I love that there was little hot air from the Parliament committee and a ton of hot air from the News Corp. side. I didn’t expect anything less, but the speed and tone of the questioning is refreshing compared to the “opening remarks” from U.S. Congressional hearings. I love the bit where either one of the Murdoch’s is a bit petulant or wants to answer for the other and the questioners redirect back to their original question (which remained unanswered in any kind of satisfactory way) in a kind of shushy we’ll-get-to-you-in-a-moment tone.
CNN has a whole page of short videos from the hearings earlier today.
The Murdoch’s did apologize for the phone hacking, but denied knowing or having anything to do with phone hacking. To be expected. What I didn’t expect was the masterful way the Murdoch’s and Ms. Brooks played themselves as victims.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this next bit from anyone else…
Back on July 7, Graham Linehan (@Glinner on Twitter) re-tweeted a bunch from George Michael’s stream. These next few tweets caught my eye and bumped the scandal up a few notches for me:
I keep thinking that if this is true, there will be a bunch of celebrity suits against News Corp, likely one of the reasons motivating the Murdoch in shutting down News of the World.
This really is like Watergate in terms of crookedness, reach and power. People resigned much more slowly in the early 1970s.