ExaroNews a British investigative web site, has just published the full transcript of a secretly recorded meeting between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the staff of The Sun, a U.K. tabloid owned by News Corp., in which Murdoch admitted that he was aware for decades that journalists from his newspapers had been bribing both police and public officials.
According to the site (which is behind a paywall), the meeting took place in a boardroom at The Sun's headquarters in East London with Murdoch at the head of the table. Present were nearly two dozen executives and reporters from The Sun, who had been arrested on allegations of illegal newsgathering practices.
In the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that shut down the News of the World—the Sun's sister title—News Corp. established a management and standards committee (MSC) with the assistance of Linklaters, a law firm, in order to gather any evidence of purported wrongdoing on the part of its reporters and hand it over to the police.
The Sun staffers were irate over Murdoch's decision to supply mass internal communications to the police "that had betrayed confidential sources, some of whom were public officials who received no payment for information," reports ExaroNews.
The journalists felt that News Corp. had turned them into "scapegoats." It was with that mindset that some entered the room with hidden digital recorders.Oh what a tangled web we weave...