Friday, July 15, 2011

Rupert Murdoch a supporter of paedophilia within our churches? He donated $10 Million for New LA Cathedral, buys Beliefnet religion site

As the government of Ireland condemns the Vatican for its role in the cover-up of 19 pedophile priests in the Cloyne Diocese, it is quite a coincidence or God-incidence - that Rupert Murdoch had to close-down his British tabloid, News of the World, and face the British Parliament investigation of the hacking of the telephone of a deceased young girl and other victims, see news below. Questions of the integrity of Rupert Murdoch has surfaced and suggestions are being raised that his knighthood by the Pope should be revoked.

When Benedict XVI went to England last year, he barely met with victims of pedophile priests but was busy posing for photos with millionnaires inclusing Rupert Murdoch who are hefty donors to the Vatican Bank, read our related articles in our blogs Benedict XVI God's Rottweiler http://pope-ratz.blogspot.com/

JohnPaul II Millstone http://jp2m.blogspot.com/

JP2 Army John Paul II Pedophiles Rapists Priests Army http://jp2army.blogspot.com/

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Rupert Murdoch, a supporter of paedophilia within our churches ?

15 Jul 2011: Concerns emerge over six-figure Murdoch gift to papal visit funds

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jul/15/catholicism-pope-benedict-xvi

The Catholic weekly The Tablet has a news story and editorial about concerns over the six-figure donation from James Murdoch towards the pope's visit to the UK last year, a trip that made as many headlines for its financing as it did for its historic nature.



According to the magazine:

James Murdoch, who is in charge of his father Rupert Murdoch's media empire in Europe and Asia, is understood to have given a donation believed to be at least £100,000. On the day that Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass in Westminster Cathedral, Mr Murdoch, and other major donors to the visit's funding, were introduced to the Pope in Archbishop's House.

The meet and greet led to a minor "pope for hire" firestorm in some circles. The Tablet carries a photograph of James Murdoch bowing before Benedict XVI as they meet. If you've never bought The Tablet before, the picture alone is worth the cover price.

With some understatement, the Catholic bishop of Arundel and Brighton has told The Tablet the church will have to "be careful about that source of money". Kieron Conry said:

A conversation needs to take place, discussion needs to take place. It is a public scandal and everyone knows Murdoch's empire is tainted by these revelations.

A spokesman for the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales has said the donation was "given and accepted in good faith".

Catholic commentator Francis Davis said:

Given the importance that the English bishops have attached to ethics in business since the banking crisis, it would now be extraordinary if the bishops were not to review the ethical provenance of this donation. And perhaps it raises questions about other donations we
don't know about.

It is not the first or only link between the Catholic hierarchy and the Murdoch empire. In 1998 Rupert received a papal knighthood, thanks largely to his $10m donation to Los Angeles Cathedral, and last year the Guardian revealed how the media mogul enjoyed lunch with Times editor James Harding and the Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, weeks before Benedict XVI flew into Britain.

It is not just the Catholics who have found themselves mired in the phone hacking scandal.

Last Saturday the Church of England revealed it had a £3.76m stake in News Corporation and £5.3m invested in BSkyB. Days later its First Church Estates Commissioner warned against a "premature" sale of shares. Former Independent editor Andreas Whittam Smith (coincidentally the same chap investigating Johann Hari) told General Synod:

I feel that a premature sale of News Corp and BSkyB might just be simply very bad timing. I don't argue with anything that anybody is saying about them, but I think it must be possible that News Corp will get rid of its entire British holdings, of newspapers that is, and that if it is to do so, first of all the problem would have vanished if you look from the point of view of the parent company and for us as investors, and the shares will certainly bounce up again, and so it is a ticklish area.

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James #Murdoch paid £100,000 to meet Pope

Rupert Murdoch is not a Catholic , he holds a Papal Knighthood and yet until the hacking scandal erupted ONLY then was this disclosed by journalists. Rupert gave orders this title was not to be reported in his British newspapers ? Murdoch and his obssession with paedophiles, Brooks tracking them down even hacking into their phones when they were not paedophiles at all.

The noise when the Murdochs paid a huge sum toward the Papal visit to England AND yet in all of those articles not one word about Murdochs Papal Knighthood, WHY did he want this title kept secret ?

Snippet from Article

The Catholic Church has been criticised for accepting a six-figure donation from James Murdoch ahead of him being given a personal audience with Pope Benedict during last year's papal visit. Mr Murdoch was among major donors who were invited to personally greet Pope Benedict after a special mass at Westminster Cathedral during the pontiff's visit last September. It is believed that the Murdoch family paid a contribution towards the Papal visit of around £100,000.

The continuing scandal over phone hacking has placed religious institutions in a moral quandary. There have already been calls for the Church of England to divest its £3.8m shares in News Corp, a request which church leaders have so far resisted.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/ko/content/james-murdoch-paid-%C2%A3100000-meet-pope

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Rupert Murdoch,
Papal Knight,
Publisher of NIV,
Donates $10 Million for New LA Cathedral


http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/murdoch.htm



Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch recently made a $10 million contribution toward the construction of a new Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles. Murdoch has wide holdings in the movie, TV and publishing industries including Fox Television, 20th Century Fox Films, London Times and New York Post newspapers, Harper Collins and Zondervan publishing companies.

But the fact that his TV stations and movie productions are some of the sleaziest, did not stop Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony from anointing him and his wife as members of the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great in January, 1998. This knighthood, bestowed on behalf of the pope, is given to persons of "unblemished character" who have "promoted the interests of society, the [Catholic] Church and the Holy See [Vatican]."

Besides this strange connection, there is an even stranger one. Murdoch is Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation which lists as one of its holdings, Zondervan Publishing House, the designated publisher of the New International Version of the Bible (NIV). Although the NIV copyright is held by the International Bible Society, Zondervan has exclusive publishing rights.

Is it just a coincidence that the distribution of the most popular of the modern Bible versions, based on the corrupted Roman Catholic texts, is controlled by a man who contributes heavily to Catholic causes and holds a papal knighthood?

It is also curious that since Murdoch was knighted for his "unblemished character" that he abandoned his wife of 31 years and married one of his "dynamic, tall and gorgeous" female employees who is half his age. When Cardinal Mahony's office was asked if the knighthood honor would be revoked, a spokesman replied, "As far as I know, once you've got it, you've got it for good."

It appears that as long as someone continues to "promote the interests of society, the Church and the Holy See" character blemishes can be conveniently overlooked. Especially if it includes donations in the $10 million range and distribution of the major Bible "perversion" based on Roman Catholic manuscripts.

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Rupert Murdoch buys Beliefnet religion site

Beliefnet will become part of Fox Digital Media, in a move that further expands News Corporation's Internet holdings.

By Cheryl Heckler
Monday, December 10, 2007
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=12842

Rupert Murdoch's global media organization News Corporation has announced it has acquired Beliefnet, said to be the largest faith and spirituality information site on the World Wide Web, for an undisclosed sum.

"Beliefnet has garnered respect for its commitment to quality, editorial strength and unbiased approach to faith and spirituality from a broad range of consumers, religious and political leaders, journalists and advertisers," said Dan Fawcett, president of Fox Digital Media, part of News Corporation, in a 4 December statement announcing the acquisition.

He said Fox wants to "leverage these characteristics across a broader media canvas" and "enhance an already terrific product in a rapidly growing market".

Beliefnet will become part of Fox Digital Media, in a move that further expands News Corporation's Internet holdings.

"Rarely has religion been more prominent in the media than today, and News Corp's interest in Beliefnet, thought to be a good advertising revenue generator, indicates how seriously this is all being taken," wrote Ruth Gledhill, religion correspondent for the News Corporation-owned Times of London, on her online blog http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/

Founded in 1999, Beliefnet claims 3 million users each month. Its aim is to "help people find and walk a spiritual path that instils comfort, hope, clarity, strength and happiness for people who are exploring their own faith or curious about other spiritual traditions".

More than 82 million Americans and 64 percent of all Internet users search the Web for faith-related information, according to The Pew Internet Project.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the deal would offer cross-marketing opportunities between Beliefnet and Fox Faith, a year-old division within the Fox studio that targets Christian audiences with religious-themed movies.

Beliefnet became profitable in 2002 and received US$7 million investment from venture firm Softbank in June 2005.

Source: ENI www.eni.ch
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Phone-hacking scandal

Monday 25 July 2011

Latest as pressure grows on James Murdoch in run-up to BSkyB board meeting and David Cameron says scandal has shaken confidence in Britain 'to the core'

• Read a summary of today's key events

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/25/phone-hacking-scandal-live-coverage



James Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch appear on television during their questioning by the culture, media and sport select committee last week. Photograph: David Moir/Reuters
Hello, and welcome to today's phone-hacking live blog. We'll be covering all today's developments live here throughout the day. Here is the latest so far today:

• David Cameron has said that the scandals over MPs' expenses, banking and newspaper phone hacking have shaken people's confidence in Britain "to the core".

• James Murdoch, News Corporation's chairman for Europe and Asia and non-executive chairman of BSkyB, is under pressure in the run-up to Thursday's BSkyB board meeting, after last week's challenge to his select committee evidence by two former senior figures at the News of the World.

• Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, has lambasted Rupert Murdoch, saying the chairman of News Corporation had shown a complete denial of responsibility for what had gone on in his company.

• Legal letters sent by the News of the World to detectives have cast doubt on News International's repeated claims that the company co-operated fully with the police inquiry into phone hacking.

• Rupert Murdoch is down from No 4 to No 6 in this year's MediaGuardian 100, and his son James falls from No 8 to No 11.

The government is expected to publish details of cabinet ministers' meetings with media executives "in due course" – although probably not today. David Cameron's meetings with media executives since the election have been published already, including 24 with News International figures, including one with James Murdoch on 23 December and one with Rebekah Brooks on Boxing Day.

11.18am: The culture select committee is due to meet on Friday to discuss how to respond to the apparent conflict of evidence between James Murdoch and Colin Myler, the former News of the World editor, and Tom Crone, News International's legal manager.

Murdoch told the select committee on Tuesday that when he approved a big payout to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, he did not know phone hacking at the News of the World went beyond one "rogue" reporter. But Myler and Crone released a statement saying they informed Murdoch of an email – known as the "for Neville" email – suggesting the practice went further.

Committee members are hoping to write to Myler and Crone. They will also write to Harbottle and Lewis, the solicitors who reviewed emails from Andy Coulson and five other News of the World staff members in 2007 before deciding there was no "reasonable evidence" that phone hacking went beyond royal correspondent Clive Goodman or that senior editors were aware of Goodman's hacking. They may also ask for evidence from Jon Chapman, News International's former director of legal affairs. Chapman has said he wants to correct "serious inaccuracies" in James Murdoch's evidence.

The New York Times also suggests Murdoch could "face a challenge from another source" – Julian Pike of law firm Farrer and Company, who was at times directly engaged in discussions with the lawyers for the soccer union leader Gordon Taylor, the paper said.

An unnamed lawyer told the NYT:

So far it's two against one. But if two more lawyers step forward to contradict Mr Murdoch's evidence, it would raise even more profound questions.

Tom Watson, an MP on the culture committee, has referred the matter to the police as a potential perversion of the course of justice.

11.45am: Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, sent out an email on Friday that got slightly lost amid all that day's other events, so he's sent it out again.

Vaz's email announces that legal firm Harbottle and Lewis (see 11.18am) has written to him outlining the firm's ability to disclose information to the committee, which the firm suggests is quite limited. The Harbottle letter says the firm is "free to explain the position in general terms, without commenting at all on the circumstances in question", citing solicitor-client confidentiality.

Vaz responded by requesting they disclose the advice they provided to News International and also the NI emails they were asked to examine in 2007, and saying: "I am aware that Harbottle and Lewis have now been given permission by News International to talk to the Home Affairs Select Committee about the remit in the 2007 investigation of phone hacking at the News of the World."

Vaz has also written to Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, and his predecessor Lord Macdonald asking what conversations they had and advice they were given by the attorney general during the phone-hacking investigation of 2006-07 and the re-examination of material in 2009. Lord Goldsmith and then Lady Scotland were attorneys general during this time, and Vaz has written to them too, asking whether they provided advice to the DPP or the Metropolitan police over the phone-hacking investigations.

Goldsmith has told Vaz he did not.

Vaz has also written to Dick Fedorcio, the Met police's director of public affairs, who gave evidence to the home affairs committee last week, regarding work experience his son did at the Sun and why he did not tell the committee about this. Fedorcio replied that he did not believe "any questions relating to my son were asked of me, nor would it have been relevant to refer to him".

Vaz has also written to HCL Technologies, regarding the possibility that they "stored and/or destroyed information on behalf of News International". Vaz said:

The evidence taken by the committee has raised significant questions. We must ensure all avenues of inquiry are followed through.

11.59am: Ed Miliband has updated his published list of meetings with media executives.

Here's the original list, and here's the new list.

The new list goes back to May 2010 – matching David Cameron's – rather than the point at which Miliband became Labour leader in September 2010, although there are no additions from May to September, suggesting he met no media figures during this time, for most of which he was a candidate for Labour leader.

The additions are a "social" meeting with Colin Myler, the editor of the News of the World, in London on 24 March 2011, and a "general discussion" with Sue Inglish, Mary Hockaday and Stephen Mitchell last Friday.

I have asked Labour why the meeting with Myler was left off the original list and will update you when they get back to me.

12.15pm: Labour have got back to me about Ed Miliband's meeting in March with Colin Myler, then the editor of the News of the World; the meeting was left off Miliband's original list (see 11.59am). Miliband's spokesman says the meeting was overlooked by the Labour leader's office and it was a "simple mistake".

12.28pm: The Ed Miliband meetings list has been updated again.

A number of meetings from May to September 2010 have been added. They are:

• 27 May 2010: Simon Kelner (Independent) – "general catch up"

• 9 June: Jason Cowley (New Statesman) – New Statesman Labour leadership hustings

• 16 June: Richard Wallace (Daily Mirror) – "general discussion"

• 16 June: News International summer reception

• 8 July: Geordie Greig (Evening Standard) – "general discussion"

• 20 July: Kevin McGrath (Tribune) – "general discussion"

• 21 July: Alan Rusbridger (Guardian) – "general discussion"

• 16 August: Jason Cowley (New Statesman) – interview

• 29 August: Bruce Waddell (Daily Record) – "general discussion"

• 26 August: Colin Myler (News of the World)– "general discussion"

• 27 August: Geordie Greig (Evening Standard) – "general discussion"

• 2 September: John Mulholland (Observer) – "general discussion"

• 7 September: Tony Gallagher (Daily Telegraph) – "general discussion"

• 15 September: Dominic Mohan (Sun), Rebekah Brooks (News International) – "general discussion"

12.57pm: Here's some coverage of phone-hacking elsewhere, some of it suggested by readers below the line.

The Daily Telegraph has a report on Andy Hayman, one of the former senior Scotland Yard officers accused of failing to properly investigate phone hacking, which claims he took News of the World journalists out for lunch, dinner and drinks on his Metropolitan police credit card.

The Independent reports on demands that the judge in charge of the phone-hacking inquiry be removed because of reports he had socialised with members of Rupert Murdoch's family. Lord Justice Leveson attended two parties at the home of Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert's daughter. The paper suggests Ed Miliband "shares concern" over this.

The Independent also has a short interview with culture committee member Tom Watson, seen by many as having been particularly dogged in investigating phone hacking. Interestingly, Watson credits social media with fuelling much of the public outrage over the issue:

The other papers were not reporting the story, so it was social media that kept the issue alive and many thousands of people on social media have been concerned that a cover-up has taken place.

I think the story might not have come about had not people using social media expressed their outrage. Certainly without Facebook or Twitter a consumer boycott of the advertisers of the News of the World would not have been organised so quickly.

The Times reports on comments by Vince Cable, the business secretary, who said there were "big questions" over whether Murdoch's empire was fit and proper to control BSkyB.

The paper quotes the business secretary, who was stripped of responsibility for deciding whether Murdoch should be allowed to take 100% control in the firm last year after saying he had "declared war" on the media chief, as saying:

The balanced historical view would be that he has made positive contributions. But we are dealing with the world as it actually is, where we have had a very, very dominant media company and we need to deal with the lessons from that.

The Times also reports that News International staff have been told to stop deleting emails in case they are needed by any of the inquiries into phone-hacking currently taking or about to take place.

The Daily Mail reports that George Osborne is braced for "embarrassing revelations" when his own list of meetings with media executives comes out this week.

Photograph: Georges Gobet/AFP/Getty Images 2.30pm: George Osborne (left) has said he regrets the appointment of Andy Coulson as No 10 communications chief.

Asked at a press conference in London about the hiring of the former News of the World editor – who had to resign from that job and from No 10 over phone hacking – the chancellor said:

As I said last week in an interview, and I repeat the words of the prime minister, knowing what we know now we regret the decision and I suspect that Andy Coulson would not have taken the job.

The chancellor refused to be drawn on a dinner he had with Rupert Murdoch two weeks before the media regulator was due to decide on whether to approve the takeover of BSkyB. He said:

When it comes to my meetings with proprietors and editors of all newspaper groups, we are very shortly going to publish the details and I think I will leave it until that is published.

3.09pm: To answer some readers' questions about the upcoming release of ministers' meetings, so far all the Cabinet Office has said to me is that the details will be released "in due course" and that this is expected to be in the first half of the week.

The only details the government will publish will be date, name, media group, and purpose of meeting, which with David Cameron's was generally vague ("general discussion", "speech").

These details are usually published every quarter on the No 10 website.

3.43pm: A "special committee" at the Wall Street Journal, which News Corporation bought in 2007, has criticised the paper's coverage of the phone-hacking scandal at News International as too slow and not tough enough in an interview with Rupert Murdoch. More shortly, but here is the key paragraph:

The Journal was slower than it should have been at the outset to pursue the phone-hacking scandal story, in our opinion, though it is doing much better now with aggressive coverage, fitting placement in the paper, and unflinching headlines. We agree it could have done a better job with a recent story allowing Mr. Murdoch to get his side of the story on the record without tougher questioning. We have discussed this with the involved editors.

3.58pm: As mentioned earlier, a "special committee" at News Corporation's Wall Street Journal has criticised the paper's coverage of the phone-hacking scandal at News International as too slow, and slammed an interview the paper did with Rupert Murdoch at the height of the recent controversy as being not tough enough.

In a long piece, the special committee – which was set up "to oversee the continued editorial intergrity of the Journal and its sister organisation, Dow Jones Newswires" when News Corp took over in 2007 – writes that it believes no one is putting "political, ideological or commercial pressure" on journalists to damp down their coverage of the story. But it says:

The Journal was slower than it should have been at the outset to pursue the phone-hacking scandal story, in our opinion, though it is doing much better now with aggressive coverage, fitting placement in the paper, and unflinching headlines. We agree it could have done a better job with a recent story allowing Mr Murdoch to get his side of the story on the record without tougher questioning. We have discussed this with the involved editors.

The interview with Murdoch came on Thursday 14 July following the closure of the News of the World and the abandonment of News Corp's bid for 100% of BSkyB, and led to criticism of the News Corp chief after he used it say his company had handled the crisis "extremely well in every way possible," making just "minor mistakes".

The committee also finds "nothing to even hint that the sort of misdeeds alleged in London have somehow crept into Dow Jones", and warns against complacency in case the "journalistic rot on sad display in the UK" spreads.

It rejects the idea that it should have "tested" Les Hinton's claim that phone hacking was the work of a lone reporter, saying it was created "to help preserve the editorial integrity of Dow Jones and that is where we have focused our attention". Hinton was the former chief executive of News International who crossed the Atlantic to become chairman of Dow Jones. The report says there has never been any suggestion that Hinton has promoted or condoned misconduct at Dow Jones.

And it concludes that it did not find "a pattern of wrongdoing", "a culture of journalistic malpractice", or that journalists are "shills for Rupert Murdoch".

But the committee has had and is continuing to have meetings with Robert Thomson, the WSJ editor, and other key figures, about "steps to be taken to make sure that no issue of journalistic integrity lurks hidden and that the standards of Dow Jones are reinforced".

On Friday the Journal reported that the US department of justice was "preparing subpoenas as part of preliminary investigations" into News Corp relating to alleged foreign bribery and hacking. Murdoch made it clear in his testimony to the culture committee on Tuesday that he considers the Wall Street Journal the jewel in his crown. Last Monday it published a leading article attacking the Guardian and the BBC for their coverage of the phone-hacking story and stoutly defending News Corp.

5.03pm: Here is a summary of today's key developments.

• A "special committee" at the Wall Street Journal has criticised the News Corporation paper's coverage of the phone-hacking scandal at its parent company, calling it too slow, and slamming the paper for an interview with Rupert Murdoch it characterised as not being tough enough (see 3.58pm).

• George Osborne, the chancellor, has said he regrets the appointment of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as No 10 communications chief (see 2.30pm).

• Ed Miliband has published an expanded list of his meetings with media executives going back to May 2010 (see 12.28pm). Cabinet ministers are due to release their own lists this week.

• Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, has written to solicitors Harbottle and Lewis requesting they disclose the advice they provided to News International and the NI emails they were asked to examine in 2007 (see 11.45am).

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