A hack's progress

News Ltd explains its policies on entrapment, surveillance and private investigators ... Instructive stuff ... The media world lurches off its axis as Rupert & Co are unable to manage the flood of arrests, resignations and on-going investigations ... Late night viewing as a Commons committee presses for answers 

News Ltd in Australia is doing its best to quarantine itself from the toxic behaviour of its publishing siblings in the UK and maybe even in the US. 

Separate company, same logo, same Murdochs crawling all over the business, same winner-takes-all culture, same old editorial malarky, but chairman and CEO of the local arm of the Murdoch estate, John Hartigan, wants us to know that it's a different kettle of fish here in Oz. 

Into staff inboxes at the House of News come missives from Harto's spin cycle: 

"I know, and I believe everyone here at News Limited knows, that the events in the UK in no way reflect who we are, what we do and what we believe in as a media organisation." 

No bad behaviour on Harto's patch, and certainly no evidence has come to light that News Ltd hacks are listening into the private phone messages of murdered teenagers, or the relatives of dead soldiers or fornicating celebs. 

Unfortunately, because the denials of News executives and editors in London are now known to be untrue or unbelievable, all reassurances from whatever part of empire must be taken with a family-sized packet of Saxa Salt. 

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A plaintiff who had commenced a defamation case against Murdoch's Daily Telegraph started to notice strange things happening to his life. 

His mail went missing; he was put under surveillance and photographed during his morning run; he was randomly propositioned by three different women on three different occasions. 

All of this happened over several months leading up to the trial in the NSW Supreme Court in 2009. 

The random approaches by women were relevant because the plaintiff had pleaded imputations that he had sexually harassed a former employee. 

For a time he must have thought he had suddenly acquired a fresh allure to the opposite sex, but these approaches were all too unsubtle and the timing decidedly curious. 

He believes that these events were related to his defamation case against News Ltd subsidiary and publisher of the Telegraph, Nationwide News Pty Ltd. 

As it happened the Telegraph's defence collapsed and the plaintiff received a handsome payout. 

Our informant doesn't want to be named as he's endeavouring to reestablish his life and there is separate, but connected, ongoing litigation. 

It's not hard to understand why a person engaged in legal action against News Ltd might assume that the company would indulge in underhand, invasive and criminal tactics. 

Baxter: No and YesWe asked News Ltd's top spin-meister Greg Baxter whether any News Ltd companies had commissioned, authorised or paid for surveillance, information or attempted entrapment: 

We were told that the answer is "no" ... but there's also a yes. His answer is instructive: 

"Editors do not approve of entrapment. Our code of conduct permits covert surveillance only with the approval of an editor and only if all other avenues have been exhausted.

However, external lawyers defending News in Australia in defamation proceedings have occasionally used private investigators in accordance with standard Australian litigation practice. The investigations are conducted on a privileged and confidential basis and information from those investigations is not used in editorial coverage." 

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News Ltd has set up its own internal inquiry to review all editorial payments to third parties. This is to done by an "independent assessor". The Press Council is to review any issues that are of concern to the assessor, but will have no say in the processes or procedures for the conduct of the industry. 

The Greens would like a broader inquiry into media regulation in Australia. Bob Brown suggests a "fit and proper" test be applied to newspaper proprietors. Presumably he means mainstream, daily newspapers. To apply fit and proper to the anarchy of the internet would be impossible. 

With the Murdoch press controlling 67 percent of the newspaper business in Australia, there is a stronger case for an inquiry into newsprint market dominance, particularly in those unfortunate spots on the map where the only major dailies in town roll off the Murdoch presses (Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin and Brisbane). 

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Auletta: Rupert needs more fingersThe media axis has tilted irrevocably and matters are spinning so fast and uncontrollably that just about any outcome is possible, even unimaginable ones. 

Media observer Ken Auletta, writing in The New Yorker, said that Murdoch doesn't have enough fingers to plunge into the gushing dam. 

David Carr in The New York Times observed that Murdoch's usual solution to a problem is to throw money at it.

"When you throw money onto a burning fire, it becomes fuel and nothing more."

Business pundit Robert Gottliebsen said this morning that Murdoch's Australian newspaper business could be spun off, probably into the rapacious maw of an equity fund. This could mean the demise of the loss leading Australian. 

Then again his shop-soiled print products papers on a global scale could be bundled into another vehicle, entirely separate from News Corp management. 

In six years, as a percentage of News Corp earnings, newspapers have shrunk from 36 percent to 13 percent of the overall business - from $831 million in 2004 to $530 million in 2010. 

This small part of the empire has knackered the BSkyB deal and brought the company and its employees under criminal investigation in Britain and the US. 

Whatever new structure evolves, sooner rather than later, the Murdoch era is drawing to an end. Rupert is shuffling inexorably towards the exit, and James has proved, if there was ever any doubt, that he's as thick as a brick and not up to it. 

Importantly, the intimidating influence that Murdoch snr has been allowed to exercise over politicians is critically damaged. Do you think presidents, prime ministers and potentates will be quite as quick to take Rupert's phone calls from now on? 

"Tell him I'll ring back when I feel like it," is the more likely response.  

Price: discovered the 24th member of cabinetPolitical insider insider Lance Price was surprised to discover after taking up a job with Tony Blair at Number 10 that the new Labour government had undertaken to run past News International for approval any proposed changes to Britain's Europe policy. 

He quickly came to understand that Murdoch was "the 24th member of the British cabinet". 

Governments have invariably bent the knee to accommodate Murdoch's political and commercial interests.

David Cameron's Conservatives had the same media policy as prescribed by James Murdoch in his infamous MacTaggart lecture: cutting back the BBC, winding down the regulatory powers of OfCom and allowing News to take over all the shares of BSkyB.  

If governments, or their agencies, don't obey they're subject to tireless thunderbolts from News' slavish hacks: climate change, the NBN, gay marriage, a Bill of Rights, the mining tax, the Greens (and that's just in recent memory). 

In fact, when you think about it, the Murdoch media machine, at least in this country, has campaigned against every socially progressive policy advanced by the Labor government. 

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Bruce Guthrie in his terrific book Man Bites Murdoch told the story that explains the source, inspiration and perpetuation of News' rancid ethos. 

Guthrie: computer nickedIt's Rupert, who believes that the masses should be fed dross and that anyone who criticises this menu of drivel mixed with faux patriotic drum-beating is a "snob" or an "elitist". 

Guthrie was news and features editor of the (Melbourne) Herald when he attended a News editorial knees-up at Aspen, Colorado. Before that he had worked at Fairfax's The Age. 

Various speakers gave presentations, including Tom Petrie, the veteran news editor of The Sun in London. 

"His presentation was wildly entertaining with its stories of chequebook journalism, general skulduggery and, ultimately, heavy lifting of rival paper's stories if they were unable to match them. For anyone who took journalism seriously, it was appalling." 

After the speech, Gutherie stuck his hand up to ask a question: 

"Tom, do you have any ethical framework at all at the London Sun?" 

Petrie pretended he did not hear the question and got Guthrie to repeat it, three times. 

Murdoch, and his sons, were at the gathering, with Rupert getting increasingly agitated at this line of questioning. 

All round were shouts of laughter and derision. "Ethics at The Sun, you've got to be joking," was the tenor of the mood. 

The tabloid's news editor ultimately replied: 

"To tell you the truth, we don't really have any kind of ethical framework at all." 

Murdoch himself weighed in: 

"I would have thought it's news if the captain of the English cricket team is taking barmaids up to his room the night before a Test match." 

News' director Ken Cowley later confided to Guthrie that Rupert had said to him: "I see we have a Fairfax wanker in our midst." 

In Murdochland you are a wanker if you were concerned about journalistic ethics ... hence the present disaster. 

As a side note, Bruce Guthrie's computer was mysteriously stolen from his home in the period leading up to the trial of his unfair dismissal case against News Ltd. 

If that was done by a News' plumber, was it in accordance with "standard Australian litigation practice"? 

It's enlightening to see how Labour MP Chris Bryant handled the vacuous questioning about phone hacking from a Sky interviewer. 

Let's see what happens tonight as Murdoch father and son, plus the tangled haired Rebekah Brooks, front the Culture, Media and Sport committee of the Commons. 

Brooks: chargedWill the wily fox be ahead of the pollies' questions? 

In a sense, the outcome of this round doesn't matter. The die already is cast and what is more potentially troubling is the FBI investigation in the US into whether News' journalists hacked the phone of victims or families of 9/11. 

Already one ex-policemen has said he was asked by another cop, acting on behalf of a News' reptile, for information about victims' phone numbers. 

If this turns into hard evidence that News hacked those phones, the Milly Dowler atrocity will seem like a side show. 

Good night and good luck.