Just as Rupert Murdoch has taken the stand in the scandalous News of the World phone hacking trial in Britain, a new book is out that claims to tell the story of the inner workings of Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Dial M for Murdoch by Tom Watson and Martin Hickman, reporters for the Independent. According to Penguin UK, the book’s publisher, the book includes new details, “which have never been disclosed before in public, including the smears and threats against politicians, journalists and lawyers. It reveals the existence of brave insiders who pointed those pursuing the investigation towards pieces of secret information that cracked open the case.”
openDemocracy.net has a review of the book by author Bruce Page. Page writes: “Dial is our best-to-date account of the snoopers, bully-boys, bully-girls and pseudo-hacks sicced lavishly by Newscorp onto anyone whose alleged turpitude might somehow advance its ambitions. And so they are found chasing — as illicit lovers — a couple actually established as man and wife; assuming that an MI5 officer’s tip has bared orgiastic Nazism to their censorious gaze; discovering rent boys, but without transactional evidence; and generally barking up factitious trees, or ones long since chopped down.”