News of the World's Former Top Lawyer Arrested
By PAUL SONNE And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
Wall Street Journal
August 30, 2012
British police on Thursday arrested the former top lawyer at News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, a person with knowledge of the matter said, marking one of the most high-profile arrests in a continuing police probe into wrongdoing at the shuttered tabloid.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed Thursday that officers investigating illegal voicemail interception at the News of the World had arrested a 60-year-old man and brought him in for questioning at a South London police station, but the force declined to identify the suspect.
A person with knowledge of the situation, however, identified the person as Tom Crone, the lawyer who served as the News of the World's in-house counsel for more than 25 years until News Corp. closed the weekly tabloid at the apex of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011...
The 60-year-old lawyer became one of the phone-hacking saga's most visible figures last year when he and former News of the World editor Colin Myler broke ranks with their former employer to dispute an element of News Corp. executive James Murdoch's testimony to a parliamentary committee.
Messrs. Crone and Myler said they had informed Mr. Murdoch in 2008 of a controversial email whose contents suggested the practice of hacking mobile-phone voicemails went beyond what the company had initially admitted. But Mr. Murdoch said he hadn't been informed of the email's contents at the time and learned the scope of the wrongdoing at the paper only in late 2010, a position he reiterated upon further questioning.
A spokeswoman for News International, the U.K. newspaper unit of News Corp., declined to comment on Thursday's arrest. She didn't say whether the company is paying Mr. Crone's legal bills. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Crone was a veteran lawyer on Fleet Street. He often vetted the News of the World's raciest stories ahead of publication and went to court to defend the paper against high-profile libel claims brought by celebrities.
The longtime News of the World lawyer was one of three people the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee censured in a May report for misleading Parliament during hearings on the phone-hacking matter...
Showing posts with label . Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch). Show all posts
Showing posts with label . Murdoch (Rupert Murdoch). Show all posts
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Ed-Tech Advocates Eye Rupert Murdoch's Move Into K-12 Market
December 2, 2010
Ed-Tech Advocates Eye Rupert Murdoch's Move Into K-12 Market
By Ian Quillen
Edweek.org.
Educational technology experts say the purchase of ed-tech company Wireless Generation by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. raises questions about how effective the partnership will be over the long haul, but they hope the Nov. 22 announcement inspires further large-scale private investment in the K-12 technology market.
They say the deal—in which News Corp. bought 90 percent of New York City-based Wireless Generation for $360 million—is far from a certain success. While the media conglomerate’s expansive resources may be unparalleled within the relatively small ed-tech business sphere, News Corp. may find it challenging to define its footprint in that world—perhaps one of the reasons it also recently announced the hiring of outgoing New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein as an executive vice president in the office of the chairman, where he is expected to help oversee educational endeavors.
Further, observers say, the longer, slower business cycle that typifies the education market may take some adjustment on the part of the world’s third-largest media company, which counts the 20th Century Fox film company, Fox’s numerous TV enterprises, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and book publisher HarperCollins among its holdings.
“It’s a very different business than any of the different businesses they’ve been in,” said Karen Billings, the vice president of the educational division of the Software and Information Industry Association, or SIIA, based in Washington. “Everything is a longer cycle. If they’re expecting revenue or profits over a traditionally shorter time cycle to satisfy investors, it’s going to be difficult to do.”
In addition, the widespread perception of News Corp. as conservative in its political sympathies—with such outlets as the Fox News Channel—combined with the for-profit nature of its new education endeavors may make building trust with many educators harder than it’s been for the philanthropic ed-tech efforts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and film producer George Lucas, said Mike Lawrence, the executive director of Computer Using Educators, an advocacy group based in Walnut Creek, Calif...
Ed-Tech Advocates Eye Rupert Murdoch's Move Into K-12 Market
By Ian Quillen
Edweek.org.
Educational technology experts say the purchase of ed-tech company Wireless Generation by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. raises questions about how effective the partnership will be over the long haul, but they hope the Nov. 22 announcement inspires further large-scale private investment in the K-12 technology market.
They say the deal—in which News Corp. bought 90 percent of New York City-based Wireless Generation for $360 million—is far from a certain success. While the media conglomerate’s expansive resources may be unparalleled within the relatively small ed-tech business sphere, News Corp. may find it challenging to define its footprint in that world—perhaps one of the reasons it also recently announced the hiring of outgoing New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein as an executive vice president in the office of the chairman, where he is expected to help oversee educational endeavors.
Further, observers say, the longer, slower business cycle that typifies the education market may take some adjustment on the part of the world’s third-largest media company, which counts the 20th Century Fox film company, Fox’s numerous TV enterprises, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and book publisher HarperCollins among its holdings.
“It’s a very different business than any of the different businesses they’ve been in,” said Karen Billings, the vice president of the educational division of the Software and Information Industry Association, or SIIA, based in Washington. “Everything is a longer cycle. If they’re expecting revenue or profits over a traditionally shorter time cycle to satisfy investors, it’s going to be difficult to do.”
In addition, the widespread perception of News Corp. as conservative in its political sympathies—with such outlets as the Fox News Channel—combined with the for-profit nature of its new education endeavors may make building trust with many educators harder than it’s been for the philanthropic ed-tech efforts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and film producer George Lucas, said Mike Lawrence, the executive director of Computer Using Educators, an advocacy group based in Walnut Creek, Calif...
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