Did Wall Street Journal Honcho Cover Up Murdoch Phone-Hack Scandal?

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AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan

Did Wall Street Journal Honcho Cover Up Murdoch Phone-Hack Scandal?
One of Murdoch's UK papers is in trouble over hacking private cell phones, including one belonging to a murder victim--and some familiar US faces may be part of the coverup.

July 6, 2011 |


A scandal involving phone-hacking by a right-wing newspaper tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is threatening the administration of British Prime Minister David Cameron. Now the scandal is boomeranging back to New York, engulfing the top executive at the largest-circulation newspaper in the United States, the Wall Street Journal.

To clean up some of the mess, Murdoch has called upon the talents of former Bush administration Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, whose views on privacy are enshrined in the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, and Joel Klein, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's union-bashing former schools chief, known for his phony claims of test-score gains.

The Crown Jewel and the Screaming Slime

Every corporate mogul likes to crown his empire with a jewel, and Rupert Murdoch is no exception. Having made a fortune acquiring screaming tabloids and making them scream louder, and acquiring a media company, Fox, now known for its ideological rabble-rousing, Murdoch wanted to buy his News Corp a little respectability. And so, in 2007, he purchased Dow Jones and its Wall Street Journal, the pinstriped, grey-at-the temples, oxford-shod media presence of the global financial sector.

As CEO of the Dow Jones Company, of which WSJ is a part, Murdoch installed Les Hinton, who had previously run News Corp's British newspaper empire, known as News International. Now it appears that Hinton may have won his prize spot for his part in an apparent coverup of a multi-year phone-hacking operation that likely involved an editor who went on to serve as the prime minister's spokesperson, and another who would go on to run all of Murdoch's UK papers. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/media/151552/did_wall_street_journal_honcho_cover_up_murdoch_phone-hack_scandal/