Fox News Parent at Center of British Political/Newspaper Scandal

A Part of the Fox News Empire That is Even Worse Than Fox News

England is suffering through a huge political and legal uproar over the practice of Fox News Parent’s British newspapers.  The newspaper in question have been charged with bribing the police for confidential information, and for hacking into the voice mail of politicians, celebrities, murder victims and even the royalty. 

The government is involved because the current Conservative coalition was supported by the Fox News British papers, controlled by media giant Rupert Murdoch, and because the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron brought a disgraced executive from the Murdoch empire into his government.  (The gentleman in question, a Mr. Andy Coulson has since resigned and has been arrested).

Some critical details are from this report in the New York Times.

newspapers may have bribed police officers or used other potentially illegal methods to obtain information about Queen Elizabeth II and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. . .

and the report goes on to detail the alleged abuses.

None are quite as disturbing as the fact that apparently the Murdoch newspaper gained confidential medical information on Prime Minister Brown’s son who had developed cystic fibrosis, and then published the details of the child’s medical condition.

The person close to Mr. Brown said he believed that The Sun gained access to his son’s medical records for an article about his cystic fibrosis that ran in November 2006, four months after the boy’s birth. The BBC, quoting its sources, said the information about the boy’s condition had been obtained first by The Sunday Times, and passed to The Sun. It said that Rebekah Brooks, then The Sun’s editor and now News International’s chief executive, called Mr. Brown and his wife, Sarah, to tell them that the paper knew of the boy’s condition, which they had believed was something known only to themselves and medical professionals who were caring for their son.

While the American part of the group, Fox News is not connected with any of this, anyone who has ever watched Fox News can see how the corporate culture would allow such a thing.  The concept of "Journalistic ethics" with the Murdoch group seems to be a contradiction in terms.