'Civil war' as Sun journalists turn on Rupert Murdoch

IN THE WORDS of the Financial Times, Rupert Murdoch “will walk the floor of a hostile newsroom” when he arrives this week at the offices of The Sun, where journalists feel let down by the management following the arrests of five senior figures on the paper on Saturday. Media commentator Roy Greenslade went further on the Today programme this morning, claiming Murdoch faces “civil war” in London.

This follows the decision of The Sun’s veteran political correspondent and now assistant editor, Trevor Kavanagh, to write an unprecedented indictment of the “witch hunt” he claims is being directed at his colleagues by the police, thanks to the cooperation of the paper’s management.  

Kavanagh claims Sun journalists and their families have been treated to bully-boy tactics in raids on their homes. “Wives and children have been humiliated as up to 20 officers at a time rip up floorboards and sift through intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents.”

He claims The Sun is not a "swamp" that needs draining. Yet its journalists are being treated “like members of an organised crime gang”.

Kavanagh claims to have evidence that the investigation into possibly corrupt payments to police officers by Sun journalists has quickly become “the biggest police operation in British criminal history - bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder probe”.

He adds: “In one raid, two officers revealed they had been pulled off an elite 11-man anti-terror squad trying to protect the Olympics from a mass suicide attack.”

Thirty journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids while their homes are ransacked - their only alleged crime, in Kavanagh’s view, being “to act as journalists have acted on all newspapers through the ages, unearthing stories that shape our lives, often obstructed by those who prefer to operate behind closed doors.

“These stories sometimes involve whistleblowers. Sometimes money changes hands. This has been standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed, here and abroad.”

Kavanagh, always considered one of Murdoch’s most loyal lieutenants, goes on to make the crucial point that “it is important our parent company, News Corp, protects its reputation in the United States and the interests of its shareholders.

“But some of the greatest legends in Fleet Street have been held, at least on the basis of evidence so far revealed, for simply doing their jobs as journalists on behalf of the company.”

That’s the nub of it, of course. Murdoch is coming to London in the knowledge that his US-based News Corp, which through its subsidiary News International owns The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times, is subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a US law that forbids bribing foreign officials.

As the Financial Times reports, lawyers “remain divided” on whether payments to police officers for newspaper stories would classify as corrupt under the FCPA.

But if a successful case were to be brought against News Corp, it could be liable to massive fines and the Murdochs could face questions about their fitness to broadcast in the States which would make last year’s grilling by British MPs look tame in comparison.

Mike Koehler, a law professor, tells the FT: “Since July, News Corp has faced the potential of an FCPA enforcement, and these developments [referring to the most recent arrests] I think escalate that.”

In short, to protect his US empire, which includes Fox Television, Murdoch has to be seen to be doing everything possible to aid the authorities in their investigations.

From where the staff of The Sun are sitting, that feels as though they’re being dropped in it from a great height.

As Andrew Neil, the BBC Politics Show presenter and former Murdoch newspaper executive, tweeted this morning: “In many ways the crisis at The Sun is bigger than the one Murdoch faced at NoW [the News of the World]. And his most loyal of newspapers has turned against him.” ·