By guest columnist Tess Lawrence  

It may be premature to write Emeritus Chairman Rupert Murdoch’s epitaph now that he’s ostensibly handed the keys of his media empire to his favoured scion and heir, Lachlan.

Bubba Lachie, you will recall, is the infantile drongo recently forced to payout on a rather silly defamation action against our feisty independent cousin, Crikey.com.au, after daddy’s flagshit Fox News Network settled a defamation action brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems, opening yet another vein on the corporate corruption of (some) journalists and journalism within Murdoch’s bespoke empire.

Bubba Lachlan and Naughty Crikey

Dominion’s victory also conveniently proved the legal case for Crikey.

In a deliriously audacious and courageous flourish, Crikey took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times challenging Lachlan Murdoch to make good his threat to sue over an alleged defamation. Bubba took the bait. Silly sad boy, Bubba.

Dominian proved case for Crikey

Basically, Dominion proved a bunch of Trumpian Fox News stooges masquerading as journalists, commentators, experts and news executives, promulgated lies about Dominion’s role in the 2020 presidential election.

Ultimately, Murdoch and Fox News were hoisted by the one petard. Dominion did us all a favour. Into the public domain and courtroom was tipped a container load of Murdoch/Fox News documents and data from their countless devices that proved unequivocally they were guilty as hell.

The Murdoch machine had to shut down the case. They settled. They paid up. But hey, not before the squalid and unethical behaviour of these entitled dudes was writ large upon the internet’s skies sans frontieres.

At US$797.5 million, It was a helluva payout, even though it was only half of what Dominion sought for injury caused to its reputation and business by Fox.

Uncle Sam became Uncle Spam

At the time, the unelected President Donald Trump might well have been the network’s prime anchor, such was his Fox profile. Fox morphed into the Zombie Trump News network. It was like, Trump 24/7.

Too much Trump was never enough. The endemic mantra it churned was that the election was rigged and that really, Americans had unanimously re-elected Trump. Uncle Sam became Uncle Spam.

Trump: Clickbait for Fox advertisers

But even before that, whilst Trump was still president, any appearance or call-in by the big guy was advertiser clickbait for Fox and friends. Ratings mean advertisers. The talking heads were vying with each other to get Trump on their shows and incessantly talked about him and interviewed experts and others who talked about him to get a ratings uptick.

While they were at it, they spread even more conspiracies and lies. With impunity. As the records now show, they knew their boss, ever the dirty digger, felt no shame in them clothing the butt naked truth in a transparent cloak made from immoral fibres threaded with lies.

Mother Fucker Carlson, Yawn Hannity, Laura Ingraham frontline pit bulls and bitches

Fox’s frontline pit bulls and bitches like the man they call ‘Mother Fucker Carlson’ (aka Tucker Carlson), Yawn Hannity (aka Sean Hannity) and Laura Ingraham, whose sobriquet I do not know, were three heavy hitters who were let off the corporate leash.

All three were indisputable propagandists for Brand Trump. You would be forgiven for thinking they were on his payroll and certainly via the ratings, he was contributing to theirs. There were others.

One thing is certain. Fox News Network and its journalistic mercenaries, still have a case to answer over their collective role in the attempted political coup and insurrection on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Fox: Flesh-eating ravings maul truth and democracy

Their on-air flesh-eating ravings contributed to the savage maulings of democracy, truth and journalism itself along with the unforgivable betrayal of the people by bearing false witness to the truth and the bleeding obvious.

If the Proud Boys were Trump’s Pretorian Guards, then Fox News, under the tutelage and watchful eye, we now know, of Commandant-in-Chief, Rupert Murdoch, provided the pussy grabber with a propaganda unit of which Joseph Goebbels would have been proud, such was its effectiveness in building upon nationalistic white supremacist fervor fueled by hate and fear, lies and more lies and fake news. Surely it/they, were the equivalent of a journalistic Squadrismo.

For the Fox juggernaut, raking in the money from advertisers and the pursuit of even more power and influence was the coveted prize. The Murdoch Machine collected the former whilst Murdoch pocketed the other. For him, power is a bottomless pit. Can’t get enough. Perhaps it’s what gets his rocks off. Perhaps he even covets power more than money.

Murdoch needed Trump. Trump needed Murdoch. Who was/is the neediest of them all? This is unfinished business. There is history yet to be writ.

Hannity goes gaga on Trump’s MAGA stage

Who can forget Hannity being summoned onstage by Trump at a Make America Great Again (MAGA) rally? Supporting causes is one thing, supporting messianic Trump, quite another. Supporting the Republican Party is one thing; endorsing Trump and exploiting his dangerous buffoonery and more, inflating Trump’s public persona to deific status, all served to turn America into Nation Trump. For a moment, Trump was America. And an America far removed from the nation that elected the likes of Barack Obama as its president.

In these dystopian times, such is the stuff of nightmares. Where was the American Dream on the day of the seige upon the bulwark of American democracy, once held up like Liberty’s lamp, as a beacon to the world? It was a warning to us all.

Murdoch’s journalism takes road most travelled

In all of this, are the globally wandering hands of an arch power monger: Rupert Murdoch. His kind of journalism invariably takes the road most traveled. How often he has sat back and commanded, encouraged, nurtured others to do his bidding.

Hannity’s odious master-servant relationship with Rupert Murdoch, emblematic of many, but certainly not all, of Rupert’s frontline journalistic mercenaries, especially those in the United States, Australia, as we here know only too well, and in the disunited kingdom, Britain, the off-shore home of our own meddling monarch, Charles.

This CNN video shows you that despite Hannity’s denials, his onstage appearance with Trump was clearly pre-ordained and for all we know, Trump wizened, puppeteer Rupert Murdoch himself, may have ordered this sickening display of media sycophancy and blatant ratings chase.

Fox News ratings smashed competitors, once beating those of CNN and MSNBC combined.

Trump’s ego ballooned even further. Like orange ectoplasm, it continues to ooze from every orifice, conflated and inflated by Fox News.

In October 2008, the Donald trumpeted the boast that Fox’s prime time ratings of 2.8 million total viewers was because they “… treat me fairly.”

Little wonder that Fox News abandoned its hollow motto “Fair and Balanced.”

It ain’t over for Fox yet. Another company, Smartmatic is going to take on Fox News.

They’re mad as hell too. They’ve even prepared a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page to tell us why.

Murdoch: King Lear or Citizen Kane?

In the farcical self-aggrandising memo penned to his workers, Murdoch’s personal tragedy warrants scrutiny.

With breathtaking hypocrisy, his reflections reveal a brilliant and shrewd journalist who nontheless remains a deft proponent of industrial strength fake news, gross journalistic misconduct and Trumpian-like delusion on how he is perceived. Is he more King Lear than Citizen Kane?

The memo

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to let you all know that I have decided to transition to the role of Chairman Emeritus at Fox and News. For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams and a passionate, principled leader in Lachlan who will become sole Chairman of both companies.

Neither excessive pride nor false humility are admirable qualities. But I am truly proud of what we have achieved collectively through the decades, and I owe much to my colleagues, whose contributions to our success have sometimes been unseen outside the company but are deeply appreciated by me. Whether the truck drivers distributing our papers, the cleaners who toil when we have left the office, the assistants who support us or the skilled operators behind the cameras or the computer code, we would be less successful and have less positive impact on society without your day-after-day dedication.

Our companies are in robust health, as am I. Our opportunities far exceed our commercial challenges. We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years – I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them. But the battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense.

My father firmly believed in freedom, and Lachlan is absolutely committed to the cause. Self- serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.

In my new role, I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas. Our companies are communities, and I will be an active member of our community. I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest, and reaching out to you with thoughts, ideas, and advice. When I visit your countries and companies, you can expect to see me in the office late on a Friday afternoon.

I look forward to seeing you wherever you work and whatever your responsibility. And I urge you to make the most of this great opportunity to improve the world we live in. 

Murdoch’s obsession with father, Sir Keith

Keith Murdoch in war correspondent mode Photo: Wikipedia

The memo reveals Murdoch’s well-known obsession with his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, on whose media foundations, Murdoch the younger built his monopolistic empire. In fact, Keith Rupert Murdoch was named for his father and seems to have spent his life endeavouring to prove himself as his father’s equal and more, to his much-loved mother and matriarch of the clan Dame Elisabeth Murdoch.

The beautiful, redoubtable and indefatigable Dame Elisabeth, a noted philanthropist and tireless community entrepeneur, she lived a life of enduring public service. She founded and/or supported so many community initiatives and was still involved up to the time of her death at 103 in 2012.

Indeed, she bequeathed the family home, Cruden Farm, with its famed gardens designed by Edna Walling, to the people. Cruden was where Rupert and his three sisters spent their childhood.

Elisabeth Joy Greene was a mere slip of a 19-year-old who caused a minor scandal when she married the handsome ambitious Keith, because he was 23 years older than she.

It is said that serial matrimonialist Rupert’s penchant for much younger brides, is due in part to the loving relationship and dynamism between his parents.

Dame Elisabeth adored the lauded journalist Sir Keith, of Gallipoli Letter fame and practically deified him after he died. Rupert’s endeavours could never match let alone eclipse that of her beloved husband. She disapproved of his salacious newspapers and the gratuitous Page 3 girls. And she certainly disapproved of Wendi Deng.

Dame Elisabeth gives Rupert Bollocking over turfing Anna for Wendi

An insider told me Dame Elisabeth gave Rupert a right bollocking about the way he discarded and divorced his second wife, Glasgow born Anna Torv, for Deng.

Anna Murdoch’s business acumen contributed to Murdoch’s empire building.

“As well as being beautiful, she has brains, she’s savvy, bright and clever, really sharp. She’s also very warm and has that ability to put people at ease. She’s a wonderful hostess and had no trouble adapting to New York’s high society, such as it was. She reeked old money rather than new. She has a grace about her. But she’s tough as tungsten, a bit like her mother-in law, or should I say her ex mother in law, who was very angry with Rupert. Rupert was a bastard, the way that he treated her at the end. She’s also well read, witty and very funny.

When Wendi Deng had an affair with Blair, I thought to myself, right, Rupert you bastard, now you know what it feels like.”

Deng Murdoched in cold blood

Wendi Deng, you will recall, was rather fond of Tony Blair’s “butt.” The publicly cuckolded Rupert expedited a speedy divorce. As usual. Deng, who has two daughters with the tichoon, was Murdoched in cold blood.

Blair has denied any liaisons with Deng, dangereuses or otherwise. But then, he lied about the Iraq War.

A Catholic, Anna Murdoch bore three of Rupert Murdoch’s six children by three mothers. Lachlan, James and Elisabeth just happen to be the key media players in the family.

In a world exclusive with David Leser in the then Kerry Packer owned Australian Women’s Weekly the usually discreet second wife, married to Murdoch for 31 years, told it like it was.

This from a wrap by Christopher Zinn in the UK Independent in July, 2001:

… She described her state of shock at the divorce, her wish not to appear as a victim and her feeling of “coming out of a deep mental illness”. She also detailed the way that, despite reports of an amicable separation, she was unceremoniously dumped as a non-executive director of News Corp. Of her once-admired partner, who she helped to secure a papal knighthood in 1998, she said: “I began to think the Rupert Murdoch that I loved died a long time ago. Perhaps I was in love with the idea of still being in love with him. But the Rupert I fell in love with could not have behaved this way.”

The since remarried and renamed Anna Murdoch Mann, was brutally honest and one can sense her pain and injury at that time.

… “I think that Rupert’s affair with Wendi Deng – it’s not an original plot – was the end of the marriage. His determination to continue with that. I thought we had a wonderful, happy marriage. Obviously, we didn’t.” She went on: “I don’t want to get too personal about this… but [he] was extremely hard, ruthless and determined that he was going to go through with this, no matter what I wanted or what I was trying to do to save the marriage. He had no interest in that whatsoever.”

She also revealed she’d been forced off the Board of News Corp on which she sat, alongside Lachlan. She wasn’t given a choice, she told Leser.

Perhaps to prove he is his own man and truly owns his chairmanship, Bubba Lachie might reconsider a role for the now Anna dePeyser.

In 1998, Rupert Murdoch joined dozens of prominent Southern California Catholics who were awarded a papal knighthood.

Murdoch, who was thought to have converted to Catholicism, stated a while back, he wasn’t baptised in the faith, but would accompany Anna to Mass.

His donations of large sums of money to local Catholic churches was rewarded with the Order of Knight Commander of St Gregory the Great, conferred in 1998. It works in much the same way as donating monies to political parties, perhaps not so effective. Dame Anna also received the same papal award, although that fact received less attention.

It’s said that Anna leaned on Cardinal Roger Mahony who in turn, leaned on the Pope to secure their Honours.

The camel, eye of the needle and rich man Rupert

Because of the phone hacking and Dominion scandals, there have since been calls for Murdoch to be stripped of his papal knighthood.

Here’s Anna Murdoch’s clever quip after the ceremony, that had Rupert chortling:

Rupert: “I thought it was very spiritual and very moving. I was very impressed by what the cardinal said.”

Anna: “I think it was very humbling.

We’re both trying to get through the eye of the needle. Perhaps this is the beginning.”  

Some of you will recognize Anna Murdoch’s wry and telling alluding to the words of New Testament gospeller Matthew (verse 19.24) reporter-at-large for Jesus, quoted as saying:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

* Some scholars contend the translation of the word ‘camel’ should be ‘rope‘ but hey, let’s not get into the fake news bizzo.

Note Anna’s use of the word ‘humbling.’ Years later, after appearing before the UK’s House of Commons Committee investigating Murdoch’s News of the World phone hacking scandal in July, 2011, he referred to it as “the most humble day of my life.” Not only did he eat humble pie, but it was also the day he had a cream pie thrown at him, the security breach bravely thwarted by his then wife Wendi Deng. Talk about having the cake and eating it too.

Murdoch’s memo: He’s still on Planet Fox!

Murdoch’s memo wasn’t only to his minions. It was also a press release to the world and no doubt he hopes that obituary writers in due course, will quote the noble sentiments he espouses.

His words also reflect the pathos and reflection of those of us who hover closer to death than life. In his carnal pursuit for power, Rupert Murdoch has strayed far from the rebellious swashbuckling disrupter he once was. There is self-pity in his reckoning words, is there not? Truisms as well:

… But the battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense…

No mention of the fact that time and again such freedoms have been savagely mauled by he and his media outlets, News of the World, Fox News Network et al.

Then there is this:

… My father firmly believed in freedom, and Lachlan is absolutely committed to the cause…

Here’s an apt cliché whilst I get a fresh vomitbag. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Bubba Lachie is so committed to the cause of freedom, that one of his first grown up actions as chairman of daddy’s empire, was to nominate none other than a man renowned for his suppressive rigid right-wing politics and views, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott for the board of Fox Corporation.

Who better than the bloke who scurried out of Parliament to avoid voting in the same sex marriage debate?

News.com.au’s Liz Burke fingered Abbott this way:

“… But when it came time to vote – and he could have voted against it = he made a gutless lurch for the door.

Mr Abbott’s weak act didn’t have anything to do with democracy, it was a protest against it. And history won’t forget that.”

There’s a litany of testimonials about Abbott’s attempts to curtail, even abolish freedoms of all kinds, so I guess that makes him a perfect candidate.

Surely, disgraced ex Qantas Chief Alan Joyce, will be next.

Murdoch speaks of ethics, denounces elites

Perhaps the more egregious calumny embedded in Murdoch’s memo is this paragraph:

…Self- serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.

Such abject hypocrisy. Such pathos. It smacks of Murdoch’s perennial interference with the truth; nothing more than a press release from which he hopes obituaries writers will quote. Nothing else to see here. No 13-year-old murdered Milly Parker phone to hack today. Don’t mention the war on truth.

Milly Dowler and her family were/are no elites. The cruel violation of their grief and family privacy was as an inside joke to the then News of the World.

Can you imagine a News journalist hacking Dame Elisabeth’s phone messages after she died? It wouldn’t be right. But Murdoch journalists and agents thought it was alright for little Milly.

How dare Murdoch give us a lecture on freedom and ethics. Both are beggars in the Murdoch millieu.

His words are from a man closer to death than to life, like many of us. What happened to that reforming swashbuckling disrupter of the media who lived and breathed journalism. At what point was journalism cast asunder for the power and the glory?

When I read Murdoch’s memo, the words about the elites rang a bell. Sure enough, Murdoch, who I’m told, has written his own obituary for publication throughout his media outlets, both electronic and print, must keep it in the second drawer on the right.

Cop this 2015 tweet (X):

Murdoch, she wrote

Some years ago, I published an article in Independent Australia about Murdoch.

Certain people were alarmed that I’d discussed Murdoch use of SawPalmetto used, among other things for sexual dysfunction. He couldn’t get it up. No shame in that.

He had a wife 37 years his junior. Then again, age doesn’t matter when one is in love. Right?

Moreover, I’d seen and verified correspondence and the physician concerned also verified it to me in person. I was told that Murdoch was furious at the revelation – and comments I made in relation to his father Sir Keith. Sacred ground.

I thought of the Milly Dowler phone hacking scandal and the obscene, cruel and brutal invasion of that murdered little 13-year-old schoolgirl’s forever grieving family and the gross moral turpitude of the News of the World and I thought this is a man who can dish it out but can’t take it.

Milly Dowler, with her dad, Bob. Photo: Daily Mail

Imagine if a News of the World journalist/agent hacked Dame Elisabeth’s phone messages before or after she died.

We are publishing the article in full because it contains pertinent matters hardly discussed in the hagiography written about Rupert Murdoch’s abdication as Chairman.

Murdoch most foul

(Originally published on Independent Australia)

DOES it really matter if Rupert used Saw Palmetto to increase his libido to service his young wife?

Does it really matter that despite industrial strength botox and other wrinkle spakfillers Rupert Murdoch still looks like a pantomime Dame and decades older than his Mother?

You can’t blame him for wanting to be Peter Pan for his Wendi.

Here’s the headline. Came to me in a flash. “Linga Longa Denga” Gotcha!

Does it really matter that the late Professor John Avieson, who wrote a still unpublished and not entirely flattering biography of Sir Keith Murdoch, was warned by Dame Elisabeth Murdoch at a social gathering that the book would never see the light of day as long as she lived?

Does it really matter if Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal in 2007 as marital insurance for his ‘China Doll’ (a more polite employee nickname than Chairman’s Mao) to call her own in the event of his premature death or ejaculation as Chairman or in the event of clan ructions or corporate infarction?

Well yes, brothers and sisters. It matters. And it matters mightily.

Okay, the WSJ might not be the Taj Mahal, but it’s up there in media mogul terms of journalistic prestige. Or was. Maybe now it will get its mojo back.

Of course, Rupert might have bought it for the former Deng Wen Ge (thank you Eric Ellis) to get back at the Bancroft family who’d owned it for 100 years, because just seven years earlier, the Journal published an article about Wendi he didn’t like.

You know, like the obverse of the famous ad – he hated the company so much he bought it.

He has a reputation as a man who cradles grudges and who never forgets a slight.

But intercorporate rutting is a boardroom artform. I believe the Bancroft family is still represented on the Board.

This stuff is right up the rectal columns of stabloids like The Sun and The News of the World and the Murdoch media in general. Why shouldn’t it be? What’s good for the goose is good for the propaganda.

It is news and it’s fit to print. But whilst you’ll read such things about celebrities and we of the great unwashed, you won’t read it about Big Daddy.

You won’t read about it in his newspapers. And you won’t read about it in other papers that he might as well own by default and by virtue of an extended coterie of power and influence.

We forget that the rebirth of The News of the World under Murdoch was baptised in murder and mystery just as in the wake of its death throes, there is great sorrow and mystery at how the courageous whistleblower of the phone hacking scandal, journalist Sean Hoare was found dead in his Watford home on Monday.

Writing about him in yesterday’s Guardian, investigative journalist Nick Davies, described Sean as “a lovely man”.

Explaining why he had spoken out, he [Sean] told me:

“I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation. In the newsroom, you have people being fired, breaking down in tears, hitting the bottle.”

“He knew this very well, because he was himself a victim of the News of the World. As a show-business reporter, he had lived what he was happy to call a privileged life. But the reality had ruined his physical health:

“I was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars – get drunk with them, take pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive. You are going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things that no sane man would do. You’re in a machine.”

Nick Davies, it should be said, must rank among the more courageous of journalists in his relentless work to uncover and publish the truth about the News of the World Hacking Scandal.

I doubt that anyone in Australia would have easily published it here. And that is an indictment of the moral cowardice of our profession. Perhaps we will find greater courage now that the beast is wounded.

When one contemplates the blind and steadfast courage of the likes of Sean Hoare and lost lives of citizen journalists and correspondents in the frontline of war and terrorism, our comfortable and flaccid obeisance to a media tsar is a betrayal of all that we should hold dear and worthy.

I think of young journalists I know, who in the Bosnian war, daily risked their lives to keep radio stations and communications open for foreign reporters.

I think of Libya, of Egypt, of Pakistan, of Afghanistan and Somalia and Sudan and the wholesale slaughter of journalists in the Philippines and elsewhere.

I think of Iran. I think of revolutions perfumed with jasmine and blood and the stench of fear.

And I think of how easily we here and in Britain and the States, squander our freedoms. And how easily our silence is purchased.

And how often we do unto others that which we would never want done to ourselves.

And of how the Fourth Estate is so often barren ground. Of how truth and justice and compassion are spent seed upon its harsh surface.

It seems that Sean Hoare had a not untroubled life. But still he found in his heart and in his conscience a shared humanity that compelled him to knowingly jeopardise his life and most certainly his career to expose the truth to The New York Times and fine journalists like Nick Davies.

I am alarmed at how, almost immediately, police reports were filtering out stating there were no suspicious circumstances over Sean Hoare’s death.

Given the indecent alliances between the police, News Corporation and politicians, asking us to have faith in anything any one of these groups does at the moment is too big an ask.

Like most, Sean had his demons, but even they could not mar his sense of justice. At least he exorcised one by telling us the truth and he has undoubtedly altered the global media landscape in doing so.

If you read Nick’s full article here, you will get a better picture of both Sean and Nick.

Writing in Sunday’s Independent, journalist Jonathan Owen backgrounded some unsavoury connections between the NOTW, private investigators and some interesting information about Rebekah of sunny Brooks animal farm.

Two former senior News of the World editors wanted for questioning by police

Detectives investigating phone-hacking allegations at the News of the World are keen to question two former senior journalists at the newspaper. Scotland Yard officers have been told the two, former executive editor Alex Marunchak and deputy news editor Greg Miskiw, were both key figures linked to the use of private investigators to access confidential information.

Rebekah Brooks appointed Mr Miskiw as the News of the World’s assistant editor in charge of news, and it was he who employed Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal.

… After examining documents taken from Mulcaire’s home, police are anxious to question Mr Miskiw, who is living in Florida. His also featured in documents obtained by police following a raid on the Hampshire home of private detective Steve Whittamore, who was used by a large number of journalists to obtain information about public figures. Whittamore was later convicted under the Data Protection Act in 2005 at Blackfriars Crown Court of obtaining and disclosing information after passing information obtained from the police national database to customers.

Whittamore’s network was investigated and broken up by the Information Commissioner, who discovered he was accessing sensitive information from the Police National Computer, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, British Telecom and a number of mobile phone companies.

 

The investigation, called Operation Motorman, showed 23 journalists from the News of the World hired Whittamore more than 200 times. The names include Rebekah Brooks, who allegedly commissioned access to confidential data from a mobile phone company.

Mr Miskiw is known to be a close friend of Mr Marunchak, a former crime reporter and senior executive at the NOTW. The two reportedly had mutual business arrangements including the importation of vodka from Ukraine. Mr Marunchak, who left the newspaper in 2006, claims to have been appointed as a special adviser to Ukraine’s UK embassy in 1999.

Mr Marunchak is said to be a friend of a private investigator called Jonathan Rees who was employed by the NOTW to help provide reporters with illegally obtained confidential information. Rees was later jailed for falsely planting cocaine in an innocent woman’s car but was re-employed by the NOTW’s editor Andy Coulson after he served his sentence. [My emphasis]

Detectives also suspected Rees of bribing corrupt officers to supply information to the media. A surveillance operation was carried out on Rees including a bug being placed in his office. It was later revealed that among the hours of taped conversations were many between Mr Marunchak and Rees discussing transactions involving thousands of pounds for work carried out for the newspaper.

[Click here to read the Independent‘s powerful larger story.]

The gutless self-censorship in this country about Rupert Murdoch and his various media dealings is disgusting. We have yet to address our own media cankers.

How many Australian or UK newspapers have ever retold the undoubtedly bizarre and ripping yarn of the tragic story of Muriel McKay, who was mistakenly kidnapped instead of Rupert’s then wife, Anna, a few days after Christmas Day in December 1969 – the same year Murdoch bought The News of the World?

The hapless Muriel, wife of Alick McKay, then Deputy Chairman of News of the World (he wasn’t made a Lord until 1976) was actually driving the Murdoch’s Rolls Royce whilst the Murdochs were in Australia.

Alick McKay returned to his Wimbledon home to find the doors forced and Muriel missing.

In a saga that belongs on the ‘tall tales but true’ shelf, it transpired that two brothers, Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein, who were living beyond their means on a country estate and vainly trying to insinuate their way into a disdainful British establishment, apparently saw Rupert Murdoch being interviewed by David Frost and thought it would be a good idea to kidnap Anna for a ransom that would put an end to their financial woes.

The Jamaican-born brothers were subsequently caught and charged with kidnapping, murder and blackmail. Both were given life sentences. I understand that Nizamodeen Hosein is now back in Jamaica and have unconfirmed reports that Arthur Hosein is now out of prison and lives in England.

If ever there was a cold case begging to be re-examined, this is it; given the advances in forensic science and if there’s anyone left at Scotland Yard.

Tragically, Muriel McKay’s body still hasn’t been found. It is said that her body was dismembered and fed to the pigs.

Lucky that the sub editor who wrote the infamous headline ‘FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER’ was not on duty that day.

© Tess Lawrence