Murdoch-gate meets “Climate-gate”

What we know so far about the Rupert Murdoch/News Corp scandal may just be the tip of the iceberg. Keith Olbermann wrote yesterday on his blog about the connection between Murdoch’s News Corp and the stolen “climate-gate” emails:

The Murdoch Phone-Hacking Scandal may have just metastasized. The so-called “Climate-Gate” controversy — in which e-mails about global warming were stolen from researchers at Britain’s University of East Anglia in November, 2009 — now turns out to bear the stamp of Neil Wallis, one of the key figures in Murdoch’s hacking of the phones, voicemails, and other electronic communications of thousands of people.

Wallis is unique in this scandal. He had been the Executive Editor of Murdoch’s News Of The World when hacking was at its peak. Yet in 2009 he wound up being hired by the police as a public relations consultant while the police investigated the hacking scandal. And he wound up spying for Murdoch’s people on what Scotland Yard was investigating.

Wallis was, as the New York Times put it, “reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case.”

In the interview below, Joe Romm from Climate Progress and Olbermann discuss  News Corp’s penchant for hacking, and what this means for the private emails that were stolen from the climate scientists at Britain’s University of East Anglia in November, 2009.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p0yCsRet0A]

Romm described it this way on Climate Progress:

There is a cancer on the U.S. media.  That cancer is the disinformation machine aimed at spreading and endlessly repeating the most absurd falsehoods on a host of vital issues to the health and well being of Americans.

The cancer’s most dangerous symptom — the one that will ultimately prove fatal to human civilization and the American way of life as we know it today — is the relentless lies on climate science (see “Foxgate: Leaked email reveals Fox News boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science” and “93% of WSJ‘s Climate Op-Eds Misrepresent Science“).

Will the cancer of News Corp be caught in time to change the prognosis for the planet?  Nothing is for sure, except that we have the blessing – and curse – of living in interesting times!

More links:

When Murdoch-Gate met Climate-gate

Connecting the Dots From News Corp Scandal to Dangerous Lies of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal

0 thoughts on “Murdoch-gate meets “Climate-gate””

  1. Murdock’s Eulogy by Peter Shakespeare Baxter

    Friends, Readers, countrymen, lend me your ears;
    I come to bury Murdock, not to praise him.
    The evil that men do lives after them;
    The good is oft interred with their bones;
    So let it be with Murdock.
    The noble Orwell hath told you Murdock was ambitious:
    If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
    And grievously hath Murdock answered it.
    Here, under leave of Orwell and the rest –
    For Orwell was an honourable man;
    So are were all, all honourable men –
    Come I to speak at Murdock’s inquest.
    O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
    For all men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
    For my heart is in the custard pie there with Murdock,
    And I must pause till it come back to me.
    A once noble profession graced by the likes
    Of Orwell and Greene as today become the
    Possession of a custard pie.
    A pie cooked in Murdock’s bakery.

    PS that is George Orwell or Eric Blair and Henry Graham Greene for the benefit of journalists everywhere.

    Reply
    • Wonderful! Thanks for that Shakespearean take on the whole sordid and illegal business which has so corrupted democracies on both sides of the Atlantic.

      Reply

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