News Corp. vs. Fox News in the James Rosen Leak Case?
First, poop throwing ceases and mystery solved.
On Saturday, a Fox News executive said that the notice had gone to News Corp., its parent company, on Aug. 27, 2010, but that Fox News was not told until Friday. The executive said they were still trying to sort out how the notice fell through the cracks.
The rest of the story.
“While we don’t take issue with the DOJ’s account that they sent a notice to News Corp., we do not have a record of ever having received it. We are looking into this matter.”
Why would News Corp., which is not often soft on the Obama Administration, be so quick to agree with the Justice Department in this case, especially when Justice’s leak seemed designed to undercut some of the outrage emanating from Fox News?
Here’s one theory: News Corp.’s deference to Justice is related to the phone-hacking scandal, centered in the U.K., that has engulfed the company since 2011, when the story broke. While there has been little attention paid of late to any legal liability News Corp. might face here in the United States, Bloomberg Businessweek recently noted the following:
In the U.S., the Department of Justice continues to investigate News Corp. under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), a law that makes it illegal for U.S. companies to offer gifts or payments to government officials overseas to gain a competitive edge. “Certainly, within News Corporation, there remains a persistent, if not a paranoid, fear that the Department of Justice is going to move against them,” Wolff says. “The ultimate resolution has yet to take place.”
In 2011, News Corp. hired D.C. law firm Williams & Connolly to handle the FCPA investigation. In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that in addition to looking into the phone-hacking and police bribery charges in London, the DOJ has also been investigating allegations that Journal employees in China gave gifts to government officials in exchange for information. According to the Journal, the federal probe is nearing completion—possibly setting the stage for Williams & Connolly and the government to begin negotiating a settlement. “You hire Williams & Connolly because it says, ‘We are local, we get the game, and we are innocent. Oh, and by the way, if we’re not, we can work out a deal,’” says Levick, the crisis management fixer in Washington.
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