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Murdoch and the stench surrounding his newspapers.....continued

"In 1988, while attending a conference of News Corporation editors in Aspen, Colorado, I made the mistake of raising the thorny issue of journalistic ethics. The proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, was not amused.

In short order, Murdoch, who was hosting the session, turned red, then purple, as I repeatedly asked a senior executive from his London paper The Sun whether the publication had any ethical framework. It didn't, the paper's news editor finally admitted. In most media companies that admission might have earned the executive a rebuke. But instead, I copped it, with Murdoch later dismissing me as a ''Fairfax wanker''.

So begins a piece by Bruce Guthrie, a former News Limited editor, in The Age. Continue reading here.

Meanwhile, an almost legendary newspaper man, Carl Bernstein - of Watergate fame when at the Washington Post during the Nixon years - has written for Newsweek on the Murdoch / News of the World saga.

"The hacking scandal currently shaking Rupert Murdoch’s empire will surprise only those who have willfully blinded themselves to that empire’s pernicious influence on journalism in the English-speaking world. Too many of us have winked in amusement at the salaciousness without considering the larger corruption of journalism and politics promulgated by Murdoch Culture on both sides of the Atlantic."

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