News of the World whistleblower found dead

[billybob476]

I know there was some minor talk in the shoutbox regarding News of the World last week. They were apparently employing very underhanded means (including voicemail hacking) to get info out of their sources. In an interesting, almost cinematic turn of events, it seems the first journalist to bring this to light has been found dead in his home.

News of the World whistleblower found dead
Rob Beschizza at 10:41 AM Monday, Jul 18, 2011
Sean Hoare was the first journalist to publicly allege that former News of the World editor and government spokesman Andy Coulson knew about voicemail hacking at the newspaper. He was found dead today at his home.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/18/news-of-the-world-wh.html

I'm posting the Boing Boing link since it has links to both the current article and some background.

[Meds]

OK so the News of the World scandal or NOTW. I did mention this off the cuff during the skype call we did on Sunday.
About six months ago the NOTW was accused of phone hacking celeb and politicians phones to get inside scoops and dish the dirty really. The British public were a bit meh about it all, mainly because we're a bit bored about celebs and footballers.
BUT about a month ago it was revealed that a investigator hired by the NOTW had hacked into a murdered young girls phone and read the messages and then the reporters had wiped the messages leading the poor family to think that the young girl was still alive and erasing messages.
Now this caused a uproar (and rightly so) with the British public, and so a huge public back lash via telephone calls, twitter etc caused not only a further police investigation but also for the NOTW to close down for good.
NOTW is owned by Rupert Murdoch and we all know he owns the world of media (FOX) and generally the Montgomery Burns of the real world.
News this week has revealed phone hacking of dead soldiers along with other victims of serious crimes. Rebbecca wade (Brooks) the former editor of NOTW has resigned but frankly i would hope she gets locked up for good.

[QuadShot]

wow...and I thought I was messed up! :)

[Meds]

I've been following a hacker who has just broke into the sun newspapers site so when you go there you get directed to his twitter feed. They are planning a full on attack on all the Murdoch owned media. Quite fun actually the media controllers falling victim for once.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

This just reinforces why I do not trust any big media company anymore...this sort of stuff is just down right wrong.

King

[Bromptonboy]

Yeah, we haven't seen the bottom of this yet.

[Meds]

Yeah and think about the fact that if it's happened here who's to say it hasn't happened anywhere else say at any other news Corp company ( wall st journal, NY Post) (*disclaimer*) lol

[Bromptonboy]

Yeah and think about the fact that if it's happened here who's to say it hasn't happened anywhere else say at any other news Corp company ( wall st journal, NY Post) (*disclaimer*) lol

I think if it happened there...you can be sure that other papers have done the same thing.  I can imagine all the editors trying to cover their tracks everywhere.

[Rico]

I read some more about this in this week's Entertainment Weekly involving Hugh Grant.  This is all pretty crazy and wild stuff.  I always think that if people do things like illegally tap phones and so forth that they will get found out.  Especially in this day and age.  These news companies better be careful.  I'm sure it happens all over the place, but they are all on borrowed time.  I think it's one of the reasons I don't watch or read much "regular news."  I depend on the masses of the Net to give me a better view of things.

Reminds me of a class I had in college where they showed us a "60 Minutes" story and then showed us the real facts behind the piece.  Lets just say I had no faith in "60 Minutes" after that class.

[Feathers]

I know there was some minor talk in the shoutbox regarding News of the World last week. They were apparently employing very underhanded means (including voicemail hacking) to get info out of their sources. In an interesting, almost cinematic turn of events, it seems the first journalist to bring this to light has been found dead in his home.

News of the World whistleblower found dead
Rob Beschizza at 10:41 AM Monday, Jul 18, 2011
Sean Hoare was the first journalist to publicly allege that former News of the World editor and government spokesman Andy Coulson knew about voicemail hacking at the newspaper. He was found dead today at his home.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/07/18/news-of-the-world-wh.html

I'm posting the Boing Boing link since it has links to both the current article and some background.

I heard this on the news last night. The BBC were very quick to add that the police "aren't treating the death as suspicious." In truth, it's probably not suspicious but, despite it being the story of a death, I almost had to laugh at the headline. Mind you, I doubt the police have much capacity to investigate this anyway - both the Comissioner and Assistant Comissioner of the Met have resigned (over this matter)  in the last two days.

[Bryancd]

Yeah, this is, excuse my French, a shit storm of epic proportions. I get the feeling Murdoch doesn't seem to have a grasp of how big and bad this could get for him.

[Rico]

Agreed Bryan.  Check this out...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-19/rupert-murdoch-has-most-humble-day-in-u-k-testimony-over-hacking-probe.html

[Dangelus]

Rupert Murdoch has just been attacked with a custard pie during the committee proceedings!

[billybob476]

and the Sun News website was hacked by LulzSec

The Sun Website gets hacked by LulzSec
Tuesday, July 19, 2011, 9:15:08 AM
Despite rumours that internet hackers LulzSec were disbanding, The Sun website has recently found itself at the receiving end of one of the groups attacks.
Lulz Security managed to redirect The Sun visitors to a site where they posted a news article claiming that News International owner Rupert Murdoch had been found dead in his garden.
After a while visitors were directed to the hacktivists Twitter page where they took full responsibility for the hack, Tweeting the rhyme "We have joy we have fun, we have messed up Murdoch's Sun". The hours following the hack saw many more amusing Tweets from LulzSec including comments such as:

http://uk.webhostdir.com/news/ShowItem.aspx?ID=90453

[Bryancd]

The Brits love their cream pie tosses! It must be a Benny Hill thing. :)