Rupert Murdoch practicing immoral and illegal journalism? Who could have seen that coming?

No one could ever have anticipated that a Rupert Murdoch-run organization would flaunt the law. Yet …

News International was facing three fresh inquiries into the conduct of its journalists and executives following the Guardian’s disclosures that Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire paid £1m to keep secret the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, announced he was intending to launch an urgent review of the evidence relating to phone hacking gathered in the investigation of the News of the World reporter Clive Goodman, who was jailed for obtaining information illegally.

His intervention came after a powerful Commons select committee said it would be calling senior managers from News International to give evidence as early as next week to clarify what they knew about malpractice by journalists at the News of the World. Andy Coulson, the former editor of the paper and now the Conservative party’s director of communications, will be asked to appear. He has always denied he knew reporters working for him had hacked into the mobile phones of politicians and celebrities.

On the bright side, we won’t have to worry about such controversies being reported in the future, as Murdoch is about three years away from owning all media organizations on the planet.

–WKW