Carl Bernstein, one half of the famed reporting duo that exposed the criminal conspiracy of the Nixon administration, says the likeness between the News of the World fiasco and the Watergate break-in is more than a “passing resemblance.”

 

Bernstein writes that the News Corp. empire “is shaking, and there’s no telling when it will stop.” The shuttering of Britain’s 168-year-old News of the World will not put an end to the scandal, which involved the illegal spying on phone messages of royalty, celebrities and military families. Rather, the inquiries by the British government are only beginning, and now that certain former editors are taking the fall, “people are going to talk.”

 

“It looks like a circular firing squad,” one News Corp. official told Bernstein.

 

Another source, a former executive of Murdoch’s empire, said: “The hacking at News of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means.”

 

Sound familiar? It should, according to Bernstein, for it was the very same dirty-tricks philosophy that dominated—and ultimately brought down—Richard Nixon’s White House.

 

“The circumstances of the alleged lawbreaking within News Corp. suggest more than a passing resemblance to Richard Nixon presiding over a criminal conspiracy in which he insulated himself from specific knowledge of numerous individual criminal acts while being himself responsible for and authorizing general policies that routinely resulted in lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention his role in the cover-up,” Bernstein says. “It will remain for British authorities and, presumably, disgusted and/or legally squeezed News Corp. executives and editors to reveal exactly where the rot came from at News of the World, and whether Rupert Murdoch enabled, approved, or opposed the obvious corruption that infected his underlings.”

 

The scandal is enmeshed in British politics. Former News of the World Editor Andy Coulson, who later became a top aide to Prime Minister David Cameron, was arrested Friday by Scotland Yard. He is suspected of authorizing payments to police for information while he was the newspaper’s editor.

 

The government is under pressure to halt Murdoch’s $14 billion-bid to purchase pay-TV operator BSkyB. 

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Murdoch’s Watergate? (by Carl Bernstein, Newsweek)

News of the World Shuts Down Amid Hacking Scandal (by Henry Chu and Joe Flint, Los Angeles Times)

Pressure Mounts on UK Government to Halt Murdoch/BSkyB Deal (by Christina Fincher, Reuters)

Brown a Hacking Target as Murdoch Delays BSkyB Bid (by Kate Holton and Georgina Prodhan, Reuters)