Murdoch et l’horreur de Gordon Brown

Murdoch et l’horreur de Gordon Brown

Le “scandale Murdoch” continue à son train dévastateur. Chaque jour apporte son lot de nouvelles, dans une situation en aggravation constante, qui secoue jusqu’au tréfonds l’establishment britannique et conduit le groupe Murdoch à évoluer de plus en plus vite autour de thèmes encore impensables il y a seulement deux semaines.

Le Guardian note (le 12 juillet 2011), sans doute avec une secrète satisfaction, que les titres du groupe Murdoch voient leurs ventes reculer fortement (en mettant bien sûr à part le cas de la liquidation de The News of the World), avec 150.000 exemplaires en moins pour le Sun et 30.000 en moins pour le Times et le Sunday Times («However, it seems the public eschewed News International titles when it came to seeking news on the phone-hacking scandal, with the Sun, Times on Saturday and the Sunday Times thought to be the only nationals to have lost sales over the weekend.»). L’hypothèse d’un départ de Murdoch du Royaume-Uni, avec vente de la branche britannique de son groupe (News International), avec les titres qui vont avec, est désormais évoquée. C’est l’Independent qui évoque cette hypothèse, ce 12 juillet 2011 :

«Will Rupert Murdoch abandon British newspapers entirely? After the dramatic demise of the News of the World, speculation was rife last night that the News Corp media empire might seek to sell off News International to protect the rest of its business from the fallout of the hacking scandal. Pressure increased yesterday with news that a group of American institutional investors had brought new charges against the company over the phone-hacking affair. The investors, who are critical of Rupert Murdoch and his son and deputy, James, accused News Corp of “rampant nepotism and failed corporate governance”. […]

»“There has long been a faction within News Corp which says ‘Why do we have these newspapers?’” notes Michael Wolff, contributing editor to Vanity Fair and Rupert Murdoch's biographer. He said that the former president and chief operating officer, Peter Chernin, had taken such a view, and that the current chief operating officer, Chase Carey, the most likely non-family member to succeed the ageing chairman, “has never had any involvement in the newspapers”.

»Wolff said it was conceivable that News Corp would attempt to put the phone-hacking scandal behind it by selling News International. “It's quite possible that at some point one of the fall-back positions is to blame it all on the newspapers: ‘It's newspaper culture and newspapers which are the problem here, not the company, which is a modern media company.’ The newspapers were once the motor of this company but they have not been certainly in half a generation. In New York no one has heard of the News of the World.”

»He said that the board of the US-listed company needed to show that it did not simply act at the behest of the chairman. “As boards of major companies go, this is one of the most docile and least independent. One of the themes that is going to be taken up there is of corporate governance and that these people are not accountable. That's a board-level question and I think the board is going to come under increasing pressure to realise that.”…»

La nouvelle la plus spectaculaire du jour vient des révélations des extraordinaires activités d’espionnage et de détournement d’informations confidentielles et personnelles qui ont eu lieu aux dépens de Gordon Brown, notamment lorsque Brown était chancelier de l’Echiquier, jusqu’en 2007. La révélation de l’espionnage de l’état de santé de son fils gravement malade, de ses diverses situations privées, etc., a constitué un choc (un de plus) extrêmement fort, pour Brown bien sûr, mais aussi pour toute la classe politique britannique. Brown accuse le Sunday Times de travailler en relation avec des “milieux criminels” de la pègre, pour organiser des opérations d’espionnage privé. Les relations de dépendance de cette classe et du groupe Murdoch sont en train de se transformer en relations d'une hostilité confinant à la haine, et rendent quasiment impensable l’hypothèse d’un retour à la situation d’avant après ce scandale... (D’après The Independent du 12 juillet 2011.)

«Former prime minister Gordon Brown accused the Sunday Times today of using illicit activity to intrude into his private family life. […] Mr Brown also said that he and his wife were “in tears” after being told by the Sun that it was going to publish the story about his son's cystic fibrosis, gleaned from medical files.

»He told the BBC: “I think that what happened pretty early on in government is that the Sunday Times appear to have got access to my building society account, they got access to my legal files, there is some question mark about what happened to other files – documentation, tax and everything else. I'm shocked, I'm genuinely shocked, to find that this happened because of their links with criminals, known criminals, who were undertaking this activity, hired by investigators with the Sunday Times.” […]

»Mr Brown added: “I just can't understand this – if I, with all the protection and all the defences and all the security that a chancellor of the Exchequer or a prime minister, am so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, to unlawful tactics, methods that have been used in the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen? What about the person, like the family of Milly Dowler, who are in the most desperate of circumstances, the most difficult occasions in their lives, in huge grief and then they find that they are totally defenceless in this moment of greatest grief from people who are employing these ruthless tactics with links to known criminals…”

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