Skip to main content

A Gotcha moment for Rebekah

Such a paradox!    Here is Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of The Sun - a newspaper which knew no bounds of decency let alone "operating" within the law - slamming the media as a result of being arrested and now charged with perverting the course of justice.

Paul Barry on Crikey about "our" Rebekah!...

"Gotcha! Rupert Murdoch's favourite editor, Rebekah Brooks, has been charged with perverting the course of justice and will face a jury trial that could send her to jail.

The charges allege she withheld documents and computer files from police investigating the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011, just days before she resigned as CEO of the Murdochs' News International.

Also in the cells—if that's where she ends up after her glittering 20-year career at News—will be her husband Charlie Brooks, her chauffeur Paul Edwards, her PA Cheryl Carter, and her security guard Daryl Josling, as well as the ex-head of security at News International, so she won't be short of company.

How her old paper, The Sun, would have loved the story, had it not been one of theirs who may be heading for the slammer. How could they have resisted reprising the famous headline that greeted the sinking of the General Belgrano all those years ago?

Yes, it was Gotcha all right.

But, surprise, surprise, The Sun hardly even bothered with the news, which managed to rate one brief mention down the bottom of its website, beneath some 50 other stories and pictures that its editor clearly thought more important.

Up in the Twittersphere there was far more excitement, with lots of "finally" and "at last", and several quips about The Sun's campaigns to toughen up jail time for criminals.

There is now much speculation about how much time Brooks might serve if a jury finds her guilty. The maximum penalty is life imprisonment, the average 12 months, but the celebrated author Jeffrey Archer copped a four-year sentence in 2001 for concealing a diary during his libel action in which he won 500,000 pounds damages. However, this did include some time for perjury, of which Archer was also found guilty."




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-de...

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?