March 28, 2024

Rupert Murdoch in Spotlight at Inquiry as Celebrities Testify

On Monday, that changed, at least briefly. Two celebrities testifying at a government-appointed inquiry into the activities of the country’s newspapers cited Rupert Murdoch, 80, the chairman of the News Corporation and James Murdoch’s father, in what they described as their abusive experiences at the hands of tabloids owned by the News Corporation, including The News of the World and The Sun.

Charlotte Church, a popular Welsh-born singer, told the panel appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron that her reputation was “shattered” while she was in her teens as a result of articles in the Murdoch tabloids, some of which she said were false, about her teenage drinking, her boyfriends and an extramarital affair of her father’s, reports of which, she said, had prompted her mother to attempt suicide.

She said the harmful coverage followed an incident at the beginning of her professional career in which she was pressed to do a personal favor for Rupert Murdoch to encourage positive coverage in his newspapers. She said her management and a record company advised her to waive a fee of £100,000 — equivalent to about $160,000 at the time — to sing at the 1999 wedding of Mr. Murdoch and Wendi Deng, his third wife, aboard his yacht in New York Harbor.

Ms. Church, then 13, said she had wondered why anybody would waive such a large fee, but had gone along with the arrangement, in which she sang three songs, after advisers told her it was a way of encouraging “good press” from the Murdoch papers.

“I was being advised by my management and a certain member of the record company that he was a very, very powerful man and could certainly do with a favor of this magnitude,” Ms. Church said.

A lawyer representing News International, the News Corporation subsidiary that operates the company’s papers in Britain, disputed Ms. Church’s account before the inquiry panel, which is headed by Lord Justice Brian Leveson. A spokeswoman for News International said in a telephone interview that the company “denies that there had been any such agreement” as the one described by Ms. Church, adding that Ms. Church’s appearance at the wedding “was a surprise for Rupert Murdoch.”

Another witness, Anne Diamond, a journalist and television anchor, said Murdoch-owned newspapers had waged a vendetta against her after she confronted Rupert Murdoch in a television interview in the 1980s. She said she had told him that “his newspapers were intent, or seemed to be intent, on ruining some people’s lives, and how did he feel about that, and how could he sleep at night knowing that that was going on?”

This year, Ms. Diamond said, she saw a television documentary that featured a former butler of Mr. Murdoch’s saying that Mr. Murdoch had told editors of his papers that Ms. Diamond was “from that point onwards to be targeted.” The spokeswoman for News International said the company had no comment on Ms. Diamond’s accusation.

Ms. Diamond offered a catalog of the abuse she said she had endured from the Murdoch papers, including a front-page headline in The Sun in 1987 that read, “Anne Diamond Killed My Father.” It was about an accident seven years earlier in which a man in a car she was driving had been killed. She said she had been exonerated by the police of any responsibility for the crash, but felt that the Sun article had portrayed her as “murderer.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ac66b6a13e682ec962e6b91d2fbc4298