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LoginMurdoch sells his headquarters in east London
Sep 7, 2011 16:13 Moscow Time
The Australian-born media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is going to sell his New Corporation`s headquarters in London’s eastern Wapping area.
The headquarters is a 15-acre site with a huge parking lot and many adjacent buildings, all surrounded with barbed wire fence. For more than 25 years the place, nicknamed as ‘Fortress Wapping’, used to be the headquarters of all Murdoch`s newspapers and a print plant. In 1985 Murdoch bought the site, paying 300,000 pounds per acre, while today the owners are ready to sell it for 200 million pounds per acre, which means that Murdoch won`t turn down financially.
I think it is not financial gains that are making Murdoch sell his ‘Fortress Wapping’. The move comes naturally in the aftermath of the voicemail-hacking scandalat the News of the World. When two months ago Murdoch faced allegations that his companies including the News of the World had been hacking the phones of private citizens, the tycoon had to shut down his tabloid and testify before the Parliament. The scandal prompted News Corp to drop its bid for British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB), of which they already owned 39%. This resulted in billion losses and came as a serious blow to Murdoch`s image.
But I`d like to focus more on the ethical aspect of the scandal with Murdoch`s media empire. All the details are being investigated at the British inquiry into the scandal headed by Judge Brian Leveson. On Tuesday two key News Corp. employees were interrogated: Daniel Chapman, the former legal director, and Daniel Cloke, the human resources director. As it was expected, both said they had been “surprised” by claims from jailed former News of the World`s royal editor Clive Goodman that phone hacking was widespread.
Whether they told the truth or lied does not matter much here since there is already enough evidence that hacking phones of celebrities and police bribery had long become a ‘routine’ in the British media, and not only for tabloids. It turned out lately that even The Guardian occasionally bribes the police when it wants to learn the details of this or that investigation. This only adds to the fact that the British society is experiencing a moral decline.
Commenting on the riots in some London areas last month, the UK`s Prime Minister David Cameron described them as “a complete lack of responsibility” in the society, adding that for it is “as much a moral problem as a political problem”. This appears to be true, indeed.
