Saturday evening catch-up - A News International and Gordon Brown special (with a little Ken Livingstone added)

Yet more Firefox tabs that need closing.

1) The American Spectator have a fascinating piece about Rupert Murdoch and his left-wing opponents, here's one key paragraph from a must read piece:

'Media Matters, funded by left-wing gazillionaire George Soros , hates Fox News . (And all things conservative, but they love to hate Fox News especially. If your side was pumping out partisan gas disguised as news at places like the broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post -- to name a few -- unchallenged, for decades and decades...well, you'd hate Fox News and the Fair and Balanced crew too.) But it’s not possible for rabid lefties to hate Fox News without really hating Rupert Murdoch and the News Corporation. Murdoch, of course, is the media entrepreneur who will be forever regarded in America as the man who made it possible to break the liberal media monopoly.'

2) The Guardian properly report something that the BBC have tried to hide away:

'Rupert Murdoch attacks Gordon Brown in first interview since NoW closed

Speaking to Wall St Journal, media tycoon defends News Corp's handling of scandal and says MPs' comments are 'total lies'

...

In his first interview about the crisis that has engulfed his media empire, Murdoch said some MPs' comments on the scandal were "total lies" and singled out Brown for criticism over the former prime minister's accusation that News International was guilty of "law-breaking on an industrial scale".

The media baron said Brown "got it entirely wrong" when he alleged that Murdoch's British papers had used "known criminals" to get access to his personal information when Labour was in power.

"The Browns were always friends of ours" until the Sun withdrew its support for Labour before the last general election, he told the Wall Street Journal, his flagship US paper.

On Twitter, Murdoch's biographer Michael Wolff said he "seemed genuinely distressed about Gordon Brown not liking him anymore."'

3) Guido Fawkes also reports The Guardian's apology and has his own take on it.


4) Allison Pearson in The Telegraph is not impressed by Gordon Brown's protestationa and complaints:

'Spare us Gordon Brown. You sacrificed your morals to Rupert Murdoch long ago

For Gordon Brown to complain about the invasion of 'private grief' is like Faustus moaning that someone had forged his signature with the Devil.'

She asks some really pertinent questions, ones that the BBC are completely and deliberately ignoring as they ceaselessly attack News International and promote their beloved Labour party:

'Here’s one you might like to try at home. If a person betrays a distressing secret concerning your child, possibly obtained via illegal means, and reduces you and your spouse to tears, how would you behave towards that person in the future? Would you:

a) Sever all connections with them and contact your lawyers or the police?

b) Pay a visit to them taking an electric hedge-strimmer?

c) Invite them to a sleepover party and attend their wedding?

Incredibly, Gordon and Sarah Brown went for option c. The former prime minister told a BBC interviewer that he cried in 2006 when Rebekah Brooks, then editor of the Sun, rang the Browns to say that her paper knew their son Fraser had cystic fibrosis and was planning to run a front-page exclusive. You can imagine the way Brooks’s call combined that wheedling, insidious tabloid blend of sympathy and threat. It was heartless behaviour at a time when the Browns were still coming to terms with the fact that their new baby faced grave health problems.

Truly shocking, but then I think back to the jolt I felt when I heard that, four years earlier, the Browns had invited several tabloid editors to the funeral of their daughter, who tragically died at 10 days old.

What on earth can they have been thinking? One of the invited journalists told me how incredulous he was that Gordon Brown felt it was appropriate to ask high-profile movers and shakers to such an agonisingly personal event.

For Brown to complain about the invasion of “private grief” was like Faust moaning that someone had forged his signature on the pact with the Devil. Brown told the BBC, “There was nothing you could do, you’re in public life.”

Actually, there were plenty of things that Brown, as a senior member of the New Labour government, could and should have done. He could have told Brooks that it was a private medical matter under Press Complaints Commission rules and she would not have been able to print a word. Or he could have gone completely crazy and put moral principle before political advantage – a quality he extols in his book Courage. But the fact is Gordon wanted to help Rebekah Brooks out. However upset he and Sarah were, the thought of upsetting the Murdoch empire was worse.

Brown’s attack in the Commons yesterday on News International’s “lawbreaking on an industrial scale” would have been magnificent had he made it when it might have personally cost him something.

Spare us the righteous indignation of politicians who suck up to hacks when it suits them and then play the avenging angel as soon as the moral weather changes. Let me put it another way. Sarah and Gordon Brown were so devastated by Brooks’s exposure of their baby’s illness that they invited her to a girly sleepover at Chequers. The other guests included Wendy Deng, the present Mrs Murdoch, and Rupert’s daughter, Elizabeth. These people weren’t just getting into bed together; they were throwing a pyjama party, for heaven’s sake. '

5) Toby Young in The Telegraph is also not impressed by Gordon Brown, his headline of 'Gordon Brown's marvellous display of classic, Presbyterian hypocrisy ' tells you where he stands on the story. Here's Toby Young:

'What a performance! Gordon Brown raised himself up to his full height in the House of Commons yesterday and delivered a thunderous sermon about the sinful behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and the “rats” who work at his British newspapers. These lowlifes had “descended from the gutter to the sewer”, we were told. They intruded on the “private sorrows” of “innocent men, women and children” – his own family, no less – and treated their “innermost feelings” as the “public property of News International”. Unlike his predecessor and his successor, who both allowed themselves to be seduced by this modern-day Mephistopheles, he had been desperate to order a judicial inquiry into the “criminal” behaviour of Murdoch’s employees, but had been cruelly thwarted by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the slippery head of the civil service. Had he been re-elected – which he surely would have been if the minds of the electorate hadn’t been poisoned by this Australian schlockmeister – he would have seen to it that the British Isles were cleansed of every trace of Murdoch’s vile presence.

It was marvellous stuff, a fitting climax to the high drama of the past week. But it does raise one or two awkward questions.

1. As Jacob Rees-Mogg asked when Brown allowed him to get a word in edgewise, if he found the methods of the gutter press so abominable why did he employ both Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride who routinely spread lies and misinformation about the ex-Prime Minister’s political opponents in Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers?

2. As Nadhim Zahawi pointed out, if Brown was so morally disgusted by the behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and his minions, why did he allow his wife, Sarah, to invite Rebekah Brooks, along with Murdoch’s wife Wendi and his daughter Elisabeth, to a “slumber party” at Chequers in 2008? And why did he and Sarah attend the wedding of Rebekah and Charlie Brooks in 2009?

3. If Brown and his wife were “in tears” and “incredibly upset” when the Sun called them in 2006 to ask them about their son’s cystic fibrosis, why didn’t they apply for an injunction to stop the Sun running the story? Why did they, instead, try to ensure the story got the widest possible coverage? According to yesterday’s edition of the paper:

The Sun ran the story after speaking to Mr Brown and wife Sarah. She gave us their consent to run it.

We agreed not to publish until they were ready to go public.

They also asked that the story be allowed to run in other newspapers. We agreed. In the following months the Browns showed no sign of any discontent with The Sun.

They attended a number of functions with The Sun’s then editor Rebekah Brooks and the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch.

Not only that, but Brown gave his first ever interview as Britain’s Prime Minister to one George Pascoe-Watson of the Sun, the very same journalist who wrote about his son’s illness nine months earlier.

4. If, as Brown claims, the Cabinet Secretary obstructed his efforts to order a judicial inquiry into the dastardly goings-on at News International, why did Sir Gus O’Donnell issue a denial immediately after the speech claiming that the decision not to launch an inquiry was Brown’s and Brown’s alone? Sir Gus is now seeking permission to publish the confidential advice to rebut the allegation.

5. Could it be that Brown’s unhappiness with Murdoch doesn’t date from 2006, when the Sun broke the story of his son’s illness, but from the Labour Party Conference in 2009, when, on the eve of Brown’s keynote speech, Murdoch’s British papers decided to withdraw their support from the Prime Minister and throw it behind David Cameron instead? On Monday, Andrew Neil wrote the following Tweet: “Labour Conf ’09. Brown calls Murdoch to stop Sun deserting to Tories. Fails. “I will destroy you,” says Brown. Slams down phone.”

I hope that Gordon Brown, or anyone who thinks he delivered a “powerful speech” yesterday and believes his “moral outrage” is “justified” (see today’s leader in the Guardian), can answer these questions. Because on the face of it this looks like a classic case of Presbyterian hypocrisy. A son of the manse indeed.'

6) Andrew Gilligan in The Telegraph links Ken Livingstone to the News International story thus with a report about questions to the London Mayor, Boris Johnson:

'Andrew Boff (Tory AM): I think it’s very important to ensure that the mayoralty cannot be compromised by undue influence. Bearing in mind when [the hacking] took place [during Ken's term of office], can I ask the mayor to look into the meetings the previous Mayor had with News International?

Boris (grinning broadly): Is this the guy who’s been popping up attacking me for having meetings with journalists?

Boff (innocently): Oh, I wasn’t aware – did he comment?… Could you also, Mr Mayor, look into any contracts that may have been entered into with the Murdoch dynasty?

Boris (mock surprise): Contracts? Involving taxpayers’ money?

Boff: Yes, contracts with the Murdoch dynasty, with Freud Communications [owned by Murdoch’s son-in-law].

Boris (mock incredulity): You’re joking!… I think it would be unbelievable and monstrously hyprocritical, would it not, if the previous Mayor, having broken bread with the hirelings and the leaders of Rupert Murdoch’s group, were then to attack any other person for doing so…wouldn’t it be an unbelievably opportunistic thing to do?

Boff: I think, I’m not sure, that the contract includes a jolly to China that the previous Mayor took.

Boris: Was GLA taxpayers’ money being paid to the Murdoch dynasty?

Boff: I think it was, Mr Mayor.

Boris: That’s unbelievable. What, you mean the thing I terminated as soon as I got in? I think you’ve opened a very fruitful avenue of enquiry! (Laughter)

Labour’s Len Duvall pointed out that what he called “Fraud Communications” was not part of News International. But then in came Dick Tracey on Ken’s relationship with NI itself.

Tracey: Talking about boot-licking News International, do you know there have been 26 bylined articles in NI newspapers since the hacking scandal broke in July 2009? The byline, Mr Mayor, is Ken Livingstone.

Boris (putting on serious expression): You’re joking. I sincerely hope no payment was received! It would be unbelievable, would it not, if cash actually went from agencies of the Murdoch empire into [Ken’s] pockets. Do you think that can have happened?'

Somehow I doubt that the BBC wil be interested in examining Ken Livingstone's previous links to News International. The BBC have adopted a 'year zero' approach to this as with many other stories.'