reason to rally. is next with the headlines and latest on what's going on. it's a friday evening here in moscow thanks me without see them a new story this hour in norway huge explosion a shot at the center of the capital oslo ravaging the prime minister's headquarters police confirm a bomb called the blast which is killed two and injured at least fifty in the same make the region officials say people are still trapped in the buildings at the

blast site i reporters they'll be catching up with a little bit later. the leaders agree on a second multi-million dollar bailout for greece sparking fears over the union delving deeper into debt the deal clings to the summit in brussels prompted a major u.s. credit agency to say will downgrade the greek get to default status. under skepticism server joining the e.u. despite officials hoping the rest of gotten hundreds will shortcut belgrade's road membership serbia's last war crimes suspect has been extradited to the hague this friday. starting from moscow another cross talk teams on the air. can. you. follow it welcome to crossfire computer all about came in the murdoch empire as the

phone hacking scandal in the u.k. engulfed more victims and politicians look for cover all eyes are on the future of news corp and its assets in the u.s. and beyond as the murdoch family finally outfoxed itself. can. get across not the implications of the phone hacking scandal i'm joined by kevin zeese in baltimore he's a spokesperson and lawyer for the government accountability group protect our elections and author of an open letter to the f.b.i. and s.c.c. urging them to investigate murdoch's news corporation in the us in washington we have dave south than i he is communications director for free press and in london with ross and toby young he's a journalist and author of how to lose friends and alienate people all right gentlemen cross talk rules and in fact i mean you can jump in anytime you want kevin if i can go to you first because of your open letter here i took a look at some of the what the laws and bylaws of the f.c.c.

and they basically their job is to make sure how the airwaves are used and they have to ensure that they're used by people of quote good character who serve the public interest and speak with candor so as murdoch's television empire at least have any place in the united states today in light of what we have heard coming out of the u.k. . but we're here you know the u.k. and also we're hearing some tidbits united states of phone hacking where you know the u.k. would make murdoch and his news corp of violator of the foreign corrupt practices act which has criminal and civil penalties and basically doesn't allow u.s. corporations to bribe foreign officials and if murdoch is bribing foreign officials as seems to be the case they're talking about one hundred hundred thousand pounds or one hundred thousand dollars worth of bribes to the london police if that happened evolve the law and the f.c.c. should look at that and say that the twenty four stations the own that cover forty

percent of united states he should not be allowed a license of the news corp's license it should be revoked and a new new new station are sure to come into play so i don't think he has any place united states and that's very important for. ok to be i'd like to go to you in london what do you think about what kevin had to say because we all know on this panel that these kind of practice is have been going on for a long time ok why the moral play now. well i think i. would ask kevin to define what he means by bribe a little more carefully because that sounds slightly as though he's overstating it what some of rupert murdoch's british newspapers have been accused of doing is paying the police the story for stories giving them tips in return for tip offs and i think that is absolutely demick within any tabloid newspaper culture it's actually any country in the world it's not

a case i don't think anyone at this stage has accused news international the british that surgery of news corp actually bribing police officers to drop charges against them or anything like that it's simply paying for information tipoffs ok is that is that is that can still fall foul of the corrupt practices act when you want to jump in there before we go today i think. yeah i think i would i think i would still would for the problem to the federal foreign corrupt practices act is essentially doing neither for a visual in order to benefit their corporation in a probably and that's what a bribe is because they're not going to drop charges that kind of thing although it's pretty interesting how those those in this investigation started years and five can really proceed very far as we will find more about about that later but i do think that what the british were told we described would be considered a bribe ok dave it sounds to me we were playing to go ahead and go to this. supposed wood or bernstein. paid deep throat for the information which

led to the watergate exposure do you think that that means that katharine graham should go to jail well that's no that's not a parker brothers out there does raise questions in fact it's become too common you know states media paying for stories ok to be so this is what i want to get you and i want to go to dave right now again you know these kind of practices are in demick in media in the english speaking world the western world ok so again you know why is this kind of moral outrage out there because you could make the claim and i'm not making it they did murdoch is being turned into a scapegoat for what everybody else does including his organisation. well i would i would say that singling out news corp and singling out murdoch in particular is shortsighted. i'm not going to speak to you know how many other news organizations in gauging our right bribery and what

kevin described it as a matter of law under the former foreign corrupt practices act is bribery and that's giving money to officials in order for it to entice them to do something or not do something within within their are thore and certainly giving over private information would fall under that. whether other organizations are engaged in that same same precise activity i think i think is you know it's i wouldn't be surprised at all if it were happening i can't i can't confirm or deny that it is but looking at news corp as an isolated incident or an isolated company that does this sort of thing i think is naive ok i told me i mean one of the things that we're in the twenty first century with the internet in everything journalism told it's all very very competitive it's very very expensive and if we look at business journalism is simply a business then we should expect something like this to happen i mean we're you

just have to get cut throat and you got to go cut cut corners go around the law maybe even break the law but everybody seems to be doing it and i think that it's because journalism has become just a purely business model and that's how we've gotten to the point where we are now. well there may be something in that i think certainly the fact that there is so much competition in the british newspaper market particularly now that readers are declining on an almost daily basis that is going to lead to a lot of corner cutting but i think that one of the misnomers about this particular scandal is that it represents a failure of regulation now for many years the british political class who. wanted to regulate the press much more heavily mainly because the press are constantly delving into their own wrongdoing they want to tame the press and my worry is that this scandal will be used as an excuse to regulate much more heavily the british press and it's actually not

a failure of the existing self regulate remake it isn't that we have in place at present it's really a failure of the police to enforce the law because bribing officials in this country is illegal and phone hacking is also illegal the problem is because of be collusion between some of news international newspapers and the metropolitan police force the most part of the police have an enforced the law as rigorously as they should have done but it's not a failure of regulation it's a failure of law enforcement well kevin it seems to me at least in the u.k. and we can talk about all of us if we as a mentor develop their bit you know the political class the media class in law enforcement it was just a kind of nice cozy relationship among all three of them ok all of them quote unquote benefited somehow. no question and they all are benefiting i think told me that point is exactly right that it really was a failure of an informant of current laws the acts of bribery in beijing people's privacy through hacking phones are illegal here as well and i think that's that's

a really good point you know in the united states we have seen some cutting of corners you could call it maybe desperation as as revenue sink as readers think as viewers think the media seems to be going the wrong direction with more anonymous sources more paying people to speak things that were in the past really of limited use now are going to be too commonplace i think where the transition period of our media we've gone from this can't we have this concentrated corporate media that has no credibility among the american public only twenty percent of the public believe the media tells the whole story and we're going to transition into a new form of democratized media and this will help get us there and gave this program is broadcast all around the world so can you tell my viewers outside the united states i'll be scandalous being covered in the united states. not particularly well is the short answer there's been been very little in television coverage c.n.n. has done has done a bit of fox and fox news channel has done almost nothing frankly and in fact

c.n.n. reported that in the fox news channel's. media criticism program called fox news watch during a commercial break the people on the on the program were discussing how they weren't going to discuss this story. so kevin makes a very spare harry strong and powerful point that concentration of media power in very few hands will lead to this sort of thing it's it's natural that a corporation is going to protect its own interests and news corp is an enormous company so no other no other news corp property is going to go to too terribly far out on a limb to to investigate this story. the wall street journal the bible of wall street. is now on by news corp or news corp and

it is here is not going to give shareholders in news corp a real story on this and what it could mean to their to their bottom line and that's that's a real problem you don't get real news when when so much power is concentrated if you want to jump in there. i just wanted to take issue with the optimistic note kevin struck imagining. this the fallout from the scandal would ultimately be good for democracy my worry is that if the fallout from this scandal is greater regulation of the press and much more rigorous enforcement of the existing laws as they affect the press is the you'll end up with a very regulated print media which will then be unable to compete with the completely unregulated internet media. i'm not sure that if people become less reliant on the print media even on television news and more reliance on what they can in from the internet that that would be good for the market can you want to

reply to that that's an interesting point well of course where we're actually seeing much less reliance on the print media the court the corporate media and the corporate television news people just don't trust any longer i'm sure it's true you mentioned bridges have been a tragedy here dramatic drop some confidence dramatic drops in viewership or readership will receive the same time is an increase in more democratic forms of media and it's not just the murdoch scandal that's going to add to this it's a whole series of events almost a perfect storm of events i was ok with bill and you really should point out are a short break and after a short break we'll continue our discussion on murdoch and his empire state with our. to observe nature and discover its beauty.

sleep. communicate with the wild. yourself and become free to me to see what nature can give you. the are. the losers the soloist so. lucky.

slug. slug came to see elizabeth. the solo welcome back to cross talk i'm carol about to remind you we're talking about murdoch under siege. mum came to see the a. ok kevin i'd like to go back to you and maybe start with the question a question and we look at how competitive corporate media is today and this scandalous i demonstrating it is corruption a necessary ingredient to be competitive. well it will become even more necessary if the department of justice is not working aggressively to enforce the laws

against iraq and in there you know i'm a big fan of freedom of press and don't want to see the government you know investing in the time of the free represses not give a license to break the law to tap phones to bribe officials those are illegal and they should be investigated as crimes and not be blocked right through the press and my saying earlier i see a great democratization in the media occurring not just because i'm murdoch but the lack of credibility of the media murdoch giving a million dollars plus to the republican party and that's n.b.c. and fox news being only such parties the news outlets people just all trust in a more you'd want to see more democratized media things like wiki leaks for example are also at pushing in that direction by making it easy for people to anonymously provide information to the media through wiki leaks and then we can establish is it and then all of us can become media outlets the social networks the blogs so websites and we all become media reporters and we can all interpret the news based on documents that are anonymously leaks that's a good marker is ation immediate i think is

a positive step i agree with toby i don't want to see the media more regulated but i do want to see media you know of this forced to obey basic criminal and laws against invasion of privacy ok kilby key thing media is held to a lower bar when it comes to obeying the law because you know we we we have woodward and bernstein you know looking for the bad guys you know interested in journalism we don't like that and we we like seeing journalists going after the bad guys and that's part of this story here but our journalists are held to a lower bar and doing their job. i think that. there's been a certain journalists being granted a degree of latitude particularly tabloid journalists because mainly the people that they are breaking the law to find out about are celebrities sportsman and so forth and there is a huge amount of public sympathy when a celebrity gets caught with his pants down so they think well if you have to hack is prone to get that story so be it it doesn't cause public outrage there isn't a political outcry i think when there are two to two distinguishing characteristics

about this scandal i mean it really exploded when it was discovered that one anyway some news of the world reporters were accused of having listened in to the voice mails of a missing girl who turned out to be dead and then deleted those voice mails after listening to them thereby destroying potential evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation that caused public outrage and that that that triggered this murder copulates as we call it here the other reason i think is that the reason murdoch in particular is being targeted not just because it's journalists at his newspapers were accused of wrongdoing it's also fueled by political analysts he's generally thought to be a conservative and if the liberal left media in particular the guardian or most liberal newspapers really didn't doggedly the searing this story now everyone knew that these kinds of things were going on not just on murdoch's papers were on all the tabloids and no one to the last government didn't do anything about it i think that's partly because rupert murdoch threw his weight behind the last two labor

prime ministers it was only when he switched support to the conservative party that the labor party and the little left media became up on their high horse about these wrongdoings ok if i go to you dave i mean if it all of our politics in the u.k. and i accept that is it all about fear in the united states because if you book you guys have pointed out to me it's not covered very much in the united states are you know shareholders are afraid every people are afraid of getting on murdoch's toes as they don't know which way it's going to blow in the us. yeah i would i would agree with toby the there is quite a bit of far too cozy relationship between the media in general and and politicians and in news corp's case in particular fox news channel is widely regarded fairly or unfairly as a as the organ of the republican party and i mean if you just look at look at who there are on air personalities personalities have been it's loaded with either

current or potential presidential candidates from the republican party so it's no secret that fox news channel tends to favor a conservative point of view and if you are a politician on the right you certainly want to curry favor and if you're a politician on the on the left you have to be afraid of that attack machine coming after you and they've claimed a number of scalps in the pl in the political establishment here and nobody wants to put his or her neck too far out on that line. campaign if i'm going to you he has been murdoch been successful because of corrupt business practices because we did a program on this subject last week and we had a gentleman that was from the left but actually praised murdoch for his business model but maybe that business model was successful because of these proxies. oh yeah before this scandal broke you say it was aggressive business practices we know yet how aggressive the united states do they as they're doing the u.k.

cross the line of criminal behavior and if they are then i think his business model will not be seen as one that's worth worth copying and i agree with david that we do have this kind of cozy relationship between politicians and media united states in fact politicians need the media to get elected they need appear on the air to get elected they pay the media tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue they raise money from billionaires or do their and it's a symbiotic relationship between big business big media and the two point two two big corporate parties and for she was led to as a total corruption of u.s. democracy we know long our politics is the reason that people's interests we are parties are represent big business interests whether they're democrats or republicans we are politicians that kowtow to the media and play the twenty four hour media cycle we really don't care and i think that's one reason why you're seeing we're shipping viewership dropping people see this corrupt symbiotic relationship as undermining really any kind of any any functional government we

have a dysfunctional government that can't be all health care can't deal with energy can't deal with climate we can't heal then these issues it's a it's a disgrace. go ahead joe i was going to ask you a job you go first go ahead but i wouldn't ask you that you currently have a dysfunctional government in the united states we're still waiting for you to result in the debt ceiling we're very worried about that at the moment in europe i think one thing i would say in favor of one aspect of rupert murdoch's business model is that quite often cross subsidy goes on so he uses the profits from the more profitable parts miss business to subsidize the less profitable parts and in the u.k. for instance the news of the world and the some the two best selling tabloids owned by news international he's the profits from those papers i used to keep afloat a newspaper called the times which is one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in this country. does that i think partly because of the political influence that having a respectable serious global newspaper gives him but also i think because of his love of newspapers you can see that in new york i mean he keeps the new york post

afloat it loses tens of millions of dollars a year and then it grants him that much political clout but he just clearly loves these papers he has in for blood it's in his family and i think my worry is that if murdoch pulls out of the u.k. the times for one is going to close gave way why can't we go back to the issue of regulation why can't there be regulations in separate countries where you can own one newspaper or a new or a television station or a television station and one magazine way why can't the industry regulate it from an ownership point of view where you don't have someone like murdoch that is so powerful particularly in the u.k. in the united states we could avoid something like this up front you know if you want to be in t.v. good be in t.v. but don't be in print. right well that's to be theoretically that is the case the other day that is the case and that's how that's how it was before rupert murdoch decided that he wanted to own t.v. stations and newspapers in the same in the same cities and through

a very aggressive lobbying campaign was able to get an exception for that but now it's become the rule television stations and newspapers owned in the same own by the same company in the same cities lead to very troubling situations because. american democracy is founded on the principle that the marketplace of ideas will lead to better democracy and if you have a newspaper and now with with. several shared service agreements you could have the same company operating to television stations in the same city where it where it owns a newspaper and in a smaller town there might be no competing newspaper there might be no competing television stations so in that sort of situation you've got one company. dominating and monopolizing the entire debate you're not going to get opposing points of view free press is an organization that is founded on the idea that loosening media consolidation and in the corporate grip on media democratizing it through very

various means including internet as kevin discussed and through better public media and through more diverse ownership will lead to better democracy because people will will get opposing sides and you know just because i think it's easy for case you're talking about the the social good the public good and that's almost never mentioned or seen in media today because it's just one big business and it's very competitive and very lucrative kevin what about that i mean as journalism really does detach itself from its roots of serving the public good. you know it has and i think that's also partly because your leisure in media and politicians and used to be that we consider the year waves radio and t.v. the public airwaves and public as you read early in the first question that the f.c.c. is mission and including a public interest that's almost disappeared even as the f.c.c. has mission you don't really hear much about anymore we don't even call the public there is only now we call the commercial media and

a desperate and major mistake and i hope that this scandal and the declining revenues and viewers and readers of commercial media. are starting to happen now that we start to move back toward a public interest perspective that these are public airwaves and start to require the me do much more for the public good including giving everyone every kelly who goes i want to tell you the last word toby got the last word of the program go ahead i think the problem with. the state effectively playing a greater role in the media whether it's from subsidy or through regulation through requiring the media to be more balanced and so forth and so the public good is that that just becomes another mechanism for the state to control what's printed in the media maybe they just cut out the middleman they don't have to curry favor with rupert murdoch anymore they can just do it directly and i'm not sure that's a preferable system ok dave i'm going to give you the last last we're go ahead what do you think. ok well you know i have i have i am

a former journalist i feel better now but what i have what i have seen too much of when i was in the business and since i got out of the business is that too much of it depends on access you're not going to do a story hardly because we have no right to believe we're going out of time many thanks so my guess would be in london baltimore and in washington and thanks to our viewers for watching us here or he can see you next time and remember cross talk will. keep you. want to. twenty years ago largest country in. the suitcases of the.

same place how did you. get the job. where did it take.