For the past week, family members of 9/11 victims stood idly by as an international phone-hacking scandal shook Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Yesterday, they took a stand.
An outspoken group of family members issued a public letter to the FBI and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, asking to be included in the FBI’s probe of Murdoch’s News Corporation.
‘It is upsetting that there now exists an allegation that a newspaper would seek to illegally obtain information about their loved ones, and perhaps even their own personal lives, and exploit it for profit,” said their lawyer, Norman Siegel. “We need to determine whether or not such unconscionable acts in fact took place.”
“We want to find out what’s going on,” said Sally Regenhard, who lost her firefighter son, Christian, in the towers.
The letter was address to Holder, Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI, and Representative John Conyers of the House Judiciary Committee.
Yesterday, News Corp stocks continued to fall as Murdoch’s flagship US property, The Wall Street Journal, attempted damage control by publishing an editorial meant to separate the paper from its parent company, while accusing rivals of “schadenfreude.”
“We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics … They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp. journalists across the world,” read the editorial.
“The Journal’s editorial is disingenuous,” said Columbia University media ethics professor Todd Gitlin. “It is a dishonest piece of right-wing propaganda. This is a case of doing the boss’s bidding. It deserves no respect.”
Follow Emily Anne Epstein on Twitter @EmilyatMetro
