Communications Industry: Rupert Murdoch's Fox broadcast licences targeted by US ethics group - Ed Pilkington and Dominic Rushe

A Washington-based ethics watchdog is calling on federal regulators to revoke News Corporation's 27 Fox broadcast licences in the wake of the highly critical report on phone hacking from the UK parliament.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) has written to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, calling on the regulator to pull the plug on Rupert Murdoch's lucrative television licences on grounds of character.
The letter argues that the final report of the UK Commons culture, media and sport committee, which concluded that Murdoch was not fit to run a major international company, had implications for the US regulators that they had now to act upon.

Melanie Sloan, Crew's director, said that the Murdochs had clearly failed the character test that is embedded within US media law as it is within British. "If they are not passing the character standard under British law, it seems to me that they are not going to meet the character standard in America."

For more: Rupert Murdoch's Fox broadcast licences targeted by US ethics group | Media | guardian.co.uk

Journalistic Ethics: Billionaires' day at the Leveson inquiry - by Michael White

The Leveson inquiry into phone hacking has turned its attention to the secretive, foreign-based billionaires whose shadowy grip on much of Fleet Street influences millions of ordinary British lives. But the session was not all about the Telegraph-owning Barclay brothers. The Russian oligarchs and their Australian rival, Rupert Murdoch, also shared the spotlight.

They are all very different, but also similar, as billionaires tend to be, in important respects, such as having lots of money. And their devotion to free enterprise and meritocracy also has a strongly counterintuitive side to it: heredity.

So the Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev, who bought the London Evening Standard and (for £1) the Independent, was represented by his son, Evgeny (31), to whom dad gave both newspapers, as dads do. The Barclay twins, Dave and Fred, did the same. They sent young Aidan Barclay (55), who is chairman of the Telegraph Media Group, but does not own it yet.

For more: Billionaires' day at the Leveson inquiry | Media | The Guardian

Journalistic Ethics: James Murdoch appears at Leveson Inquiry - by Sam Marsden

James Murdoch is being grilled in London today about his stewardship of News International during the years when the phone-hacking scandal was growing.

The media boss is being asked asked about his time in charge of his father's UK national newspapers when he gives evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards. He is likely to face fresh questions about when he learned that phone-hacking was not restricted to a single “rogue reporter”.

Two News of the World executives claim they warned him in June 2008 that the practice of illegally intercepting voicemail messages extended beyond the paper's former royal editor Clive Goodman, who was jailed in January 2007..

Mr Murdoch, 39, admitted last month that he shares the blame for not uncovering hacking sooner but denied turning a “blind eye” to alleged wrongdoing.

For more: James Murdoch appears at Leveson Inquiry - Home News - UK - The Independent