The ever-growing scandal has shut down one newspaper, led to multiple arrests and numerous resignations in the UK, and an FBI investigation into allegations that News Corp. staff may have sought to hack the voicemail of victims of 9/11 and their families in the US.

And now a committee in the UK parliament has issued a report blasting both Rupert Murdoch and his son James (also an executive at News Corp.) for their complicity in the scandal, concluding that Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person to exercise stewardship of a major international company.”

It’s time for the FCC to take action. The law requires that the FCC consider the “character” of media owners when deciding whether to grant, deny or revoke a broadcast license.

Tell the FCC: Enforce the law. Revoke the broadcast licenses held by Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

We already knew that the hacking activities at the center of the scandal were not limited to a few rogue reporters, but reflect systematic orchestration from the highest levels of News Corp. This new report, however, is the clearest evidence yet that the rot went all the way to the top.

With the law saying that the FCC should consider Murdoch’s “character,” this recent report detailing both his willful blindness that contributed to the phone hacking scandal and his lack of candor in his testimony about his role, ought to enough to call the issue into question.

As Melanie Sloan, the Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — the nonpartisan watchdog group — aptly put it, “If [Rupert and James Murdoch] are not passing the character standard under British law, it seems to me that they are not going to meet the character standard in America.”

Tell the FCC: Enforce the law. Revoke the broadcast licenses held by Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

CREW has already sent a letter to the FCC demanding that the commission revoke News Corp.’s broadcast licenses.

But the commission is likely to flout the law unless significant public pressure can be brought to bear.

We need to speak out.

Remember, Rupert Murdoch may own a massive media empire, but he doesn’t own the airwaves — we do. And the 27 broadcast stations Murdoch owns are only allowed to use the public airwaves because the FCC has made a determination that it is in the “public interest” that they be given licenses to do so.

The deplorable actions Murdoch has condoned in News Corp. go to the very heart of whether or not we can trust his company to act in the public interest.

News Corp. has crossed a line and it’s time for the FCC to take action.

Tell the FCC: Enforce the law. Revoke the broadcast licenses held by Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Click the link below to automatically sign the petition:

http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=6883524

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They’re all ignoring a massive public outcry against media consolidation by favoring new rules that would allow conglomerates to gobble up more local media across America.

Please click here to help stop media consolidation now — it’ll just take a second.

By signing this letter to the Federal Communications Commission, you’re joining thousands of people who have already told the agency to stop this latest attack on independent media.

I am joining with tens of thousands of Americans to urge you to foster more independent media outlets across the United States. We need your agency to expand media ownership opportunities for women and people of color. Given our nation’s diversity, we need more independent stations to provide communities with diverse programming and a range of viewpoints.

More media mergers translates into less of the news and information people really need. Please abandon any proposal that would leave communities with fewer voices and fewer choices in local media.

And the public response has been overwhelming: So far more than nine out of every 10 comments to the FCC opposes letting broadcasters snatch up even more media outlets.

President Obama was once an outspoken opponent of media consolidation. In 2007, he said that protecting local, independent and diverse media was “critical to the public interest.”

But times have changed. The president has failed to speak up as his FCC has sided with Murdoch and big-media lobbyists in a push for unchecked consolidation.

Last year, Obama also stood on the sidelines while his FCC approved the Comcast-NBC Universal merger — one of the largest and potentially most disastrous media mergers in history.

Now Obama’s FCC is on the verge of weakening the rule that prevents one company from owning both broadcast stations and newspapers in the same market.

Murdoch has long lobbied Washington for this change, which would allow News Corp. to buy up even more local television stations and newspapers in markets from New York City to San Diego. And it would give Clear Channel, Earth’s largest radio conglomerate — and the company that syndicates Rush Limbaugh’s program to more than 600 stations — the power to dominate the dial even more.

Please click here to tell the FCC to side with the people, not Big Media

Nobody — not Rupert Murdoch or other powerful media moguls — should be allowed to monopolize our print and broadcast media and crowd out independent voices. But corporate special interests have prevailed up until this point, dictating ownership rules to the FCC.

And the results are appalling: People of color own just 3 percent of our country’s full-power TV stations and just 7.7 percent of all radio stations. Women own just 6 percent of all broadcast outlets.

By creating real limits to media consolidation, the FCC can pave the way for the kind of independent media that a healthy democracy needs. But the agency needs to hear from you first.

Please click here to urge the FCC to fight the big media barons and oppose further consolidation.

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Rebekah Brooks, former Chief Executive of News International

LONDON (AP) — British police made six arrests early Tuesday in the British media’s phone hacking scandal, including Rebekah Brooks, the former top executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, The Associated Press has learned.

Police did not identify those arrested, but a person who had been briefed on the details said Brooks and her husband, a prominent horse breeder and a friend of Prime Minister David Cameron, were arrested at their house.

The six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, police said in a statement. The charge is an indication that investigators may be focusing on a possible coverup of the scope of phone hacking.

The investigation stems from widespread wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch’s now-closed News of the World tabloid. The victims have ranged from celebrities and major politicians to the families of crime victims.

News International, which operates Murdoch’s British newspapers, confirmed that its head of security, Mark Hanna, was also one of those arrested. A spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she had no information about where he was arrested.

The Metropolitan Police said five men and a woman were arrested in various locations in and around London in a series of raids conducted between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Police said a 43-year-old woman was arrested at her home in Oxfordshire. In addition, police said a 49-year-old man was also arrested in Oxfordshire at his home. Brooks, 43, and her husband, horse trainer Charlie Brooks, live in Oxfordshire in the town of Chipping Norton.

Cameron has recently described Charlie Brooks as “a good friend” and neighbor. The two have gone riding together in the countryside outside Chipping Norton.

Police also arrested a 39-year-old man in Hampshire, a 46-year-old man in West London, a 38-year-old man in Hertforshire and a 48-year-old man in East London.

A judge-led inquiry into media ethics has heard extensive testimony about wrongdoing by tabloid journalists, and Murdoch’s company has reached cash settlements with a number of victims.

There is also a simultaneous investigation into corrupt relations between the police and the press, which has yielded a number of arrests in recent weeks.

An inquiry panel appointed by Cameron is trying to determine why an initial police investigation into phone hacking in 2006 failed to reveal the scope of the problem.

At the time, Murdoch’s executives claimed the wrongdoing was limited to one scurrilous reporter and an unprincipled private detective, both of whom were jailed.

The dormant police investigation was reopened last year after reporters were found to have hacked into the voicemail of a missing schoolgirl who was later found to have been murdered.

That investigation led to the resignation of Cameron’s top media adviser, Andy Coulson, who had been the editor of the News of the World.

It also led to the arrest of Brooks, who was later released on bail. Both have denied wrongdoing.

Murdoch’s company has reached cash settlements with various hacking victims, including actress Sienna Miller and singer Charlotte Church, but many new cases are being brought against News International, the U.K. newspaper branch of Murdoch’s global media empire.

The scandal also scuttled Murdoch’s plans to purchase full control of the British broadcaster BSkyB.

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Rupert Murdoch - said to believe "coloreds" like American sports

Roger Simon, who wrote a telling piece for Politico, provides fascinating insight into Rupert Murdoch‘s formula for success when purchasing and running a company… at least to those of us outside of Murdoch’s inner circle of evil.

Simon and his wife worked for the Chicago Sun-Times prior to Murdoch buying the company. Soon after, Simon and his left, but not after witnessing first-hand racist remarks from the media magnate.

SIMON: I had a conversation with him about various sections of the paper. “I don’t understand anything about American sport,” [Murdoch] told me breezily, “but I know the coloreds like it.”

I told him that in America we no longer used the word “coloreds,” that it was considered insulting.

He looked at me the way Queen Victoria might have looked at a footman who had told her she was using the wrong fork to eat her pheasant.

Murdoch had apparently told employees and management at the Sun-Times that he intended to maintain the quality and integrity of the paper. Simon said everyone knew it was a lie. Within months, there were mass resignations and dismissals and Murdoch brought on his own “thugs” and “stooges.” He sold the paper, but the damage had been done.

Murdoch and his goons also know what damage can be caused to a political career and exactly how to do it using harassment, printing sexist remarks and photo editing…

Sarah Lyall of The New York Times wrote last week about Clare Short, a Labour member of Parliament, who once mentioned “in passing that she did not care for the photographs of saucy, topless women that appear every day on Page 3 of the populist tabloid The Sun,” owned by Murdoch.

The Sun attacked swiftly with the headline: “‘Fat, Jealous’ Clare Brands Page 3 Porn.” The paper also sent a busload of “semi-dressed” models to Short’s home to jeer at her and stuck a picture of Short’s head on the body of a topless woman in the paper.While powerful politicians often privately deplored the behavior of the British tabloids, they were “afraid to say so publicly, for fear of losing the papers’ support or finding themselves the target of their wrath,” the Times article said.

The editor of The Sun at the time of the attack on that “fat, jealous” member of Parliament was Rebekah Wade, now Rebekah Brooks, who has been arrested in the phone-hacking scandal and who testified Tuesday before a parliamentary committee right after Murdoch finished.

While Fox News may not be as blatantly sexist in their harassment of public officials in the United States, the results are basically the same… We saw the backlash that the Obama administration received when they called out Fox News for their BS. I wonder how many of those journalists who defended Fox News will realize they were on the wrong side of history when it’s all said and News Corp. is done.

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Of course, you can always check FNB’s list of News Corp Properties (updated).

Here are some screenshots of the plugins…

Murdoch Alert plugin for Firefox

Murdoch Block plugin for Google Chrome

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Dilenschneider: Why are so many people piling on at this point? We know it’s a hacking scandal. Shouldn’t we get beyond it and really deal with the issue of hacking? Citicorp has been hacked into. Bank of America has been hacked into. American Express has been hacked into. Insurance companies have been hacked into.?.?. . So we have to figure out a way to deal with this hacking problem. That’s what we have to do.

The following analogy by clockworkdiamond from Reddit puts this into perspective:

Wow, way to spin it to make news of the world out as though they are the same kind of victims as other corporations that got hacked. Lets be clear, this company was not the hacked, but the hacker. They are the criminals, not the victims. This is like saying “sure we were raping people, but rape is a serious thing in this country, so we should focus on that”.

If you can stand it, watch the end and you’ll notice that Steve Doocy mentions the “mainstream media,” of which he must have forgotten they are part of… He states that there are more important topics – Cue Casey Anthony!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Sean Hoare, News of the World whistleblower

As news of the phone hacking by News Corp. owned News of the World spreads and the story grows to include the arrest of News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and the resignations of police officials, Sean Hoare, the NoW whistleblower has been found dead. Hoare first made the claims in a New York Times investigation into the phone-hacking allegations.

Police are still investigating his death and have not ruled it suspicious.

“At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.”The death is currently being treated as unexplained but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing.”

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News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks

Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, the UK arm of Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corporation has been arrested on charges of suspicion of corruption and conspiring to intercept communications. Brooks resigned on Friday.

Mrs Brooks’s arrest is the 10th made by Operation Weeting police, who are conducting the current investigation into phone hacking.

She was released on bail until October.

Others arrested and bailed have included ex-NoW editor Andy Coulson, ex-NoW assistant editor Ian Edmondson, ex-NoW chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, senior ex-NoW journalist James Weatherup, freelance journalist Terenia Taras, Press Association journalist Laura Elston, an unnamed 63-year-old man, and ex-NoW royal editor Clive Goodman.

Officers from Operation Elveden were also involved with this latest arrest. They are investigating allegations of inappropriate payments to police, under the supervision of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

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A law enforcement official says the FBI has opened an investigation into allegations that media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. sought to hack into the phones of Sept. 11 victims. The official spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

According to the AP, this is a result of U.S. Rep. Peter King and several other members of Congress writing to FBI Director Robert Mueller, demanding an investigation.

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