Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

[tsuki]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/08/murdoch-papers-phone-hacking

"Rupert Murdoch's News Group News­papers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public ­figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

Today, the Guardian reveals details of the suppressed evidence, which may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them. The evidence also poses difficult questions for:

• Conservative leader David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts."

If Murdock was doing this in the UK, what is he doing here?

[madrchsod]

1. the same thing....

our laws are more relaxed than englands

[tsuki]

3. I know. But I cannot believe that evidence of criminal activity was

suppressed by Scotland Yard.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. If Murdoch had tapped the phone/e-mail of Alec Baldwin,

I'll bet AB wouldn't have sued him or the corporation.

He wouldn't have taken any pay-off money.

He would have punched out the lights of Rupert Murdoch and gone on to win the democratic senatorial primary in Connecticut and later the general election.

[tsuki]

4. No, the Millionaire$Media would have gone into 24 hour overdrive on

how out of control Baldwin was. They stick together (for the most part) like the mafia.