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Subscribe to RSSA panel of British lawmakers have declared media mogul Rupert Murdoch 'not a fit person' to run a major international company. NBC's Jim Maceda reports.
A stinging report by a British House of Commons committee concluding that Rupert Murdoch is “not fit” to run a major international company provides powerful new ammunition for shareholders suing News Corp. in the United States and for big institutional investors demanding changes in the media giant’s management, analysts say.
It also comes at a perilous time for the U.S.-based company. Law enforcement sources have confirmed to NBC News that the U.S. Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into Murdoch’s media empire, looking into allegations of bribes paid to officials in Russia and China as well as Scotland Yard police officers in the United Kingdom.
“I think there will be a shareholder revolt over this,” said Julie Tanner, an assistant director of Christian Brothers Investment Service, an investment advisory firm for Catholic Church institutions, referring to the report by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. Christian Brothers has filed a shareholder resolution calling on News Corp. to shake up its management and appoint a new independent chairman.
Other big investors, including the California state retirement fund CalPERS and a consortium of British pension funds, have signaled their support for these efforts.
“Our principal concern at News Corp. has been to ensure that it has robust governance policies and practices in place, and that effective action is taken to root out wrongdoing,” Tom Powdrill, chief of communications for the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), the British pension fund consortium, said in an email to NBC News on Tuesday. “Clearly, today’s report reflects the fact that News Corp. has been deficient on both counts in the past.”
Murdoch not 'a fit person' to lead major firm, UK lawmakers say
As chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp, the 81-year-old Murdoch is among the highest-paid executives in the world, receiving total compensation of $33.3 million last year, including a $12.5 million bonus. He has successfully beaten back similar resolutions in past years, thanks in part to his and his family’s ownership of 40 percent of the voting stock of the media giant. (He also benefited from the solid support of Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the Riyadh based media tycoon who owns an estimated 7 percent of News Corp. The prince did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. )
But the blistering report by the House of Commons committee could change the equation and potentially spur the board’s directors -- including such prominent figures as Joel Klein, the former chancellor of the New York City Schools -- to demonstrate their independence by distancing themselves from Murdoch, some analysts say.
“The biggest impact of the report is going to be on the shareholder resolutions and it could threaten the Murdoch family control of the company,” said Andrew Schwartzman, a Washington, D.C.,-based media lawyer and the longtime policy director for The Media Access Project, a public interest group that has sought to curb the power of big media firms.
But Murdoch has shown no inclination to step down as head of News Corp. — a company whose diverse interests in the United States include the Wall Street Journal, the Fox cable network and the 20th Century Fox movie studio.
In a memo to News Corp. employees Tuesday afternoon, Murdoch acknowledged what he described as “past mistakes” over the phone hacking allegations and promised “a more robust global compliance structure” around the world.
“To that end, News Corporation continues to cooperate with all inquiries relating to voice mail interception and improper payments to public officials,” Murdoch wrote in the memo, an apparent reference to the Justice Department investigations into potential violations of U.S. anti-bribery law.
At the same time, Murdoch insisted, “Our business has never been stronger.” And, in a separate statement, the company criticized the inclusion of passages in the report -- clearly the ones referring to Murdoch -- as “unjustified and highly partisan.” (The personal criticism of Murdoch -- including language that he “turned a blind eye” to allegations of widespread phone hacking and gave testimony that was “barely credible”-- was adopted by six of the committees 11 members. Voting for the harsh language were five members of the Labor Party and one member of the Liberal Democratic Party, over the opposition of members from Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party.)
Beyond the shareholder resolutions, the company is also facing civil actions in the United States.
Mark Lewis, a British lawyer who has been active in suing News Corp. in Britain and collecting damage awards on behalf of hacking victims, told NBC News this week that he has identified at least one American victim of phone hacking who alleges that his phone was hacked in the United States. Lewis says he has teamed up with U.S. lawyers and plans to file a U.S. lawsuit on behalf of the client — whom he declined to identify -- in the next couple of weeks.
Another U.S. lawsuit, filed last year by several large labor union shareholders, alleges that Murdoch has run News Corp “as his own personal fiefdom” and misused company assets “to advance the selfish business interests of his family”—including paying $615 million to purchase a television and film production company owned by his daughter. The company has moved to dismiss the complaint as without merit, but a Delaware judge is set to hear oral arguments on whether the suit should proceed later this month.
Schwartzman and other media analysts said Tuesday it is far from clear what direct impact the House of Commons report will have on many of these matters or on other potential problems the company may face.
It would be exceedingly difficult, for example, for a rival media firm to challenge Fox News’s broadcast licenses at the Federal Communications Commission. A federal law enacted in 1996 says such challenges to broadcast licenses can only succeed if it could be demonstrated that the broadcaster committed “misconduct” while running the station in question, not wrongdoing by the broadcaster’s corporate owners in other lines of business.
The British report, moreover, has no legal standing in the U.S., although some experts say it could spur British regulators to challenge News Corp’s stake in B Sky B, the huge British pay television firm that has been a major cash cow for the firm.
But the broader impact, they say, could be in diminishing the power and influence of Murdoch himself. The stinging language in the report’s conclusions seems to echo many of the sharpest critiques leveled by News Corp.’s dissident shareholders.
After blasting Murdoch for “willful blindness to what was going in his companies,” the report stated: “This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organization and speaks volumes about the lack of corporate governance at News Corporation. We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”
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The Murdochs, like so many high flying executives, seem to have forgotten thier legal and moral responsibilities to their companies. The buck stops with them and ignorance should be no defence. They are paid the huge bucks to know what is going on in their companies. Otherwise, what use are they?
I hope Murdoch loses control of all his companies. The WSJ has been a piece of sh!t since he took over.
Yes, but on a happier note Fox & Friends is up for an Emmy in the best comedy show category.
That doesn't say much for the Emmy's then, does it, hehe.
Noam Chomsky was right and always has been right.
The media is propaganda put out by your countries corporations and government, period, and you are NOT getting news of any kind.
The only real news is people with cameras and phones showing everyone the real truth.
MSNBC is just the liberals Fox news. All corporate news is TRASH. Murdoch and his corporate empire is trash.
They just made money off all of us posting in this article with ad revenue per view.
I hope Rupert and Company, as well as all corporate media go off the air immediately. The world would be a MUCH better place. Some day one can hope REAL journalism returns to the world.
REAL journalism are citizens of earth around the world, with camera/smart devices that show the truth...... where no embellished, infotainment, propaganda, shock value news is needed
The problem with this notion that we have to let private businesses and billionaires do whatever they want to with public owned airwaves is that it is a political agenda designed to enrich the rich, generation after generation increasingly acting parasitically on the country and consolidating power. No, sorry, the airwaves are ours and Rupert Murdoch and Fox News does not have the right to conduct a propaganda campaign centered on lies, hate, division and corruption. Now that they've been caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar they cry ignorance. This is lunacy and corrupts our entire country.
The other problem is it distracts us from huge problems like global climate change and alarming pollution levels in every part of our environment. As Murdoch has done with the Media Industry large oil conglomerates milk the planet for all it's worth and have a political agenda to block alternative energy sources, production, research and implementation. You've seen their propaganda campaign if you watch television, regularly playing on MSNBC and just about every other station. Invest in oil is their mantra...
Ok, seriously now, from a scientific perspective this is not unlike watching lemmings throw themselves off of a cliff. We are neck-deep in sludge, all kinds of sludge, toxic chemicals, smog and emissions from everything, cars to coal plants. The planet is in peril because it is heating up and the glaciers are all melting. Let's not even discuss the environmental damage from repeated oil spills and the economic damage from dependency on petroleum fuels. All the while oil companies and the politicians they buy insist solar power is for communist hippies.
Again from a scientific perspective this assertion is ridiculous. The sun is a star nearby the planet earth that for purposes of understanding can be thought of as a 3.846×1026 W (that's 384,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts) light bulb. Now tell my by what contorted reason would we continue to pursue burning tar extracted from the earth that was formed by millions of years worth of dead plant matter? Here on earth that almost unimaginable amount of energy can be collected in many ways including solar collectors, wind, tides and in fact by just about every living thing. In fact, the oil we burn is another form of solar energy which unfortunately releases a lot of pollution when it is released.
Today many people don't know about how much progress has been made in solar cell technology and batter technology there has been much of it. The time for our planet to shift to clean, cheap energy is now and will be for the rest of time. Holding back this progress is a political agenda to keep cash flowing to almost unimaginable rich people. So there you have it, Murcoch and his corrupting media empire as well as many others like him, including oil companies, create a political system that actually holds us back in the stone age and as a society we have to take back our democracy and move forward. I think we all know what political system maintains Rupert Murdoch and vice versa.
More good news -
Based on disclosures in SEC filings (Securities and Exchange Commission), at present the Justice Department's Criminal Division has 81 active investigations of violation of the FCPA (the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act).Three that should interest everyone are:
Active FCPA Investigations- News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch's organization)
- Koch Industries (David and Charles Koch's organization)
- Halliburton Company (organization associated with Dick Cheney)
Nothing is going to happen to him. People like him are above the law. If something does does, it will be because of his other big friends decide to throw him under the bus. They would want the attention on him and not on them.
TheOverlord this is worth repeating:
So there you have it, Murcoch and his corrupting media empire as well as many others like him, including oil companies, create a political system that actually holds us back in the stone age and as a society we have to take back our democracy and move forward. I think we all know what political system maintains Rupert Murdoch and vice versa.
It is time to take Murdoch's American citizenship away. He did not earn it as almost all naturalized citizens must earn it. It was given to him by a republican congress. It can be taken away by a congress with a different set of ethics. Take away Murdoch's American citizenship!!! Do it now!! Let him take his crypto-fascist, diseased criminal mind back to Australia and keep it there!
Rupert Murdoch is a Tar Baby that the United States touched last, so we own him. The Australians revoked his Australian (and therefore his Commonwealth) citizenship. He is the only Australian to lose his citizenship in that way. He belongs to the Republicans who gave him American citizenship. As do the Fox News and Wall Street Journal organizations that spew their venom.
At this troubled time in our country, a huge chunk of our public airwaves are controlled by a guy from Australia who's proven to have zero ethics and a Saudi prince? Super! We used to have laws against that kind of thing.
Middle America.
And we should have laws against that kind of thing again.
"It would be exceedingly difficult, for example, for a rival media firm to challenge Fox News’s broadcast licenses at the Federal Communications Commission. A federal law enacted in 1996 says such challenges to broadcast licenses can only succeed if it could be demonstrated that the broadcaster committed “misconduct” while running the station in question, not wrongdoing by the broadcaster’s corporate owners in other lines of business."
Seriously! How many thousands of examples of "misconduct" are required? Isn't a propaganda machine pretending to be a "News" channel misconduct enough? If not, how about claiming to be "Fair & Balanced"?
Oh, the irony of it all!
We definitely need to bring back strong anti-trust laws and break up all of these new "Ma Bell" type empires. They should never have been allowed to get this far to start with. That goes for Comcast, NewsCorp, all WS banks, AT&T, Google, MS, and the list goes on and on, just like the energizer bunny.
Anti-Trust laws should be enacted immediately.
Comcast came on my land to service the neighbors below and put cable on my property instead of on the easement across the driveway. It was actually Prince Telecom but Comcast is the one who hired them and gave them instructions.
I told them to move it and "Comcast said they did move it". One year later, they were on my land fixing a problem with the cable to the neighbors again.. I was furious and asked why they didn't move it. Comcast said they service wasn't actually on my land and I threatened to take legal action because I had my land surveyed along with the easements. The survey cost me $1,100 and of course, Comcast had trespassed on my land again.
The excuse Comcast gave me over the phone from one of their people was: They were afraid to hit the Puget Sound Energy line and they're sorry now.
They dug up the service to move it and left a muddy bog for me to deal with. Then they got a ditch-witch (ditch digger) and put in the service on the easement as required by law and gave me 2 months free cable.
They were cheap, insolent, showed how little they care about telling truth and I still have watch out for them today.
Big Corporations didn't learn about Social Responsibility in College. All they learned about was getting ahead through any means necessary.
Today, Comcast wants to put cable in my Mobile Home Parks in Tacoma. They've been asking for years through Prince Telecom. I wouldn't give them the time of day now after what they did. I get a letter from them every few months telling me this: "Thank you for choosing Comcast as your cable provider, here's an agreement for Comcast to install service to all your tenants at no cost you"...
All I think is: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, that will never happen you greedy pigs!
I didn't select Comcast for the mobile home parks.. But they're sneaky and they say I have...
That's sleezy business tactics when you lie straight to an owners face.
I agree. And wouldn't it be nice to introduce some competition into the marketplace? Corporate oligarchies don't count as competition. I'm talking about real competition to stimulate small business again.
Anti-trust laws will never be enacted. All the politicians are in the back pockets of these corporations.
@ Satanick: Then as American citizens, and taxpayers, it is our right and responsibility to replace each and every one of them until they do seek to enact laws that are good for all Americans and not just the biggest of businesses.
We wonder why our telecomms infrastructure is so antiquated when compared to Europe and Asia, it's because we haven't enforced anti-trust laws among the biggest giants. There is no chance for small businesses to get a foothold into the market and help drive down costs, because the US Gov't contracts with a mere handful of massive giants, and these companies routinely, if not always fail in their promises of service and reach.
Both sides say they're for small businesses...it's about time we forced them to follow their own words.
I agree. We also should pressure the worst offenders through boycotts.
Agreed, if only we could get people to stay focused on the issue, and not lose interest over time just because it feels like a daunting task. That's a big part of the problem, our attention span as a country is erratic at best.
Telecommunications would be a difficult one to boycott. I'm going to do some research into it! I am sick of having all the information we hear controlled by a few select corporations.
People are also just unaware. I think if more people were aware of how just a few companies control the news they receive, some people would be willing to try to do something about it.
Indeed, we'd have to give up some things we take for granted. But the alternative isn't tenable in my opinion. Nor does it give any small businesses any kind of chance.
Yeah, people are unaware, but I prefer to consider it blissfully ignorant. And I think we know by now that leaving the Government up to it's own devices will encourage them to abuse their power. We're appear to literally be letting the Government continue business as usual, without any consequences...and we're surprised they screw us over whenever they can?
Have they forgotten or do they purposely scoff at them. I have known a few and they seem to think they are not just above the law, but that they are the law. They believe it is their duty to tell us what to do since they consider us (everyone but a select few from their class) incapable.
Murdoch is like thousands of other executives and politicians who feel that they are above the law because of their wealth and office. If a senior exec is paid 50 times more than an average employee, then that senior exec should be exceptional in every way. Sadly, this is not the case. Most senior execs and politicians are simply capable of lying or obfuscating 50 times better than the average employee, and they use their wealth and their cadre of lawyers and personal contacts to rise above the law.
So a Saudi prince owns 7% of the company that owns Fox News. Who could have seen that?
Just because Murdoch was Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious in Star Wars, was editor of The Death Star News, and his son James turned to the Darkside?
Not to get all religious on you, but ain't Karma beautiful!? It is so rare and refreshing to see those effects in one's own lifetime.
Kharma would mean one thing..... Murdoch fell into one of the press machines and didn't survive. They employee would then decide to keep it secret and not tell anybody...
The Murdochs(sic) are simply criminals and should be brought to justice!!!!
Boot the bossie Aussie and his possee !
Where are the RWNJ's? When are they going to come to Rupert's Rescue? They LOVE FOX NEWS! It gives them THEIR truthiness!
Universities should go back to teaching Business History as a requirement for graduation from Business School. It's an elective to take it, I did and it forever changed me to be ethical in nature (Social Responsibility).
If it's required and not an elective course, more people will understand the need for ethical behavior, and sociopaths in business will be exposed more often.
The Robber Barons of the 1900's are back today. They are worse than before and if you look at the anti-trust suits over the last 30 years, you'll see "so called" Philanthropists all through the law suits!
Greedy people disguised as Philanthropists. The only one I would disagree with being called greedy is Bill Gates. He is actually helping the world now with his money. Just like his father.
Dave,
Your point about business history and ethics is exactly right!
The only thing I might add would be to require that these be taught in high school, before kids decide where they want to go in a career. The need for ethics enters into all areas of our lives. And too few have any clue what damage they do on a daily basis, due to a lack of ethics toward other people.
Yes, it makes me wonder what the heck they have been teaching in the business programs these past fifty years...
Yep, bad ethics is bad business. And it costs dearly. Eventually, ill acquired never benefits.
Everybody knows the Murdochs is been running News Corp like their own piggy bank but as long as they were making $, hey lets not kill the golden goose eh.
If they go after News Corp for corruption, they will have to go after Walmart too, and that maybe too big to handle.
Although we live in a global society, we still must be wary of any company that controls the flow of information to such a great extent.
right, more like WolfNews. and the wolf needs sheep.
Scum is as scum does!!
MAY 15th is the "FAUX NEWS DAY" - Everybody leave cardboard signs at the doorsteps of the FAUX NEWS Head quarters in N.Y. that say "FAUX NEWS" - or any kind of sign that says FAUX NEWS with a photo of murdoch,,,, bout' 30 Million people leaving signs should work,, pass the word everybody !!!
We can only hope for a shake up at Faux and Speeeeed, LOL profit, profit, profit.
I watch fox for comic relief. Always has a bimbo showing some leg for sex appeal and the men making what they think must be intelligent cuts about anyone who is in opposition to Murdochs interests. It is so transparent at times. But, I do not trust any "news" at face value someone most of the time has a hidden agenda when shaping public opinion.
what's so hard about telling the full story msnbc? you accuse Murdoch of bias and then you leave out the most important facts of this whole story.
This House of Commons Committee voted 6-5 to censure Murdoch. 5 Labor (equivalent of the Democrats), 1 Liberal Democrat (another left of centre pary) to censure, and 5 Conservatives (republican equivalent) voted NOT to censure.
This is typical of Parliamentary committees worldwide - a purely political vote with little impact in teh real world despite what your reporter and so on might want.
But the real question is WHY you dont report that fact? BIAS, BIAS, BIAS and dont pretend otherwise
Yea, Fox's plan to invade Canada pretty well got nipped in the bud as was reported in the news, CBC, Global and CTV. Nobody lost any sleep over it. It was basically, good riddance to bad rubbish.
Their coming for you FOX NEWS. :)
What strikes me most about this whole story is that it has taken the Government of Great Britain just to scold this guy a little, and maybe make his life a tiny bit more trouble. Not a group of pissed off shareholders or some dissatisfied readers or viewers, Great Britain itself!
With that kind of power, I can't see him having all that much trouble in the US.
The brit gubmint says he is unfit because he pretended not to know about what his subordinates were doing when they did illegal acts. OF course most people would think that. It's common sense. So in Florida, we have a Governor who was CEO of an Alabama based health care company that defrauded the gubmint's medicare program. Several of this CEO's lieutenants plead to felonies, paid fines and some did Fed jail time. The CEO maintained he had no idea what his subordinates were doing and he had no idea in fact that anything wrong was being perpetrated. The gubmint listened to him and said: duh ..... OK. So the billionaire moved to Florida and bought a governorship. And conservatives like to pretend that the US gubmint is not owned by the corporations. THey believe in trickle down and await the day when guys like this governor will enrich those under him as a reward for their loyal work. In fact he let them go to jail to protect his riches. Still waiting for the fraudsters in our big banks and Wall street firms to be arrested for collapsing the most succesful economy the world ever built ? don't hold your breath.
I'm sure if we lightly scratch the surface we can find plenty of misconduct over at FOX. Hannity better start sending out resumes.
Not a word on Fox News. You know the network that covers the real news that the lame-stream media won't cover. Anybody that works for that network has sold their soul to the devil, which they only pretend to believe in, while they laugh all the way to the bank at expense of the fools who watch them.
One can only imagine the hue & cry if Murdoch were a Liberal running a Liberal news organization. Tea Bagger heads & the radical right pols of the GOP would be positively frothing at the pie hole to sentence the Aussie to death by slow torture. Where are the moral Republican police distancing themselves from this corrupt man? Will not happen now, in the future, or at any other point in time. The whole bunch of coconuts that align with the radical right are so full of phony indignation where they condemn something as unholy; say the fact that President Obama is daring to even breathe a syllable about taking out Bin Laden. How dare he mention Bin Laden, it wasn't him it was the Seals. Like it wasn't Hitler that carried out the genocide of the Jewish race it was his soldiers.
So Murdoch is rightfully going down in scandalous flames & one can only hope that Limbaugh & Beck will be close behind him. Beck with his rip-off gold deals that defraud his salivating fans themselves & Rush being once again busted for his illegal oxy pill use. Again, if this were Democrat involvement there would be 24/7 coverage of the radical right calling for a public execution. Oh the hypocrisy has such a distasteful reek to it.
The man, his son, and his upper level people are first clas sleeze buckets. People who listed to all than nonsense Fox News and the NY tabloids put out can't think for themselves. But I stopped trying to have debates and reasonable arguments with any of those people a long time ago. I use their tactics now. I just outscream, out obmoxiousm, out attack, out smear them. Who cares about facts when you just be a pain in the butt. It works, Because they stay the f%^%^%^away from me with their right wind propanganda. Believe me, it's a good thing.