“Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.”
Vint Cerf
So why did Old Crone quit?
It seems that Tom Crone, who has been News International’s chief lawyer for over 25 years, has quit. Two questions arise from this unexpected development: 1. why did he go now? and 2. What role did he play in the hush-money payments to Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford (the ones that James Murdoch he authorised without knowing the full story)?
“Whether he jumped or was pushed still isn’t clear”, writes the Christian Science Monitor.
But his role at the paper, particularly in a decision three years ago to pay large out-of-court settlements to two men whose phones were hacked into by the company’s employees, is sure to be under scrutiny in the coming weeks and months.
Mr. Crone told Parliament in 2009 that he’d recommended and approved a $1 million settlement paid to Gordon Taylor, the head of the Professional Football Association, whose phone had been illegally hacked by NotW reporters. Colin Myler, then NotW editor, told Parliament that he, Crone, and James Murdoch collectively decided to make that payment. That hearing came after The Guardian newspaper broke the story of the paper’s payments. Celebrity publicist Max Clifford also reportedly received a settlement of over $1 million.
That has raised tantalizing questions about how much James knew about the illegal practices at NotW – both during his time at News International and before.
Yep.
Take back the Net: Rebecca MacKinnon’s TED talk
How to mislead Parliament: a letter from Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade)
A section of the letter Rebekah Wade (as she then was) sent to the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in 2009. I particularly like the bit where she states her belief that the Guardian coverage “has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public”.
Mrs Brooks, by the way, is (or, should I say was?) David Cameron’s riding-out companion.
Photography 101
Class of 2011
Murdoch and metaphor
Just about the only truly memorable phrase uttered by Edward Heath, the Tory Prime Minister in the 1970s, was his description of Tiny Rowland, the boss of Lonhro (who also, for a time, owned the Observer) as “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. (Rowland famously replied that he would not want to be its acceptable face, which was quite a good riposte.) But Tiny has long since passed to his reward. The Digger and his spawn are proving worthy inheritors of his title.
Jeremy Hunt’s get-out-of-gaol card
As I write, the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt is wriggling on an exquisitely sharp hook. He has to find a way of stopping the Digger’s take-over of BSkyB without triggering a very expensive lawsuit from News Corporation. It may be simpler than he thinks. Apart altogether from the question of whether anyone involved with the Digger is a “fit and proper” person to run a broadcasting company, there is the fact that his decision to approve the BSkYB takeover was apparently based entirely on “assurances” received from News Corp about what would happen to Sky News. Given what we now know about the way News International has concealed information from the police, misled Parliament and possible obstructed the course of justice, Hunt could easily — and plausibly — maintain that no assurances from such a source can be taken seriously.
Who said what? — and when?
Here’s Statement #1, dated September 2009.
“Concerns about News of the World hacking are codswallop that looks like a politically-motivated put-up job by the Labour party.”
Statement #2, dated July 2011.
“It is unbelievable that victims of some of the most odious crimes in recent years might have had their suffering prolonged and intensified by such blatant intrusion into their lives. If true, it suggests that there was no limit to the callousness of the journalists and provate investigators involved. And if some police officers were indeed paid as part of this process, there is only one word for this: corruption”.
So who made these statements?
Yes, you guessed it: Boris ‘Bollinger’ Johnson, currently Mayor of London.
Is Google+ a minus?
This morning’s Observer column.
To read some of the excited commentary on these innovations you’d think that teleportation had actually arrived. Watching people salivate over Circles and, er, Hangouts helps to explain how the ancient Egyptians came to worship an insect. It also reminds one of the astonishing power that large corporations possess to create a reality-distortion field around them which, among other things, disables the capacity to believe that these organisations might sometimes do very silly things indeed. There was a time, for example, when Microsoft’s every move was greeted with the hushed reverence with which devout Catholics greet papal utterances. Grown men swoon whenever Steve Jobs appears in public. And it’s not that long ago since Google launched its incomprehensible “Wave” service (now defunct) and an idiotic venture called “Buzz” – things that excited geeks but left the rest of the world unmoved.
So the question du jour is whether Google+ is an electric wok or not…