Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Commons Committee Report: New York Daily News Editor-In-Chief Colin Myler Guilty Of Misleading Parliament

Not that this would surprise anybody who actually reads the New York Daily News, but there's a criminal running the newspaper.

Colin Myler, Daily News editor-in-chief and former editor of the now-closed News of the World, was found guilty of having misled the Commons committee on culture, media and sport in the News Corporation hacking scandal.

Along with Myler, former Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton and former News of the World lawyer Tom Crone were also found guilty of misleading the committee.

Hinton was also found to be "complicit" in a cover-up of the scandal as well.

The Guardian has the details:

The cross-party group of MPs said that Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International, was "complicit" in a cover-up at the newspaper group, and that Colin Myler, former editor of the News of the World, and the paper's ex-head of legal, Tom Crone, deliberately withheld crucial information and answered questions falsely. All three were accused of misleading parliament by the culture select committee.

...

The culture select committee charged Hinton with being "complicit" in a cover-up of wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

MPs said that Myler and Crone deliberately withheld crucial information and answered falsely questions put by the committee.

The executives demonstrated contempt for parliament "in the most blatant fashion", the MPs said, in what they described as a corporate attempt to mislead the committee about the true extent of phone hacking at the News of the World.

The MPs said that Hinton, executive chairman of News International until December 2007, had "inexcusably" mislead the committee over his role in authorising the £243,000 payout to Clive Goodman, the former royal editor convicted of phone hacking in January that year.

"We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton was complicit in the cover-up at News International, which included making misleading statements and giving a misleading picture to the committee," the MPs said.

Crone and Myler were accused of deliberately misleading the MPs on the culture select committee in 2009 and again in 2011 about their alleged knowledge that phone hacking went beyond a single "rogue reporter" at the now-closed Sunday tabloid.

"Both Tom Crone and Colin Myler deliberately avoided disclosing crucial information to the committee and, when asked to do, answered questions falsely," the MPs said in the report.

All three executives now face the prospect of being called to apologise before parliament, in a constitutional move that has not been used for almost half a century.

How does a man who lied to Parliament and helped run the News Corporation hacking cover-up continue as editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News?

So far, both Colin Myler and DN owner Mort Zuckerman have maintained silence on this.

Indeed, the Daily News doesn't cover the Murdoch/News Corp hacking story in the paper because of Myler's proximity to the scandal.

And of course the NY Post NEVER covers the story (although the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal does.)

So most New Yorkers do not know the extent of the criminality at both companies.

The Commons committee found that the toxic culture at the News Corporation media outlets "permeated from the top" and "speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International".

Therefore, the committee concluded, "Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of major international company."

If Rupert Murdoch is unfit to exercise stewardship of a major international company, you can bet his former News of the World editor, the guy who lied to Parliament and helped cover up the hacking scandal, is unfit to exercise stewardship of the Daily News.

It is time for Colin Myler to go.

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