The Evil Emperor
What a strange couple of days. The Dirty Digger’s evil empire flexed its muscles on Sunday, but by Monday the Beeb had made some more, and by the looks of it, extremely serious problems for them.
There has always been a suspicion that News International (NI) holds back from exposing all the peccadilloes they discover of politicians in order to give them power over those individuals. Many feel this is why it took so long to start investigating the News of the World.
If that’s so it’s seems to be very close to blackmail, but as must often be the case one in which the victims are not prepared to testify. Could this explain why Ed Miliband has been fairly quiet on NI recently? Another explanation could be connected with the ‘secret’ meetings between Miliband and Blair. Was Blair representing Murdoch in his meetings with the new leadership? He has form on this as we know he asked Brown to call off Tom Watson’s attacks on Murdoch towards the end of the last government.
Still back to the Sunday Times sting on the Tories. Was there more to it than just the story. Was it the old man’s warning to Cameron that he isn’t prepared to go down alone? And go down he and NI could well do if Monday’s Panorama leads to a criminal investigation into NI’s alleged hacking of its competitors in the digital TV markets of Italy and Britain. It seems to be just one executive spilling the beans away from a disaster for Murdoch.
Murdoch’s real problem is how it’s all perceived in Washington. Unlike the UK where Murdoch cultivated politicians of all varieties, in the US he is seen as being a player on behalf of just one party, the Republicans. His Fox News network, the jewel in the NI empire, has very few friends in the governing Democrats. Now that we know that the US Department of Justice is looking into what NI has been up to in both Italy and Britain, Murdoch must be hoping that Obama is not re-elected.
