News Of The World

Well, the water got all the way up to Rupert Murdoch's front steps, but it never came in. Any number of his underlings got the axe, and were sent packing for their part in the phone hacking scandal that many were calling Rupert's Watergate. Okay, maybe that was just Carl Bernstein, who knows a thing or two about Watergates, but it still showed up as a mighty big deal at a time when the United States was wrestling with default and Casey Anthony was found to be just a really bad parent and not a murderer. So what if a bunch of tabloid reporters were listening in to citizen's cell phone conversations?
Just because Mister Murdoch owns a paper that uses bribery and wiretapping doesn't make him guilty, but fish tend to stink from the head down. This is the guy who brought us the New York Post and "A Current Affair." Were we really expecting journalistic integrity? Why wouldn't we expect something his hands had touched to generate a machine that would seek to eavesdrop on the conversations of families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, or those of the victims of September 11?
Is it because he's built himself this air of respectability behind the Fox News Channel? Fair and Balanced in one room, Secretive and Corrupt in another. Down the hall from there is Joe Klein, recently installed executive vice president, who was last seen as chancellor of New York City's schools and was asked to advise Murdoch on education for profit, as well as how to get out of this current mess.
When Rupert Murdoch showed up to testify in front of Parliament, he said he was "shocked, appalled and ashamed" at the hacking of the phone of a murdered schoolgirl by his now-shuttered News of the World tabloid. He said he had seen no evidence that victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack and their relatives were targeted by any of his papers.He said that he had been humbled by the experience. Humbled, humiliated, what's the difference when you're Rupert Murdoch?
Should we expect more from the kerjillionaires and their corporations? If you held a shaving cream pie to his head, do you think that Rupert Murdoch would fess up to any of misdeeds? Would he see the error in his ways, and use all his influence and power for good, instead of evil? Like Bill Gates, who is busy re-inventing the toilet. Now that's what I call putting your money where your - er - wait a minute...