‘Just another crazy’: Rupert Murdoch’s week of horrors

by David Salter, a journalist and former Media Watch EP
It’s been a bad week to be a Murdoch. Even ever-smiling Sarah, who married into the clan via Lachlan, seemed so paralysed by the revelations over the past five days that she confessed to Nine News that she couldn’t make up her mind which infant to vote for as a judge of the Australia’s Loveliest Baby competition. That it has come to this …

News Corporation suffered three hefty hammer blows in the space of as many days. First, the BBC current affairs flagship Panorama revealed the bones of what looks to have been a secret worldwide strategy to sabotage their competitors in the pay-TV market. The following day, The Australian Financial Review put some meat on those bones with exhaustive detail. On Wednesday, The Independent (UK) published a strong news feature that tracked how similar hacking/piracy techniques had been employed in Italy, where News International also has a major interest in pay TV. The Independent described its revelations as another chapter in the “uncomfortable scrutiny of the Murdoch empire”.

www.crikey.com.au/2012/03/30/just-anothe...chs-week-of-horrors/