A crusading Parliamentarian gets his revenge
The British Lawmaker Nipping at Tabloids’ Heels
By AMY CHOZICK, NYT
LONDON
SIX years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun described Tom Watson, then a little-known 39-year-old member of Parliament, as part of a “plotting gang of weasels” who played “grubby politics at a time when soldiers are dying in Afghanistan.”
Recently, Mr. Watson got some payback.
For years he led the push to investigate the freewheeling tactics at British tabloids, most notably those belonging to Mr. Murdoch, as the scandal involving phone hacking unfolded. Last month prosecutors brought criminal charges against eight senior editors and reporters at News International, the British publishing arm of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Since the accusations were first made public, Mr. Watson, a Labour politician who had himself been the subject of tabloid fodder, has emerged as a kind of Inspector Javert of the Murdochs. He served on the parliamentary committee on media ethics that repeatedly questioned Mr. Murdoch and his son James; traveled to Los Angeles to attend the company’s shareholder meeting where he leveled new charges, and he even recently published a book about the phone-hacking scandal, “Dial M For Murdoch.”
(More here.)
LONDON
SIX years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun described Tom Watson, then a little-known 39-year-old member of Parliament, as part of a “plotting gang of weasels” who played “grubby politics at a time when soldiers are dying in Afghanistan.”
Recently, Mr. Watson got some payback.
For years he led the push to investigate the freewheeling tactics at British tabloids, most notably those belonging to Mr. Murdoch, as the scandal involving phone hacking unfolded. Last month prosecutors brought criminal charges against eight senior editors and reporters at News International, the British publishing arm of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Since the accusations were first made public, Mr. Watson, a Labour politician who had himself been the subject of tabloid fodder, has emerged as a kind of Inspector Javert of the Murdochs. He served on the parliamentary committee on media ethics that repeatedly questioned Mr. Murdoch and his son James; traveled to Los Angeles to attend the company’s shareholder meeting where he leveled new charges, and he even recently published a book about the phone-hacking scandal, “Dial M For Murdoch.”
(More here.)
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