窃听事件后风雨飘摇的默多克新闻集团

During his long career as the pantomime villain of the media world, Rupert Murdoch has seen out many scandals, but nothing like this one. Back in 1983, under attack for his decision to publish a set of diaries from Adolf Hitler that turned out to be forged*, he famously remarked, “After all, we are in the entertainment business.” Today, nobody, least of all Murdoch, is laughing.

在他常年扮演童话里坏人的媒体行业，默多克经历并送走很多流言蜚语和丑闻，但是没有一次像这次这么严重。回顾1983年，当他正在经历由于他杜撰了阿道夫希特勒日记并出版的舆论攻击时，他随口一句：毕竟这是娱乐行业，让他迅速出名。但是今天，没有任何人会被他的言论逗笑。

With the British parliament about to come together in an unprecedented move to thwart him, Murdoch this morning accepted the inevitable and called off News Corporation’s takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting, which, together with the BBC, dominates British television. Meanwhile, one of his own papers, the Wall Street Journal, confirmed my suspicion that he might even be prepared to sell his three remaining British newspapers—the Times, the Sunday Times, and the Sun—assuming a buyer can be found.

由于英国国会史无前例的反对，今天默多克不得不放弃新闻集团对于大不列颠天空电视台的收购，同时还有英国电视巨头BBC的收购。与此同时，默多克的华尔街日报最近也透露如果有买家的话，默多克还会出售他现在依然拥有的时代周刊，周末时光和太阳报。

The BSkyB announcement marks a humiliating climb down for Murdoch. At this stage, however, he has more important issues to deal with—namely, insuring the survival of himself and his family at the helm of his beloved News Corporation. In the midst of a media frenzy, it is always dangerous to make definitive judgments, but at the moment it is hard to see how Murdoch can ever fully recover from the blows he has suffered in the last few days.

BSKYB的声明是默多克耻辱失败的证明。但是，这一次他自己还需要解决保全自己以及自己的家族能够在新闻集团的保护下幸免于难这个更重要的差事。当事件还处在疯狂状态时，任何决定性的言论都为时过早，但就现在来讲想看见默多克从过去几天痛苦的灾厄中恢复过来恐怕很难。

Failing in his designs for BSkyB was the least of it. To all intents and purposes, the media company, whose satellite dishes protrude from the roofs of ten million British homes, is already part of the Murdoch empire. News Corp. owns thirty-nine per cent of BSkyB’s shares, and Murdoch picks its boss. From 2003 until 2007, his youngest son, James Murdoch, was BSkyB’s C.E.O. Since then, Murdoch, Jr., who now runs all of News Corp.’s operations in Europe and Asia, has held the post of non-executive chairman of BSkyB, a post he will continue to hold, the company said today.

失去BSKYB的竞购应该说是最无足轻重的事情了。因为无论出于什么目的，那些从数以万计的英国家庭中突出的卫星接收器早已是默多克媒体王国的一部分了。新闻集团拥有BSKYB公司39%的股份，默多克是这个公司的老板。从2003年到2007年，他的长子詹姆斯默多克是这个公司的CEO。从那时开始老默多克就已经是亚洲和欧洲两个板块的非执行董事主席了，当然他现在也是，将来依然会是。

The motivation for the takeover bid was purely financial. Having spent more than twenty years building up BSkyB—which was loathed on the left when it was launched, but which has since established itself as part of the fabric of British life—Murdoch is understandably keen to consolidate the business with the rest of News Corp., thereby gaining access to a hundred per cent of its cash flow. But now that the takeover bid has failed, nothing much has changed. News Corp. remains a formidable company with profitable businesses all over the world. After today’s announcement, its stock price actually rose.

这次收购的动机其实纯粹是为了收益。这个从一开始建立就不被人喜欢但是默多克执意要将其建立为自己英国事业一部分的BSKYB集团耗费了默多克20年的时间，默多克毫无疑问的希望全资收购它进而巩固新闻集团的基础，也进而获得这个公司所有的现金流。但是现在都不可能了，引文收购计划必须终止。新闻集团依然是业界令人敬畏的企业，在全球都有利润可观的生意。当天的声明过后，新闻集团的股票甚至应声上涨了。

The question marks hang over the Murdochs, not News Corp. In the coming months, both Rupert and James will be called before a British judge to explain what they knew about phone hacking and when. The judicial inquiry that David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, announced today will be modelled on the 2003 Hutton Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, the British weapons scientist who had expressed skepticism about government claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The evidence that Lord Hutton unearthed, about which I wrote a long article for the magazine, effectively destroyed Tony Blair’s reputation.

所有的问题都将应向默多克，而不是新闻集团。在之后的几个月里，不论是老默多克还是小默多克都要在英国的法官面前解释关于此次的手机窃听他们知道多少以及何时知道。此次卡梅伦总理下令进行的法庭质询，将依照2003年hutton案（调查David Kelly的死亡环境）的质询模式以及英国的军火专家质疑英国政府怀疑萨达姆侯赛因藏有大规模杀伤性武器拥有证据的质询模式进行。我曾经写过一篇文章讲述关于Hutton公爵出土的证据，这个案件直接毁掉了Tony Blair（前首相）的名声。Lord Justice Leveson will want to know not only about the phone hacking itself, much of which took place five or ten years ago, but about News Corporation’s 2007 internal inquiry, which purported to establish that the misdeeds were the work on one “rogue reporter.” From the outside, only two possibilities present themselves. The inquiry was horribly botched, or there was a deliberate coverup.

Leveson法官将会需要知道不仅仅关于这次发生在5到10年前的电话窃听，还包括2007年默多克公司本身进行的内部质询，在这次内部质询中公司认为窃听行为只是某些流氓记者的个人行为。从局外者的角度看，这个结果只有两个可能型。要么这次质询彻底被搞砸了，要么就是有人故意隐瞒些什么。

Leveson, a Liverpudlian with a reputation for independence, is also sure to take an interest in what happened subsequently. News International, the News Corp. subsidiary that runs the British newspapers, reached legal settlements with a number of phone-hacking victims, effectively buying their silence. James Murdoch, it is now known, explicitly approved some of these payments.

Leveson，这位以独立审判著称的利物浦人，也会有兴趣知道在质询之后发生了什么。新闻集团的下属主管英国新闻业的新闻国际通过法律途径和受害人达成了保密协定，买到了他们的沉默。而詹姆斯默多克已经是公认的对此完全知情。

Scotland Yard, meanwhile, will be continuing its investigation into allegations that journalists from the Murdoch newspapers bribed police officers to obtain information about celebrities, the royals, and others. Bribery is a serious charge which carries long prison sentences. Who authorized these payments? Who else knew about them? From 1995 to 2007, the head of News International was Les Hinton, a longtime Murdoch aide who is now chief executive of Dow Jones. In 2009, Rebekah Brooks, who previously edited the Sun, took over as head of News International, a post she still holds, despite calls from all sides for her resignation.

当前，Scotland Yard依然在调查默多克公司的记者所说的新闻集团通过收买警察局的官员来获得关于名人和皇室成员的信息。行贿罪是非常严重罪行，它可能导致极长的服刑期。谁授权了这些收买？哪些人知道这些事情？从1995年到2007年，新闻国际的负责人是Les Hinton，他不仅是默多克的好友，现在也是道琼斯的首席执行官。在2009年，Rebekan Brooks成为了新闻国际负责人，虽然很多人现在要求他下台，但是他还是继续做着他的负责人。

Then there is the U.S. angle, such as it is. Yesterday, Senator Jay Rockefeller, who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, called on the American authorities to determine whether phone hackers tied to News International had targeted U.S. individuals. “I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans. If they did, the consequences will be severe,” Rockefeller said in a statement.

随后，美国方面也有反应。昨天，美国的参议员Jay Rockfeller,同时也是美国商业议会的负责人，要求美国官方对于电话窃听进行调查，了结是否由美国公民牵涉其中。他表示：我担心发生在英国新闻国际的电话窃听可能扩展到了美国911的受害人和其他美国人。如果真的是这样，后果很严重。

In short, the Murdochs and News Corp. are going to be besieged for months and years to come. What now are the chances of James Murdoch, or any of his siblings, taking over from his father as chairman and chief executive of News Corp.? The odds are a lot longer than they were this time last week.

短期上看，默多克和他的新闻集团将会经历长年累月的围攻。如果现有由詹姆斯默多克或者他的其他姐妹来接手老默多克在新闻集团的董事长兼首席执行官的职位是否可行呢？可能从这周来看，似乎更大了。