TV News LIES

The extraordinary access that Cabinet ministers granted Rupert Murdoch and his children was revealed for the first time yesterday, with more than two dozen private meetings between the family and senior members of the Government in the 15 months since David Cameron entered Downing Street.

In total, Cabinet ministers have had private meetings with Murdoch executives more than 60 times and, if social events such as receptions at party conferences are included, the figure is at least 107.

Evidence of possible phone hacking at the Sunday Mirror newspaper has been found by the BBC's Newsnight. The programme spoke to a journalist who worked on the paper in the past decade who claimed to have witnessed routine phone hacking in the newsroom.

The source said celebrities including actress Liz Hurley and footballer Rio Ferdinand were targeted. Trinity Mirror said its journalists work within the criminal law and Press Complaints Commission code of conduct.

One week ago, Rupert Murdoch's longtime aide, Les Hinton, was forced to resign as publisher of the Wall Street Journal because of the central role he'd been playing for years in News Corp.'s unraveling phone-hacking scandal. Hinton's resignation, unthinkable just four weeks ago, signaled the severity of News Corp.'s woes in America.

Now another Murdoch publisher, Paul Carlucci, who oversees the New York Post, may be facing renewed questions from prosecutors about his business past and what role he played in a News Corp. computer hacking scandal that unfolded right here in the U.S.

Cenk Uygur--the progressive online talk show host whose brief tenure as an MSNBC anchor ended on Wednesday--tore into the network in a lengthy monologue on Wednesday night, saying he had turned down a smaller role on MSNBC because he had been told he was too combative towards "those in power."

Uygur had been the 6 PM host the network since January. But that role came to an end on Wednesday, as the network announced that he would not be continuing. Now, every indication is that Al Sharpton will become the new 6 PM host. Sharpton has been guest hosting in the slot for the past few weeks, and his numbers have apparently improved on Uygur's.

London police have proof in smoking-gun emails that former News of the World editor Andy Coulson knew of bribes paid to police officers, Reuters reported Thursday.

The evidence, Reuters said, comes in an email exchange between Coulson – who after leaving the paper became spokesman for a time for now-Prime Minister David Cameron – and Clive Goodman, the paper’s then-royals correspondent.

When the former News of the World reporter Sean Hoare was found dead Monday at his home in Watford, north of London, the immediate response of the Hertfordshire police was to issue a public statement declaring his death to be “unexplained but not thought to be suspicious.”

The statement is at the very least extraordinary, and at worst sinister in its implications. Hoare is the man who broke silence on the corrupt practices at the News of the World and, most specifically, alleged that former editor Andy Coulson, who later became Prime Minister David Cameron’s director of communications, was fully aware of phone hacking that took place on an “industrial scale.”