along that Enron was Just Fine, Thanks!, were revealed to have been aware that they were cooking the books. And suddenly the Big N accounting firms became the Big N-1, because what you’re paying an accounting firm to do is understand what’s going on and tell you the truth in useful ways, and now you knew you couldn’t trust them. (Unfortunately, in the more recent AIG/banking/etc. derivatives scandal and collapse, we learned the same thing about the Moody’s et al. rating agencies, who were calling things AAA when they were junk, and their Big 3 are still in business.)

They’re sleaze, they got caught, they’re gone, and good riddance to them.
Anonymous

So far it seems as if their tactic is working. The focus is on “hacking” and not ethics. This story is about unethical, immoral, and outright illegal activity on the part of these alleged journalists and nothing else.
Anonymous

Bob Dilenschneider and that Fox reporter are true monsters. They KNOW they are lying. They have planned the whole segment as a lie and then KNOWINGLY go through with it. There is no way around that fact. When I see people in power behaving that way I’m nauseated. I want to live in a democracy where people stick to the truth. Oh how truly shitty this world is.
roomforthetuna

ryanrafferty, defender of corporate oligarghs, wrote: “The idea of punishing news-media for reporting something that ‘is not true’… is so absurd!”

Ryan – are you playing a little irony game here, doing the exact same thing as the article is talking about Fox doing? You’re making the news media the victim of something that never happened, to distract [yourself?] from them committing an actual crime.

It’s very good if you’re doing it deliberately. If not, I have to say, the idea of you stabbing every other commenter in their faces is reprehensible, and I don’t know how you could suggest it.
Anonymous

OK, so this is a non-issue? I’m sure a police commissioner of one of the world’s largest cities quits every day over corruption issues. Yeah, right, a non-issue. Go away Fox. I wish people would stop watching your so-called news.
Charlie Stross

Rob, you might want to update the article to remind the peanut gallery that Fox News is a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation, prop. Rupert Murdoch … as is (was) The News of the World.

Latest update: Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson resigns — London’s top cop, that is — due to a financial connection to a News of the World Editor.

And an entity known as the Serious Fraud Office (the name should be a clue as to who they are and what they do) is now digging into News Corp’s accounts.

Last week, comparisons with the Watergate scandal looked a little overblown. Tonight they’re beginning to look plausible.
- Rob Beschizza
  
  Done!
Metronicity

Murdoch Senior has handled the whole debacle very badly. As in “he just doesn’t get it”. Completely out of touch. As is his son – his “brilliant” son who advised an acquisition at – $240Million wasn’t it? – that was available a year later at $7Million. Have a look also at his acquisition of Mushroom Records. Via Festival Records Australia. The whole thing went belly up.

It’s not over until the fat lady sings. And that “fat lady” might well turn out to be the inept (and corrupt) British PM Cameron.
nealpolitan

It doesn’t matter if this is a blatant misdirection by News Corp in their own defense. That’s all their audience needs to justify it.

They hear “Excuse Excuse” and it’s all good. Everything is forgiven.

“Can’t we just move on, this blatant evil-doing is making me uncomfortable. Hey! Democrats wanna tax my boss in a fair and balanced fashion? NEVER!”
Anonymous

And then they go into a story about Casey Anthony! Aren’t they just piling on her? Hasn’t that story got enough attention? Shouldn’t we leave it to the investigators and the courts? Oh wait, I forgot FOX are a bunch of hypocrites.
Richard

But wait, it’s Gollum in a baseball cap. Surely Fox knows about that ?

Rupert Murdoch lets it all go Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/17/charlie-brooker-rupert-murdoch
ADavies

Fox News lies.
allen

At this point, it’s no longer shocking that Fox is a propaganda company- but it’s still interesting to see how they do it (and depressing to see that it is effective).

I like the way they created the impression that the PR guy was an expert on the subject matter. Then the way they used the CIA’s being hacked to paint themselves as a victim.

I can’t believe half the country not only treats Fox like a news source, but as the only news source to be trusted.
Anonymous

1. Everyone is doing it
2. And they are blaming us! Invent a phrase for it: “Piling on”
3. Repeat the phrase 1 million times until the issue becomes the phrase and nothing but the phrase. Frame all arguments around the phrase.
4. Voila: The cattle’s brains now associate the issue with the phrase. Mission accomplished.
5. Profit.

And if for even a second you doubt that the U.S./U.K. general public is seen and treated as anything but cattle, wake up.
Kosmoid

“The Journal Becomes Fox-ified” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/opinion/16nocera.html

“As a business story, the News of the World scandal isnâ€™t just about phone hacking and police bribery. It is about Murdochâ€™s media empire, the News Corporation, being at risk â€” along with his familyâ€™s once unshakable hold on it. The old Wall Street Journal would have been leading the pack in pursuit of that story.”
Anonymous

MURDOCH CLOSED DOWN HIS OWN PAPER! It wasn’t anyone else’s idea. Parliament didn’t tell him to do it. The public didn’t call for it.
- Laroquod
  
  “MURDOCH CLOSED DOWN HIS OWN PAPER! It wasn’t anyone else’s idea. Parliament didn’t tell him to do it. The public didn’t call for it.”
  
  Did you hear about the dude who got caught embezzling? He quit his job, sold his home, and fled the country. It wasn’t anyone else’s idea. The cops didn’t tell him to do it. The public didn’t call for it. Let’s just call it even.
  - Anonymous
    
    If the paper was shut down suddenly, perhaps important files/evidence were lost in the confusion?
    
    No one’s fault, just an unfortunate and unavoidable event.
- Anonymous
  
  He did shut down his own paper. As he hoped things might blow over. He wanted to buy BskyB and hoped this would placate everyone. Now we have the former CEO of News International in gaol and it’s obvious the ploy didn’t work, but it was the best bet at the time.
Anonymous

Bob Dylan is right, we shouldn’t be focusing on details of ‘whose parent company tapped the phone lines of 9/11 victims,’ but rather that there’s hacking, everywhere! In fact, Fo..I mean News Corps’ actions should serve as more of a reason to ban freedom of speech on the Internet!
TEKNA2007

> But wait, it’s Gollum in a baseball cap.

Dude’s old, he can’t help that.

Being a useless gobshite, though .. that’s all on him.
InsertFingerHere

Fucking disgusting.
Anonymous

Yeah, it’s all *so* unfair. Maybe we could take up a collection for News Of The World or something.

Next up, Jared Lee Loughner is upset because people keep pointing out that he shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head.
Anonymous

Utter genious – Fox news rolls out this totally ignorant ***hole Bob Dilenschneider as a self-styled ‘expert witness’ to spin the story round and make News Int out to be a ‘victim’ of the hacking scandal because Fox knows that 99% of Americans will just believe what they hear on the news eithout any question. This is 1984 actually happening for real…
amanicdroid

Wow, they didn’t even put cotton balls on it when they put the wolf amongst the sheep flock.
victorvodka

people: the problem is cannibalism, not jeffrey dahmer!
Anonymous

“Are they getting the same attention for hacking that took place less than a year ago, that News Corp is getting today.”

Of course not. They’re not the ones that DID the hacking!
amanicdroid

>From Bobby-boy’s website:

Power and Influence – The Rules Have Changed
by Robert L. Dilenschneider

In Power and Influence: The Rules Have Changed, master power broker and communications maestro Robert Dilenschneider arms you with the intellectual, technical, and moral weapons – the power tools that you need to get ahead and stay ahead in this increasingly competitive world. He reveals how by acquiring the power and influence you seek and wielding it in a techno-savvy, ethical manner, you can not only advance your personal interests, but also shape a more prosperous future for society at large.

What People Say…

â€œDilenschneider strongly illustrates how being a true power player-now more than ever-means accepting responsibility, taking the heat, and keeping your word.â€
-Father Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus, University of Notre Dame

> Someone should let the good father know that Bob is making him sound like a lying asshole.
Anonymous

Amazing!! FoxLand would have you believe this is all about a simple case of hacking! Discounting normal Fox viewers, just how stupid do you think the American public really is?

ck
KidDork

I was waiting for Bob to blame ‘those kids with their computers and the tomfoolery they get up to’ but maybe they’re saving that for the upcoming Fox expose HACKING IN AMERICA: ARE YOU SAFE FROM THE HACKERS WHO ARE PROBABLY MUSLIM?
lhooq

Yes, well, of course, this is just the sort blinkered philistine pig ignorance I’ve come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome, spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker’s cuss about the struggling artist. You excrement! You lousy hypocritical whining toadies with your lousy color TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding masonic handshakes! You wouldn’t let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards. Well I wouldn’t become a freemason now if you went down on your lousy, stinking, purulent knees and begged me.
- Felton / Moderator
  
  +1
Baldhead

They genuinely don’t seem to understand that NoTW are the ones who broke the law, not the victims of an attack. Of course, I expect pigs to fly to a bobsled competition in hell the day Fox & Friends actually get their facts straight about anything at all.
- emmdeeaych
  
  it does -seem- genuine, doesn’t it?
  
  You can fool some of the people all of the time. Some is apparently 26%.
chaopoiesis

Let’s be forwards-thinking about this: Rupert’s got about 30 years of natural lifespan left (courtesy his mum), so he’ll be needing something to occupy himself with once News Corp is dismantled and he’s out of a job.

Strikes me he’s singularly qualified to head the CIA. Or MI5. Or FSB. Or MSS. Or Savak, if they resurrect it.