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video. tees minefield comes and says feed stock now in the palm of your. welcome across all computable about taming 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 us and beyond has the murdoch family finally outfoxed itself. across not the end. occasions 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 then and he is communications director for a free press and in london we cross to 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 laws and by laws 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 we 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've heard coming

out of the u.k. . the u.k. and also here is some to the 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. basically doesn't allow u.s. corporations to bribe foreign officials that it. is bribing foreign officials as these were 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 here the law and the f.c.c. should look at that and say that the twenty four stations he owns that cover forty percent of united states he should not get out of license of the news corp's licenses should be revoked and new news new station owners are to come into play so i don't think he has any place the united states and it's very important for. ok toby 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'd. 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 for story stories giving them tips in return for tip offs and i think that is absolutely in demick within any tabloid newspaper culture you know actually any country in the world it's not a case i don't think anyone at this stage is accused news international the british subsidiary of news corp of actually bribing police officers to drop charges against them or anything like that it's simply paying for information tipoffs ok if that is that is that can still fall foul of the corrupt practices act when you want to jump in there before we go to do i think. yeah i think i would i think there are still

for some problems with foreign corrupt practices act is essentially giving my uniform official in order to benefit their corporation in a probably and that's 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 goes into this investigation started years of dr who really pursued very far as you will find more about it out there later but i do think that what the british were told to describe would be considered a bribe ok dave it sounds to me. go ahead toby go ahead and i'm going to do is head . suppose woodward or bernstein. paid deep throat for the information which led to the watergate exposure do you think that means that katharine graham should go to jail well it's not that there's not a foreign corrupt practices act but there does raise questions and in fact it's become too common you know. media paying for stories ok cupid 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 endemic 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 big murdoch is being turned into a scapegoat for what everybody else does including his organisation. well i would i would say the singling out news corp and singling out murdoch in particular is shortsighted. yeah i'm not going to speak to you know how many other news organizations and gauge an outright bribery and what kevin described. as a matter of law under the former foreign corrupt practices act is bribery and giving money to officials in order for it to entice them to do something or not do something within within their our 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 is 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 in the twenty first century with the internet and everything our journalism tell me it's all very very competitive it's very very expensive and if we look at journalism this is simply a business and 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 pritish newspaper market particularly now that readers are

declining on an almost daily basis of 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. wanted to regulate the press much more heavily mainly because the press a 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 free mechanism 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 the collusion between some of news international newspapers and the metropolitan police force the metropolitan 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 carol it seems to me at least in the u.k. and we can talk about the us or we as events develop there it you know the political class the media class and law enforcement it was just a kind of nice cozy relationship among all three of them ok all of them quote unquote benefited. no question and they all are benefiting i think colby's point is exactly right that really was a failure of and forswear current laws the acts of bribery in people's privacy through hacking phones are illegal here as well and i think that's a 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 in 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 commonplace i think where the transition period

of our media we've gotten this 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 i think we're going to transition into a new form of democratized media and this will help get us there and dave this program is broadcast all around the world so can you tell my viewers outside of the united states how the scandal is 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. on 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 special very 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 the wall street. is now owned by news corp or news corp and it is is not going to give shareholders in news corp a real the real story on 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 it will be you want to jump in there go ahead i just want to take you see you 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 he's a regular of the press and much more rigorous in false meant that the existing rules as they affect the press is that you'll end up with a very regulated print media which will then be unable to. it's would be completely unregulated internet media and i'm not sure that if people become less reliant on the print media even on television news and more reliance on what they're doing from the internet that that would be good for democracy can anyone reply 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 of corporate television news people just don't trust any longer i'm sure it's true you mentioned in britain as having a taboo here dramatic drops in confidence dramatic drops in viewership and 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 would poke a little and you release that point out or a short break and after a short break we'll continue our discussion on murdoch and his empire state with r.t. . if you can see. the i. think it's. the world's. premier the latest in some instances. from the realms. of the future.

kitchen sisters.

want to. welcome back to cross talk you all about remind you we're talking about murdoch under siege. education system. 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 in this scandalous demonstrating it is corruption a necessary ingredient to be competitive. well it will become even more. if the department of justice is not working aggressively to enforce the laws against murder and invest again i'm a big fan of freedom of press and don't want to see the government you know investigating me or trying to the framer press does 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 by through the press and.

saying earlier i see a great democratization of media occurring not just because a murdoch with a lack of credibility of the media murdoch giving a million dollars plus the republican party and this n.b.c. and fox news be going to parties in news outlets people just don't trust it anymore they want to see more democratized media things like wiki leaks for example are also pushing in that direction by making it easy for people to anonymously provide information to the media through wiki leaks and then we can these publishes it and then all of us can become media outlets through social networks there are blogs and websites and we all become media reporters and we can all interpret the news based on documents that are alarmist you know leaks that are democratization immediate i think is a positive step i agree with toby i don't want to see media more regulated but i do want to see media you know of is forced to obey basic criminal and laws against invasion of privacy ok kilby do you think 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 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 had to have it's flown to get that story so be it it doesn't cause public outrage there in the political outcry i think what there are two to two distinguishing characteristics about this scandal i mean it really exploded when it was discovered that when one anyway so news of the world reporters were accused of having listened into a 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 outcry isn't that that that triggered this this murder copper lips as we call it here the other reason i think is 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 in the liberal left media in particular the guardian or most liberal newspapers really been doggedly pursuing this story now everyone knew that these kinds of things were going on not just on murdoch's papers or on all the tabloids and no one did in 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 liberal left media put him up on their high horse about these were i'm doing ok if i go to you dave i mean if it's all about politics in the u.k. and except that is it all about fear in the united states because guys have pointed

out to me it's not covered very much in the united states are you know shareholders are afraid of people who are afraid of getting on murdoch's toes because they don't know which way it's going to blow in the us. yeah i would i would agree with toby that 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 is the organ of the republican party and i mean if you just look at look at who they're who they're 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 i mean 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 go to you he has beat 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 practices. well yeah before this scandal broke you say it was aggressive business practices we know yet how aggressive they are 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 gree 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 to appear on the air to get elected they pay the media tens of millions of dollars in advertising revenue

they raise money from billionaires argue that it's a symbiotic relationship between big business big media and the two big corporate parties and one for she was led to was a total corruption of us democracy we know long our politics is the result of people's interests we have parties that represent big business interests whether they're democrats or republicans we have 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 readership and 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 through all these issues it's a it's a disgrace. ok joe i was going to ask you a job you go first go ahead. i wouldn't ask you that you currently have a dysfunctional government of the united states we're still waiting for you to result it's you and they're very worried about that and i would 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 sun the two best selling tabloids and why he's international he the profits from those papers are used to keep afloat and he's paper called the times which is one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in this country. rupert murdoch 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 he grants him that much political clout but he just clearly loves. for blood it's in his family and i think my worry is that if murdoch called that of the u.k. the times for one is going to close gave way why can't the woods 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 what a magazine way why can't it be industry regulated 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. don't be in print. right well that's to be directly that is the case yeah 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 that now has become the rule television stations and newspapers owned in the same or owned 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 tape you're not going to get opposing points of view free press is an organization that is founded on the idea that the loosening media consolidation and 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 look at opposing sides and i think you know just by this i mean you see she's able to if you want your time you will start talking about the social good the public

good and that's almost never mentioned in your c.v. in media today because it's just one big business and it's very competitive and very lucrative kevin what about that i mean his 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. and politicians used to be that we consider the year way radio and t.v. the public airwaves and public as you read early in the first question of the f.c.c. these commission include a public interest that's almost disappeared even as the f.c.c. has mission you don't really hear much about anymore and we don't even call the public there is only now we call the commercial media and that's been a major mistake and i hope that this scandal and the declining revenues and viewers and readers of commercial media. are starting to happen that we start to move back toward a public interest perspective that these are public airwaves and start to require me to do much more for the public good including giving everyone every kelly who

gets to tell you the last job you got the last word of the program go ahead i think the problem with. the state affectively 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 the public good is that that just becomes another mechanism for the state to control what's printed in the media but maybe they just cut out the middleman they don't have to curry favor with rupert murdoch anymore they can just do it directly i'm not sure that's a preferable system ok to give you the last last word 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. too much of it depends on access you're not going to do a story because i can't believe anyone 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 r.t. so you next time and remember across titles. take a. look.

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