Monthly Archives: May 2012

Assange loses his final appeal … bar one

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LONDON

THE WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has lost his final appeal in a British court and faces extradition to Sweden where he is accused of rape and sexual assault.
But the Supreme Court gave Mr Assange a stay of 14 days on the extradition order so his lawyer, Dinah Rose, QC, could apply to have the proceedings reopened. She said the judgment was partly based on a legal question that had not been raised during the hearing and which she had not had a chance to argue. She said this related to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Mr Assange did not appear in court. Supporters later said he had been stuck in traffic.
In a majority decision of five to two, the judges decided that the European Arrest Warrant issued by Sweden asking for Mr Assange’s extradition was legal and should be enforced.
If the court does not allow its proceedings to be re-opened, his only other legal avenue would be the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. If that court should agree to take his case, he would be allowed to remain in Britain until the hearing.
The sex allegations relate to a visit to Stockholm that Mr Assange made in August 2010 when he had encounters with two women. One later complained to police that he had not used a condom, despite her insistence, and another that he had had sex with her while she was asleep. Mr Assange strongly denies the claims and says the encounters were fully consensual.
Outside the court, one of his solicitors, Gareth Peirce, said: “The judgment speaks for itself. The judges were clearly divided.”
The legal situation over European extradition warrants was “chaotic” and the British Parliament had implemented the law without understanding its implications. The journalist and lawyer John Pilger said: “I think the judgment was quite extraordinary in that it appears that the British Parliament has been misled by ministers and put forward this legislation based on English law, whereas most of Europe had looked at it in terms of European law. There is massive confusion.”
Mr Pilger said, “If it can happen to Julian Assange it can happen to any journalist.”
The Australian-born Mr Assange has been on bail with an electronic security monitor on his leg for more than a year after having been detained in December 2010 on a European Arrest Warrant. His legal team had argued that the warrant was not valid because it had been issued by a prosecutor and not a judge. A prosecutor was not a “judicial authority” as required by English law, they said.
The president of the court, Lord Justice Phillips, said the question had been difficult but the majority decided Britain’s Extradition Act was based on a European framework in which “judicial authority” was intended to include prosecutors such as the one who issued Mr Assange’s warrant. The European Arrest Warrant was introduced after the September 11 attacks in the US. Critics say it allows people to be moved from one European country to another without any requirement to show evidence.
One of Mr Assange’s lawyers had argued he was being persecuted, not prosecuted, because governments had been embarrassed by an avalanche of secret documents released by WikiLeaks. But a Swedish lawyer rejected the claim and said the women were victims.
Mr Assange’s team fears that if he goes to Sweden he could then be extradited to the US, where authorities are considering a range of charges against him over WikiLeaks including espionage and conspiracy.
American authorities link him to the US Army Private Bradley Manning, who faces court martial over 22 alleged offences, including “aiding the enemy” by leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.
US prosecutors reportedly believe Private Manning dealt directly with Mr Assange and “data-mined” secret databases “guided by WikiLeaks’ list of ‘Most Wanted’ leaks”.
Mr Pilger said Mr Assange should be protected by the first amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing free speech. He accused the Obama Administration of “concocting” the case.First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

At least 10 killed as Italy rocked by second earthquake in 10 days

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TEN people were reported dead and others were missing under rubble following a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in northern Italy last night, just 10 days after a similar quake killed seven and left thousands homeless.

The quake struck at 9.03am local time about 40 kilometres north-west of Bologna at a depth of 9.6 kilometres. The epicentre was the town of Medolla near the city of Modena but the quake was felt as far away as Venice, Florence and Genoa, and as far north as Austria.

People fled into the streets and shops and businesses were evacuated in Bologna, Corriere della Sera reported, and in Pisa. The tremor hit after most people had left home for work.

Buildings collapsed in several towns that were badly hit by the first quake – Mirandola, Finale Emilia, San Felice and Cavezzo. The mayor of San Felice, Alberto Silvestri, told Sky TV he feared further victims would be found under rubble. There were reports a tower had collapsed in the town.

Chris Brewerton, who lives in Mantua, 36 kilometres north of Modena, told the BBC that when the quake struck, “the chair starts shaking and there’s a feeling of waves below me. I rush out into the garden; the shutters and garage door are banging, the ground below me swaying. It lasted about 15 seconds – it was frightening.”

The Prime Minister, Mario Monti – who had been in a meeting with emergency officials in Rome discussing the earlier quake when this one hit – said the government would do “all that it must and all that is possible in the briefest period to guarantee the resumption of normal life in this area that is so special, so important and so productive for Italy”.

The first quake, on May 20, with a magnitude of 6, caused at least ?250 million ($318 million) of damage to farms in the Po valley area, a local farmers’ organisation estimated. As farm buildings, homes, sheds and machinery collapsed, ?100 million worth of Parmesan cheese was destroyed.

Italian officials said it was the worst earthquake to hit the area since the 1300s. It was the worst to hit Italy since the devastation at L’Aquila in 2009, where 300 people died.

Last night calls to emergency services overloaded the phone system in some areas, and train services were halted in parts of northern Italy so that tracks could be checked.

About 7000 people who fled their homes after the first quake are living in about 100 tent camps set up in fields, sports grounds, car parks and schools. The region has been hit by more than 200 aftershocks since May 20.

First published on smh.com.au

Better to befriend Murdoch than to confront him: Blair

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LONDON

MEDIA magnate Rupert Murdoch was not an ”Identikit right-wing person” or a ”sort of tribal Tory”, former prime minister Tony Blair told the Leveson inquiry in London last night.”There are bits of him that are more anti-establishment, sort of meritocratic, I would say,” Mr Blair said.

He said he never felt under pressure to help with the commercial interests of the Murdochs or any other media proprietors.

”We decided more stuff against Murdoch interests than in favour of it. Did that mean they changed their support for me? No, it didn’t, in fact. Even though there were things they really didn’t like.”

Mr Blair testified he made a strategic decision not to take on the British media over their excesses when he became prime minister but instead ”assuaged and persuaded” them because the Labour Party had just spent 18 years in opposition.

He said of that time: ”You certainly [did] fear the power being directed at you”, particularly the papers that would wage campaigns against politicians not just in their opinion pages but through the slanting of news stories.

He flew to Hayman Island to address News Corp executives in 1995 as part of a Labour strategy to gain a hearing with newspapers that had savaged previous leaders Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.

It emerged in 2010 that he formed a close-enough relationship with Mr Murdoch to become godfather of one of the media tycoon’s children.

Asked whether he got too close to News International, he said he became closer to Mr Murdoch once he left office and that was the point at which he became godfather to one of the media tycoon’s children. “The relationship became a lot easier and better ? I would never have become godfather to one of the children [while I was in office].”

He noted three phone calls with Mr Murdoch in the run-up to the Iraq war in March 2003, totalling no more than 45 minutes, in which he ”probably” asked about the positions of the US and Australia. ”But no, I wouldn’t have been asking him about press coverage.”

Mr Blair led the Labour Party for 13 years, 10 of them as prime minister. His appearance came at the start of a high-profile week for the Leveson inquiry into the press, which is looking at the relationships between the media and politicians.

Embattled Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is due to give evidence on Thursday and is likely to be grilled over his handling of the Murdoch bid last year for a complete takeover of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

First published on theage.com.au

Protester bursts into Leveson courtroom to confront Tony Blair

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LONDON

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has denied being too close to Rupert Murdoch, as the Leveson inquiry into media ethics took a dramatic turn overnight. Security guards were forced to intervene at one point during Mr Blair’s evidence, when a protester burst into the courtroom and accused him of being a war criminal.In a moment reminiscent of a cream pie attack on Mr Murdoch before a parliamentary committee last year, David Lawley-Walkin, a freelance documentary film-maker, appeared from behing Lord Leveson’s bench  shouting: “This man should be arrested for war crimes! JP Morgan paid him off for the Iraq war. Three months after we invaded Iraq, he held up the Iraq bank for £20 million. He was then paid $6 million every year, and still is, from JP Morgan, six months after he left office. The man is a war criminal!”

Mr Lawley-Walkin was bundled out of the room by guards, with Lord Justice Leveson ordering an investigation into the security breach. Mr Lawley-Walkin  later told the Guardian he had made his way into the courtroom unchallenged via a back staircase.

“I thought, I’m not going to be able to do this. I nearly gave up, in fact. But when I figured out a way through it was fairly straightforward,” he was quoted as saying, telling the newspaper he had later been handed over to police but had been released without charge.

For his part, Mr Blair said the accusations of payment from JP Morgan were completely untrue: “I’ve never had discussion with them about that [Iraq].”

(Financial services firm JP Morgan Chase was appointed to operate a US-created bank in Iraq to manage billions of dollars in imports and exports from the oil-rich nation).In his evidence, Mr Blair told the inquiry that Rupert Murdoch had not lobbied him over media policy and that there was no “implied deal” between them.

“There was no deal on issues to do with the media with Rupert Murdoch or, indeed, anybody else, either express or implied. And to be fair, he never sought such a thing,” Mr Blair said.

“Was I aware he had certain interests and was I aware the media as a whole had a strong interest in us not legislating on the media? Absolutely.”

Mr Blair said he never felt under any pressure to help with the commercial interests of the Murdochs or any other media proprietors: “We decided more stuff against Murdoch interests than in favour of it. Did that mean they changed their support for me? No, it didn’t, in fact. Even though there were things they really didn’t like.”

Asked whether he got too close to News International, Mr Blair said he became closer to Mr Murdoch after he left office, which is when he became godfather to one of Mr Murdoch’s children.”The relationship became a lot easier and better? I would never have become godfather to one of the children [while I was Prime Minister].”

On whether he got too close to former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, he said that towards the end of his time in office he needed all the friends he could get but “to put it bluntly, the decision-maker was not Rebekah Brooks ?. It was Rupert Murdoch, for sure”.Mr Blair acknowledged that he sent Mrs Brooks a message of sympathy after she was forced to resign over the phone-hacking scandal last year: “I am somebody who doesn’t believe in being a fair-weather friend and certainly I said I was sorry for what happened to her.”Mr Blair had earlier confirmed to the inquiry that he had three phone calls with Mr Murdoch in the run-up to the Iraq war in March 2003.Mr Blair had initiated one of the calls: “I would have been wanting to explain what we were doing. I think I had similar calls with the Observer and the Telegraph?”Probably I would have been asking him what the situation was in the US and Australia, which were part of the coalition [of countries willing to join the US intervention in Iraq]. But no, I wouldn’t have asked him about press coverage.”Mr Blair denied a claim from a former aide that Mr Murdoch had been “the 24th member” of his cabinet and denied that Mr Murdoch had been promised he would be informed any impending policy changes in some areas. The former prime minister also attacked the British press, which he had once called a “feral beast”, over the way some elements of it had waged “a personal vendetta” against his wife, Cherie. He said she had contacted lawyers more than 30 times over articles that had been written about her.”I thought and I do think that the attacks on her and my children were unnecessary and wrong. I just don’t think it is part of the political debate? What I think is wrong is where sections of the media? [have] powerful people say, ‘Right, we are going to go for that person.’”And then what happens is they go for you? it’s full-on, full-frontal. That’s not journalism. In my view, it’s an abuse of power.”Lord Justice Leveson gave an insight into what he might recommend at the end of the inquiry into press practices. He told Mr Blair there needed to be a stronger press complaints system that was fast, effective and cheap for victims to access. He also thought that editors considering an expose on an individual could seek the advice of a panel on whether to notify the subject of the story before publication. Editors could be free to ignore any advice to notify, but if they did, they might risk exemplary damages in any subsequent court case, Justice Leveson said.

First published on smh.com.au

Media inquiry told of lobbyist’s dealings with top minister over TV bid

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LONDON

A lobbyist for News Corp exchanged 191 phone calls, 158 emails and 800 texts with the office of the British Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, during the company’s bid for the satellite broadcaster BSkyB, the Leveson inquiry heard last night.
But News’s head of communications, Fred Michel, said he could not assess whether Mr Hunt had been supportive of the bid at the time.
He said that although he never met Mr Hunt during the bid process, he had exchanged a small number of text messages with him. “Nothing inappropriate never [sic] took place,” he said.
Mr Hunt’s job is under threat following revelations at previous hearings of the Leveson inquiry into media ethics that Mr Michel wrote 164 pages of emails to his boss, James Murdoch, which seemed to suggest Mr Hunt was secretly on-side with the £8 billion Murdoch bid. Mr Hunt, who is also Media Minister, was meant to be impartially overseeing the bid process.
Labour has accused the minister of being a “cheerleader” for the Murdochs’ now abandoned bid and have called for Mr Hunt to resign over the affair.
The lawyer assisting the inquiry, Robert Jay, QC, asked Mr Michel about an email he wrote in November 2010 telling Mr Murdoch that Mr Hunt had to pull out of a planned meeting to discuss the bid with Mr Murdoch because it would undermine the minister’s quasi-judicial responsibility to be impartial.
The email said: “Jeremy is very frustrated about it, but the permanent secretary has now become involved.”
Mr Michel told the inquiry there was “frustration on both sides” that the meeting could not take place and that he wanted to arrange for Mr Murdoch and Mr Hunt to speak over the phone to “apologise to each other”.
Last month Mr Hunt’s special adviser, Adam Smith, resigned over the email revelations. Mr Smith – who was due to give evidence overnight – said that in his communications with Mr Michel he had acted without Mr Hunt’s authorisation and he had allowed the impression to be created of too close a relationship between News Corp and the Department for Media.
Mr Smith said at the time: “I do not recognise all of what Fred Michel said, but nonetheless I appreciate that my activities at times went too far and have, taken together, created the perception that News Corporation had too close a relationship with the department, contrary to the clear requirements set out by Jeremy Hunt and the permanent secretary that this needed to be a fair and scrupulous process.”
Mr Michel told the inquiry he did not exaggerate in his emails in order to make himself look better to his employer: “I don’t need to puff myself up.”
He said he might have written some emails with a view to improving morale at News over the bid but that this happened on only a few occasions.

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

‘This man should arrested for war crimes!’: Leveson protester on Tony Blair

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LONDON

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has denied being too close to Rupert Murdoch, as the Leveson media ethics inquiry took a dramatic turn overnight.Former British prime minister Tony Blair has denied being too close to Rupert Murdoch, as the Leveson inquiry into media ethics took a dramatic turn overnight.Security guards were forced to intervene at one point during Mr Blair’s evidence, when a protester burst into the courtroom and accused him of being a war criminal.

In a moment reminiscent of a cream pie attack on Mr Murdoch before a parliamentary committee last year, David Lawley-Walkin, a freelance documentary film-maker, appeared from behing Lord Leveson’s bench  shouting: “This man should be arrested for war crimes! JP Morgan paid him off for the Iraq war. Three months after we invaded Iraq, he held up the Iraq bank for £20 million. He was then paid $6 million every year, and still is, from JP Morgan, six months after he left office. The man is a war criminal!”

Mr Lawley-Walkin was bundled out of the room by guards, with Lord Justice Leveson ordering an investigation into the security breach. Mr Lawley-Walkin  later told the Guardian he had made his way into the courtroom unchallenged via a back staircase.

“I thought, I’m not going to be able to do this. I nearly gave up, in fact. But when I figured out a way through it was fairly straightforward,” he was quoted as saying, telling the newspaper he had later been handed over to police but had been released without charge.

For his part, Mr Blair said the accusations of payment from JP Morgan were completely untrue: “I’ve never had discussion with them about that [Iraq].”

(Financial services firm JP Morgan Chase was appointed to operate a US-created bank in Iraq to manage billions of dollars in imports and exports from the oil-rich nation).In his evidence, Mr Blair told the inquiry that Rupert Murdoch had not lobbied him over media policy and that there was no “implied deal” between them.

“There was no deal on issues to do with the media with Rupert Murdoch or, indeed, anybody else, either express or implied. And to be fair, he never sought such a thing,” Mr Blair said.
“Was I aware he had certain interests and was I aware the media as a whole had a strong interest in us not legislating on the media? Absolutely.”

Mr Blair said he never felt under any pressure to help with the commercial interests of the Murdochs or any other media proprietors: “We decided more stuff against Murdoch interests than in favour of it. Did that mean they changed their support for me? No, it didn’t, in fact. Even though there were things they really didn’t like.”

Asked whether he got too close to News International, Mr Blair said he became closer to Mr Murdoch after he left office, which is when he became godfather to one of Mr Murdoch’s children.”The relationship became a lot easier and better? I would never have become godfather to one of the children [while I was Prime Minister].”

On whether he got too close to former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, he said that towards the end of his time in office he needed all the friends he could get but “to put it bluntly, the decision-maker was not Rebekah Brooks ?. It was Rupert Murdoch, for sure”.Mr Blair acknowledged that he sent Mrs Brooks a message of sympathy after she was forced to resign over the phone-hacking scandal last year: “I am somebody who doesn’t believe in being a fair-weather friend and certainly I said I was sorry for what happened to her.”Mr Blair had earlier confirmed to the inquiry that he had three phone calls with Mr Murdoch in the run-up to the Iraq war in March 2003.Mr Blair had initiated one of the calls: “I would have been wanting to explain what we were doing. I think I had similar calls with the Observer and the Telegraph?”Probably I would have been asking him what the situation was in the US and Australia, which were part of the coalition [of countries willing to join the US intervention in Iraq]. But no, I wouldn’t have asked him about press coverage.”Mr Blair denied a claim from a former aide that Mr Murdoch had been “the 24th member” of his cabinet and denied that Mr Murdoch had been promised he would be informed any impending policy changes in some areas. The former prime minister also attacked the British press, which he had once called a “feral beast”, over the way some elements of it had waged “a personal vendetta” against his wife, Cherie. He said she had contacted lawyers more than 30 times over articles that had been written about her.”I thought and I do think that the attacks on her and my children were unnecessary and wrong. I just don’t think it is part of the political debate? What I think is wrong is where sections of the media? [have] powerful people say, ‘Right, we are going to go for that person.’”And then what happens is they go for you? it’s full-on, full-frontal. That’s not journalism. In my view, it’s an abuse of power.”Lord Justice Leveson gave an insight into what he might recommend at the end of the inquiry into press practices. He told Mr Blair there needed to be a stronger press complaints system that was fast, effective and cheap for victims to access. He also thought that editors considering an expose on an individual could seek the advice of a panel on whether to notify the subject of the story before publication. Editors could be free to ignore any advice to notify, but if they did, they might risk exemplary damages in any subsequent court case, Justice Leveson said.

First published at theage.com.au on 5 May 2012.

Chilling testimony turns spotlight on crimes of honour

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Shafilea Ahmed’s parents are on trial for her murder, highlighting a vicious trend of hidden violence, writes Karen Kissane in London.

Her dreams were so ordinary: to be able to wear jeans and T-shirts, to go out with a nice boy, maybe to go to university and do law. But such dreams, for girls like Shafilea Ahmed, can be deadly.
Shafilea (pronounced Shafeela) was pretty and bright and full of spirit but she died at 17, in 2003. She had gone missing from her home in Cheshire, but her Pakistani-born parents did not report her absence to police. Her younger sister Alesha says it was they who killed her – in front of their other children – to save the family honour.
A taxi driver, Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife, Farzana, 49, are now on trial for their daughter’s murder. They have pleaded not guilty and the jury is still hearing the evidence.
But the case has turned the spotlight on so-called “honour” crimes in some of Britain’s migrant communities. About a dozen women a year die in acts of revenge over breaches of “honour” that might include refusing to wear traditional clothes or accept an arranged marriage, or choosing a man of whom the family disapproves.
UK police recorded more than 2800 honour attacks in 2010, a figure that is understated because only 39 of the country’s 52 police forces revealed their numbers. Among the 12 forces able to provide comparison figures from 2009, there was an overall rise of 47 per cent in such incidents. Five hundred of the attacks were in London.
The figures were released last December by the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation following a freedom-of-information request. Due to under-reporting by women, “the reality is far darker” than the numbers suggest, says its director, Diana Nammi.
She says the victims are mainly of Asian or Middle Eastern backgrounds but also include Eastern Europeans. They die, or are abused, because “it’s easier to sacrifice a son or a daughter than it is to sacrifice a society or your extended family, who you are trying to please all the time”, one young woman in a refuge recently told the BBC.
The suicide rate among south Asian women in Britain is three times the national average, thought to be the result of women taking what they see as the only way out of an intolerable situation – or being forced to kill themselves.
For Shafilea, her sister claims, death was preceded by months of abuse, including at times starvation, beatings, and threats with a knife. Alesha told the court her parents had drugged Shafilea to make her compliant about getting on a plane back to Pakistan in 2003. When there, Alesha said, “My mum told Shafilea she would be staying in Pakistan and wouldn’t be going back.”
She drank bleach so that she would not be forced into an arranged marriage, Alesha said. Shafilea was flown back to Britain for treatment and spent three months in hospital. Her parents told her to say she had drunk the bleach because she mistook it for mouthwash in the dark, but she reportedly told another patient that she had taken it to avoid marriage.
A former patient, Foisa Aslam, told the court Shafilea had said her parents had accepted a formal offer for her but “she didn’t even love the guy … she wanted to get out of there but they had taken her passport from her”.
Nammi says Britain needs a detailed strategy to deal with honour-based violence. It is more usual for domestic violence to involve only a husband or father, but honour-based violence can have wider groups of perpetrators. “Sometimes it’s not only the very close family – father, mother, brother – but members of the extended family or the wider community can be involved. Sometimes a contract killer or a bounty hunter is hired. Some families will pay other people to track them down and find where they are living, and some will pay to have them killed. That’s happened in England a few times.”
She says it will take time to help traditional elements in some communities change their thinking, and meanwhile, the government needs to establish special refuges for women fleeing honour revenge attacks. “It’s not just about domestic violence, it’s about the risk of being killed,” she says. “Refuges are crucial but in the UK many refuges have closed” because of funding cuts.
She warns that some welfare organisations make a mistake in trying to mediate between the threatened girls or women and their angry families. But some women who are forced into reconciliation find themselves taken back to their country of origin, she says.
“There are cases of girls under 14 whose families say, ‘We won’t force her into marriage’, and they sign a piece of paper saying that and then the next day the girl disappears. I always advise social services not to negotiate with the family.”
The prosecutor, Andrew Edis, QC, told the Chester Crown Court that this case had taken a long time to come to trial because Alesha, now 23, did not tell her story to police until 2010, when she snapped after being arrested for taking part in a robbery at her parents’ home.
He said the jury must decide whether she was finally freeing herself of a dreadful family secret that had haunted her since she was 15, as she claimed – she told the court she had feared suffering Shafilea’s alleged fate if she spoke out – or making up “a wicked lie”.
But he questioned why she would make up such a story. Alesha claimed Shafilea died after a row that began over the fact she had worn a T-shirt to work. Her parents suffocated her by stuffing a carrier bag into her mouth and holding their hands over her nose and mouth so that she couldn’t breathe, Alesha said. She claimed she later saw her mother with black bin bags and wide brown tape and saw her father carrying a plastic-wrapped burden out to the car.
More than four months later, Shafilea’s badly decomposed remains were discovered near a river in Cumbria.
Alesha told the court her loyalty to her parents began to unravel when she went to university and found herself wanting the same freedoms her sister wanted – but being told the same things by her parents, who wanted her to go back to Pakistan and find a husband.
“That is when I saw that it is not normal and that what happened to my sister was wrong. When it’s your own parents, you don’t see things like that because you love them.”First published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

James Murdoch ‘furious’ over plans to block BSkyB takeover bid, Leveson inquiry told

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LONDON< The Conservative minister overseeing the Murdoch bid to take over satellite broadcaster BSkyB warned the Prime Minister that James Murdoch was furious over the government’s handling of it and “if we block it, our media sector will suffer for years”, the Leveson inquiry heard last night.Secretary of state and minister for media Jeremy Hunt wrote a memo to Prime Minister David Cameron in November 2010 in which he said it would be wrong to “cave in” to objections that the takeover would give one media outlet too much power. He warned that James Murdoch was “pretty furious” that another minister, Liberal Democrat Vince Cable, had referred the bid to media regulator Ofcom for scrutiny. “He doesn’t think he will get a fair hearing from Ofcom,” Mr Hunt wrote. “I am privately concerned about this because News Corp are very litigious and we could end up in the wrong place in terms of media policy. Essentially, what James Murdoch wants to do is repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping [where he broke union strangle-holds on newspapers to introduce new technology] and create the world’s first multi-platform operator, available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad. Isn’t this what all media companies have to do ultimately? And, if so, we must be very careful that any attempt to block it is done on plurality grounds and not as a result of lobbying by competitors.” Then Mr Hunt appeared to throw his backing behind the controversial £8 billion bid, writing, “The UK has the chance to lead the way on this as we did in the 80s with the Wapping move, but if we block it, our media sector will suffer for years. In the end, I am sure, sensible controls can be put into any merger to ensure plurality, but I think it would be totally wrong to cave into the [BBC and Guardian] line that this represents a substantial change of control given that we all know Sky is controlled by News Corp now anyway.” News Corp owns 39 per cent of Sky. The company abandoned the full-takeover bid last year following public outrage over the phone-hacking scandal at its now-defunct paper, the News of the World. Mr Hunt was meant to be impartially overseeing the takeover proposal. He had a ‘quasi-judicial’ role to be objective, which Lord Justice Leveson last night said meant not speaking to the parties in any way that was not “open and transparent to everyone”. Mr Hunt’s job is under threat following earlier revelations that a lobbyist for News Corporation, Fred Michel, wrote 164 pages of emails to James Murdoch that seemed to suggest Mr Hunt was secretly on-side with the £8 billion Murdoch bid. Last night the inquiry revealed that Mr Michel had also exchanged 191 phone calls, 158 emails and more than 1000 texts with Mr Hunt’s office during the process. But Mr Michel, head of communications for News Corp in the UK, said he could not assess whether Mr Hunt had been supportive of the bid. He said he had not met Mr Hunt during that time but had exchanged several text messages with him. “Nothing inappropriate never [sic] took place,” he said. One message he sent in March 2010 congratulated Mr Hunt on his performance in the House of Commons that day. Mr Hunt sent the French-born Mr Michel a text reply saying, “Merci! Large drink tonight.” In one email Mr Michel wrote that Mr Hunt believed a new NewsCorp proposal over the bid would mean “it’s almost game over for the opposition” and that “he said we would get there in the end and he shared our objectives”. The minister did not want to the process to go to the Competition Commission as “Jeremy Hunt believes this would kill the deal”, Mr Michel wrote in another email. But Mr Hunt also wanted to “build some political cover with the process”, an email said: “He wants us to take the heat with him in the next two weeks.” Labour has accused the minister of being a “cheerleader” for the Murdochs’ now-abandoned bid and called for Mr Hunt to resign over the affair but Mr Cameron is standing by him. Lawyer Robert Jay, QC, asked Mr Michel about how he had received preview information from Mr Hunt’s special adviser, Adam Smith, on a statement on the BSkyB bid the minister was to make to Parliament the next day. Mr Michel said he was surprised that Mr Smith sent him information about the statement before it was made to parliament. Mr Michel had written to Mr Murdoch of this, “Managed to get some information on the plans for tomorrow although absolutely illegal”. Asked what he meant by “absolutely illegal”, Mr Michel told the inquiry, “it was a very bad joke which shouldn’t have been made. I think it was out of my surprise to get a briefing on the contents of the statement.” Mr Jay challenged Mr Michel on an email in which Mr Michel claimed that Mr Hunt and the Prime Minister’s office wanted guidance from News International on how they should position themselves over the phone-hacking scandal. Mr Jay said Mr Smith strongly denied asking for this. Mr Michel replied, “I can completely vouch for the fact that we discussed those issues with Adam.” But he said “‘guide’ might be too strong a word, probably, but there was an offer from me to brief the departments on the on-going issues of News International and it was something that was welcomed at the time”. Last month Mr Smith resigned over the email revelations. He said that in his many communications with Mr Michel he had acted without Mr Hunt’s authorization and he had allowed the impression to be created of too close a relationship between News Corp and the Department for Media. Questioned at the inquiry last night, Mr Smith said he had had a close working relationship with Mr Hunt. But he denied the minister was close to the Murdochs or their companies: “He did not have that much of a relationship with either of the Murdochs or the chief executive of News International… he was not close to News Corp.” He also denied that Mr Hunt had been a “cheerleader” for News Corp’s BSkyB bid. First published in The Age.

News Corp lobbyist sent 1000 texts

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LONDON

A NEWS Corp lobbyist exchanged 191 phone calls, 158 emails and more than 1000 texts with the office of secretary of state Jeremy Hunt during the company’s bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB, the Leveson inquiry heard last night.
But News Corp head of communications Fred Michel said he could not assess whether Mr Hunt had been supportive of the bid.
He said he had not met Mr Hunt during that time but had exchanged several text messages with him. “Nothing inappropriate never [sic] took place,” he said.
One message he sent in March 2010 congratulated Mr Hunt on his performance in the House of Commons that day.
Mr Hunt sent the French-born Mr Michel a text reply saying, “Merci! Large drink tonight.”
Mr Hunt’s job is under threat following earlier revelations at the Leveson inquiry into the press that Mr Michel wrote 164 pages of emails to his boss, James Murdoch, that seem to suggest Mr Hunt was secretly on-side with the £8 billion Murdoch bid. In one email Mr Michel reported that Mr Hunt believed a new News Corp proposal over the bid would mean “it’s almost game over for the opposition” and that “he said we would get there in the end and he shared our objectives”.
But Mr Hunt also wanted to “build some political cover with the process”, the email said: “He wants us to take the heat with him in the next two weeks.”
Mr Hunt, who is also Media Minister, was meant to be impartially overseeing the takeover proposal.
Lawyer Robert Jay, QC, asked Mr Michel about an email he wrote in November 2010 telling Mr Murdoch that Mr Hunt had to pull out of a planned meeting to discuss the bid with Mr Murdoch because he had legal advice that the bid was a quasi-judicial matter, not a policy issue. The email said, “Jeremy is very frustrated about it, but the permanent secretary has now become involved.” Mr Michel told the inquiry there was “frustration on both sides” that the meeting could not take place. Mr Hunt’s former adviser Adam Smith was due to give evidence last night.First published in The Age 25 May 2012.

News Corp trio called on hacking ‘lies’

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Three former News International executives are to face the British Parliament’s watchdog over claims they lied when giving phone-hacking evidence.THREE former executives of Rupert Murdoch’s British publishing arm, News International, are to face the British Parliament’s watchdog over claims they lied when giving phone-hacking evidence.Colin Myler, former editor of the News of the World, former legal manager Tom Crone and NI’s former executive chairman, Les Hinton, are to be investigated by the House of Commons standards and privileges committee.

In a Commons debate that ended in a decision to refer the issue, Labour MP Chris Bryant said the committee should consider fines or jail terms for the three men. The most likely outcome, however, is thought to be a demand that the trio – and perhaps a corporate representative of today’s News International – be ordered to present themselves to the House for public rebuke.

The men are accused of lying to the Commons select committee on the media when they gave evidence to its phone-hacking inquiry. In a recent report on hacking, the committee said it believed they had lied. The men have denied this but chairman John Whittingdale said the committee agreed unanimously that the three misled them.

He said ”alarm bells began ringing” when it was claimed the hacking scandal was limited to one journalist. The committee received documents showing witnesses had evidence this ”rogue reporter defence” was untrue, he said.

Mr Bryant said he believed the case would be ”one of the most flagrant examples of a contempt of Parliament in Parliament’s history”.

‘”It is not just that it was one person at one time. It was not just that it was one organisation for a brief period of time. It’s that a whole series of people systematically, repeatedly, lied so as to protect themselves, to protect their commercial interests and to try and make sure they didn’t end up going to prison.”

He added: ”I believe that this House and the committee itself should consider, in turn, firstly whether or not the three individuals mentioned, and corporately News International should be summoned to this House ? Secondly, they should consider whether individuals should be fined, not least because there have been considerable expenses incurred by Parliament and the prosecuting authorities by the process of lying to Parliament. And thirdly ? whether or not to imprison.”

The media committee’s report last month said that:

Mr Hinton ”misled the committee in 2009 in not telling the truth about payments to [the jailed former News of the World royal editor] Clive Goodman [who was convicted over hacking the royal family in 2007] and his role in authorising them, including the payment of his legal fee”.

Mr Crone ”misled the committee in 2009 by giving a counter-impression of the significance of confidentiality in the [Professional Footballers’ Association chief executive] Gordon Taylor settlement ? and sought to mislead the committee about the commissioning of surveillance”.

Mr Crone and Mr Myler misled the committee ”by answering questions falsely about their knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone hacking and other wrongdoing”.

The News of the World and News International ”corporately ? misled the committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking”.

First published at theage.com.au 24 May 2012.