Biased BBC contributor Alan notes….
“The BBC in conjunction with another media group and the British Labour Party are conducting a secret campaign to silence if not destroy a rival to their political views and commercial interests……
I might suggest such actions are probably illegal, certainly go against the spirit of the BBC Charter and in silencing any voices they don’t like they destroy democracy and in effect set up a one party state…regardless of who is in power the only voices of influence will be the BBC’s and its fellow travellers.
The BBC’s Panorama programme dug up a 10 year old story and have presented it as ‘proven fact’ when they have as yet shown not a shred of evidence to back up their central claim……Murdoch is plotting his revenge….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17547568
‘Rupert Murdoch plans to “hit back hard” following allegations that one of his companies used hacking and piracy to sabotage rival TV competitors.
A BBC Panorama documentary accused NDS – a News Corp subsidiary – of leaking information which allowed ITV Digital’s services to be accessed for free.
“Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels,” Murdoch wrote on Twitter.
Chase Carey, News Corp’s chief operating officer, issued a statement condemning “the BBC’s inaccurate claims….The BBC’s Panorama programme was a gross misrepresentation of NDS’s role as a high quality and leading provider of technology and services to the pay-TV industry.”.
“Panorama presented manipulated and mischaracterised emails to produce unfair and baseless accusations.’
“Wow what an integrate twisted tale of events!”
Remarkably the investigative powers of the police, the prosecution service’s authority and the judicial system have been co-opted by the BBC for a trial by television.
The BBC have launched yet another attack on their commercial and political nemesis, News Corp, claiming in a Panorama programme, ‘Murdoch’s TV Pirates’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01dlvbm/Panorama_Murdochs_TV_Pirates/)
that his company was behind the commercial destruction of ITV’s ‘OnDigital’ service.
The allegation was based solely on the word of a computer hacker with nothing substantial to corroborate his words.
Panorama claims this is ‘the biggest Murdoch hacking scandal of all…’piracy was the killer blow for the business…there is no question’…..a secret operation inside a Murdoch company hacked down the competition.’
and yet there is no proof…let alone a legal ‘trial’.
Panorama claimed to have emails that were a smoking gun but the ones shown certainly revealed no evidence that Murdoch’s company had authorised the piracy and release of the code for OnDigital’s subscription card….the emails in fact are so innocuous (so far) that Labour’s Tom Watson has put out a Twitter appeal for help reading them:
RT @tom_watson: Australian Financial Review needs help with crowdsourcing a review of some interesting emails! afr.com/p/download_the_ema…
http://www.afr.com/p/download_the_emails_4otBluEZ7OMKeUWkk0FdFL
Good to see Tom Watson and the BBC working hand in hand again.
These emails were ‘obtained’ by the Australian ‘Financial Review’….
‘The Financial Review has published thousands of emails from an archive of 14,400 emails held by former Metropolitan Police commander Ray Adams who was European chief for Operational Security from 1996 to 2002.’
‘The emails, which come from several different folders within that drive – thus there is some duplication – were passed to The Australian Financial Review by an anonymous source. The Financial Review has undertaken its own inquiries to verify the emails.’
You may want to ask why all this has come to light now…this suggestion that Murdoch’s company was involved in ‘piracy’ was made in 1999 and went to court in 2002…so strange timing…suddenly a ‘key witness’ appears after 10 years silence and a load of emails also appear simultaneously.
Panorama claimed that a court case brought by Canal Plus regarding card hacking failed because Murdoch bought out the complainant company….but the emails actually disprove that….as News Corp were after the company long before:
‘Date: 2/2/2000 10:27:20 PM Subject: FW: Industrial Espionage Article
Enclosed is a scanned article sent by Arieh Moller – taken from the Sunday Times about a case of Industrial Espionage conducted against the British Aerospace company by the French Secret Service. ?
Bearing in mind News Corp.’s attempt to join forces with Canal+ which failed
because the French didn’t want ‘foreigners’ controlling Canal+… – and in light of the recent industrial espionage case we’ve had in China -? this can be an interesting example of nationally endorsed industrial espionage – to show relevant NDS personnel… ‘
also this from the Guardian in 2002:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/mar/13/media.citynews
‘For its part, NDS says the whole piracy claim is an outlandish fabrication. A statement from Abe Peled, the company’s president and chief executive, last night said the counterfeiters had simply targeted an inferior technology and succeeded without any help from anyone.
He suggested that Canal Plus is in commercial trouble and revealed that the French firm had approached NDS before Christmas suggesting a merger, adding that the French had been trying to poach the NDS employee accused of leaking Canal Plus’s code.’
Panorama also hides some other interesting titbits:
OnDigital was launched when David Cameron, now UK prime minister, was head of communications at Carlton Communications, the ITV franchise owner….the same man who launched the anti-Murdoch Leveson Inquiry (and now has been hit by the Murdoch Times for ‘cash for access’…ha ha)
It also merely called one Steve Hewlett a ‘media analyst’…but he is presenter of Radio 4’s Media Show and former director of programmes at Carlton Television.
He appeared this morning on the ‘Today’ programme where he stated that (vhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console) 1 hr 52 mins:
Piracy was an issue (in the downfall of OnDigital) but it is fair to say that there were other issues….it is very expensive to launch a digital service, there are high costs and high risks and ITV did not have the appetite for that risk….or the money. ITV also did not have any premium content that viewers wanted to watch (bit of a problem) and finally the shareholders could never decide on anything….he stated ITV Digital probably wouldn’t have worked whatever Murdoch did.
Panorama also failed to mention one of its star witnesses, computer hacker Oliver Kommerling, had been hired by Murdoch’s NDS, but was later employed by the rival Canal Plus who were complaining of piracy.
Panorama also fails to mention that a computer hacker and ‘witness’ named Jan Saggiori was a consultant to News Corp’s competitors, the French media group Canal Plus.
Panorama also claimed that it was impossible for anyone but a powerful organisation with unlimited funding to hack these cards….but this is not true…NDS was set up to catch people hacking such cards….indeed the ITV OnDigital card/Canal Plus card was revealed to the world by Canadian ‘pirates’ who offered $1 million dollars to anyone who could hack another card….’In April 1997, the Canadian pirate dealers were offering up to $1million for a top-flight hacker to crack the DirecTV NDS card.’
These same Canadian hackers smuggled two Bulgarian hackers, Plamen Donev and Vesselin Nedeltchev (known as Vesco) into Canada under false papers, then into the US, where they had hired the University of Montana physics lab to crack the P2 card (a Murdoch card).
So Panorama’s programme rests on very dodgy ‘facts’ and the evidence of a man who we don’t know whom he works for now, nor do we know his motives for making these claims.
The whole programme was clearly constructed to try and tie this into the phone hacking scandal, and seemed more intent on proving this meant Murdoch was not a ‘fit and proper’ person to hold a broadcasting license.
The Today programme summed up the attitude with Sarah Montague getting to the point she had been desperately working towards….’What damage do these allegations do to News Corporation?’
Steve Hewlett obliged with the reply that this indicates a ‘Broader cultural issue within News Corporation.’
i.e… they are not ‘fit and proper’.
As in another failed case against Murdoch the impression is what counts….’In the event, the allegations never stuck. But the mud did.’
This of course would be a massive coup for the BBC and the Left. The BBC would love to
