Murdoch Newspapers Bribed Public Officials In Britain

Even as the Murdoch-owned newspapers in New York, particularly the NY Post, are having a field day using error-riddled teacher evaluations to demonize New York City public school teachers, the Murdoch-owned News Corporation is undergoing investigation for corruption in Britain.

Today that investigation got a little more troubling for Murdoch:

LONDON — The officer leading a police investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers said on Monday that reporters and editors at The Sun tabloid had over the years paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for information not only to police officers but also to a “network of corrupted officials” in the military and the government.

The officer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, said that e-mail records obtained by the police showed that there was a “culture at The Sun of illegal payments” that were authorized “at a very senior level within the newspaper” and involved “frequent and sometimes significant sums of money” paid to public officials in the Health Ministry and the prison service, among other agencies.

The testimony was a sharp new turn in a months-long judicial investigation of the behavior of Murdoch-owned and other newspapers, known as the Leveson inquiry. It detailed financial transactions that showed both the scale and the scope of alleged bribes, the covert nature of their payment and the seniority of newspaper executives accused of involvement.

The testimony may prove damaging to the News Corporation, the American-based parent of Mr. Murdoch’s media empire, if it gives ammunition to the F.B.I. and other agencies that are investigating the company for possible prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Here is how the Murdoch papers carried out the corruption:

In recent weeks, a number of senior journalists from The Sun have been arrested on suspicion of making illegal payments to officials, and Ms. Akers said that the activities had been carried out by “the arrested journalists.”

Ms. Akers said that the payments from The Sun went far beyond the occasional lunch or dinner, with one public official receiving more than $125,000 over several years, and a single journalist being allocated more than $238,000 in cash to pay sources, including government officials.

It was clear from references in the e-mail messages — to staff members’ “risking losing their pension or job” and to the need for “tradecraft” like keeping the payments secret or making payments to friends or relatives of the officials — that the journalists in question knew that the payments were illegal, Ms. Akers said.

“Systems have been created to facilitate such payments whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money,” she said. “The e-mails indicate that payments to ‘sources’ were openly referred to within The Sun, with the category of public official being identified, rather than the individual’s identity.”

She added: “Some of the initial e-mails reveal, upon further detailed investigation, multiple payments to individuals of thousands of pounds. There is also mention in some e-mails of public officials being placed on ‘retainers,’ and this is a line of inquiry currently being investigated.”

Maybe the Murdoch papers in New York can stop the witch hunt of teachers using error-riddled teacher evaluations and instead focus on the very real corruption that infects their parent company to the core.