Don't Bother Emailing James Murdoch on the Weekend
Murdoch sent a letter to Parliament on Monday that he just discovered an email from News of the World editor Colin Myler and News International lawyer Tom Crone sounding pretty concerned about a phone hacking case well before he had previously said he was aware of the allegations. Why did he just find it now? Well, his BlackBerry ate it. Aside from celebrity witness testimonies about being scammed by Rupert Murdoch, the most interesting part of Parliament's investigation into News Corp.'s phone hacking practices has been watching Murdoch try to defend himself as ignorant of the widespread voicemail tampering that was going on at his company's papers. Crone and Myler have both said that Murdoch has been dishonest about his recollections. The email itself isn't exactly a smoking gun. Sent the weekend before the now infamous June 10, 2008 meeting between Murdoch, Crone and Myler -- that's the one the two former News Corp. employees say they told Murdoch everything -- the thread makes Murdoch look like a pretty careless executive, at best. At worst, it's the first crumb on a long paper trail of condemning correspondence that Murdoch accidentally didn't see until he was under investigation by Parliament. The red flag portion of the thread (PDF) comes from Myler:
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Murdoch replied three minutes later with a pretty classic boss move: tell me about it later.
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Murdoch explained why he missed the three-year-old thread in a letter to the chairman of Parliament's culture committee on Monday (PDF). Start at "Given the timing…":
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We can't help but wonder: if Murdoch missed the email exchange that could very well bring down his father's beloved newspaper business, what else has he missed?
