Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
It’s actually quite insulting to Baldwin to somehow compare him to Coulson.
Diddums. Look, Ashcroft has alleged that The Times tired to hack his phone. (Which The Times and Baldwin have strenuously denied.) Frankly, you may think Ashcroft is a rich prick and you’d want a second opinion if he said fire was hot and water was wet. Fair enough.
I’m with Matthew. Coulson has been arrested by the police. Former employees have gone on the record about his actions, which included approving gross breaches of the privacy of victims and their families. Cameron was repeatedly warned not to hire him, but did so.
All there is on Baldwin is an allegation from a political powerbroker whose business and financial dealings -- including what appeared to be an attempt to get around rules on political donations -- were investigated by a Times team that included Baldwin, back in the 1990s. (There was no phone-hacking, but Ashcroft says a PI, not hired by Baldwin, improperly got details of one of his bank accounts.) I don’t think there is a serious equivalence.
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Sacha,
Stephen, can you please link to the story and maybe quote a few highlights rather than paste the whole content here. It breaches copyright, for one thing.
Yes. Just deleted the copy-paste comment sorry stephen.
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Do we? Key is generally not on top of things without a minder and a briefing. And he dimly knows PMs shouldn’t talk about the SIS. He’s as likely if not more so to be covering up his ignorance of what’s going on.
New statement: Key confirms multi-agency investigation -- which found no links to Mossad -- and denies all the other claims, including the "five passports".
Which makes his original performance look utterly hopeless.
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Hans Versluys,
This is not how we at Stratos TV got Aljazeera. When AJ English launched in November 2006 we immediately applied to have them included in our satellite programme mix and this was readily approved and arranged. As far as I know, Sky TV never approached AJE at the time of launch for inclusion in their pay platform
Thanks Hans. I've discussed this with JIm and added a correction to the originall comment. My bad, absolutely.
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And here's the "foam hacking" clip you're all gagging for:
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Nonetheless, Fox News has a presence on SKY Digital…
And? SKY Digital also carries BBC News, CNN, CNBC, Stratos/Triangle (which carries news/current affairs content from AlJazeera English, PBS, Deutsche Welle and others), TVNZ, Three and RT (which is a state-funded Russian network) – none of which bear the distasteful prints of the evil one.
There was actually demand for Fox when they added it, so that was a simple commercial decision.
On Al-Jazeera, I think they did make a craven political decision in the “War on Terror” years. They were offered Al Jazeera on very good terms (basically free, I think) and declined, which is how Triangle/Stratos got it. But that’s only a few hours a day. It’d be nice to have Al Jaz English 24 hours.
So, yeah, there is some politics in there.
EDIT: I got this wrong. Stratos approached Al Jaz, and Sky wasn't offered it.
Although not so much that CEO John Fellett, a conservative Christian, can’t look the other way when the hardcore porn gets programmed on the pay channels …
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I don’t know if I’d be as sanguine as some about the benign indifference of Fairfax Media and APN if their bottom line, or their rather cosy effective print media duopoly, was seriously threatened by government policy.
But in the real world neither of those companies actually do have anything like the history of News Corporation in working to a corporate editorial line, or its highly politicised culture. That’s surely the point.
It never manifested in the newspapers Murdoch/INL owned here, but the united front of the Murdoch papers that dominate the major centres in Australia is a fact of life. They’ve declared war on Gillard this year. It’s the way the company operates.
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
Yeah – it’s certainly possible Hoare killed himself – I’m not saying people who think that are ‘sheeple’ or anything – just that the police statements to that effect are near worthless, that it seems like a huge coincidence that he’d antagonise several groups of very powerful, ruthless people and then commit suicide.
There’s presently no more evidence for suicide than there is for murder – ie, none.
Anyway, tweet fromThe Guardian’s Paul Lewis:
I’ve been at Sean Hoare’s house. Police/ambulance there 11am-3pm. Then nothing. Story breaks. Forensics arrive 9pm.
It appears there’ll be questions asked tomorrow.
Meanwhile, The Daily Mail got pics of the forensic team at work and got a neighbour to talk:
Last night a friend and neighbour claimed Mr Hoare had become increasingly reclusive and paranoid in recent weeks. ‘He would talk about someone from the Government coming to get him and he was always hiding in the flat with his curtains drawn and he’d say to me, “If anyone comes by, don’t say I’m in”.
He was physically going downhill. He was yellow in colour and wasn’t looking well for the last month.
‘He had a constant struggle with alcohol and talked to me about how much he had put his wife through.
‘He did say something about phone hacking and I think that was his main worry. He had definite concerns with the media. He did mention he was paranoid and would mention conspiracy stuff.’
So I guess there’s fodder for everyone’s theory there. I would note that people who are turning yellow from liver disease can just up and die.
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
When is the fall out going to reach NZ?
Should it? While I wouldn’t cross the road to piss on a copy of the Herald if its head was on fire, I don’t think anyone is suggesting they hack people’s phones. Their crass and morbid insenitivity is more old school.
I think there is some marginally ethical stuff done in New Zealand in the name of the story – you can guess the handful of suspects – but that’s not really where to look.
As Bryan Gould noted in his column in the Herald, governments have been kind to Sky in New Zealand – perhaps because it’s a very active government lobbyist.
I know for a fact that every time Jim Anderton or whoever started talking about anti-siphoning regulation, Sky would call NZRU comms and tell them to put the frighteners on the government about how it would be the death of rugby.
As I’ve noted previously, Sky (largest and 39% shareholder, News Corp) has had an unprecedented run of favourable decisions from the current government, one which began with the scrapping of a regulatory review whose conclusions probably wouldn’t have been to Sky’s liking. TVNZ was pressured to make 6 and 7 available to Sky on Sky’s terms, Kordia was basically told to cut Sky a sweet deal to get on Freeview, etc.
There is a degree of unease building out there – not just in TV land but in the internet sector – about Sky’s dominance and its lock on content. I doubt there has been anything improper in Sky’s relationship with government, but it can certainly be seen as an extremely friendly one. I suspect it will be a little more circumspect now.
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Hard News: The scandal that keeps on giving, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
I think it’s fairly likely Sean Hoare was assassinated – probably not by News International, but by Met officers working in an unofficial capacity, sending a not-very subtle message to other potential whistleblowers that if you speak out against them they can murder you with near total impunity.
For the time being, I'm inclined to hang with the more straightforward explanation that he died because he was mortally ill.