McCann tweets journalist told to reveal source

AlexBG wrote:

j.rob wrote:
I still don't understand why they targetted Brenda Leyland, though? She lived near the Mcs. I wonder if they knew (of) each other? Did she have some 'insider info' perhaps? Something about nanny Amy Tierney who I think it is said she was tweeting about shortly before her death. Amy was involved in printing out those early pics, apparently. So perhaps she is a 'key' player?

I've read through the entire archive of Brenda's tweets and haven't found anything which might stand out as obviously earth-shattering although, as you say, it's possible that something she said did hit a raw nerve with TM and we are simply unaware of it.
It's also possible that the archive itself has been edited by forces unknown - this would require access to the site which archived them (unrelated to twitter itself as far as I know).

Brenda was a woman who appears to have been living alone, with no UK-based close family to support her in any legal battles. In addition, nobody was present to bear witness either to her state of mind, or to any events which may have taken place, in the days/hours preceding her death. This is perhaps the real reason why she - of all the people allegedly on the list - was the one chosen.


All just my opinions.

The only thing that set a little bell ringing for me was that she had been in New York - yet her son lives in Los Angeles, IIRC.

Could just have been a shopping trip of course.

plebgate wrote:

RogerRabbit wrote:

ultimaThule wrote:You must be jesting, j.rob.   Rupert is an immensely rich and powerful kingmaker and anyone who attempts to make a meal out of him will find their own head served on a platter before they've had a chance to warm the oven.   .

UltimaThule,

The one thing you're underestimating is that there are no shortage of immensely rich and powerful kingmakers in the world, not merely in media but in other fields. There is simply no precedent for believing that any one individual would ever become so almighty as to be untouchable. Even the most powerful and brutal of mafia godfathers inspire no shortage of would-be rivals. When you've climbed as high as you can go in a pyramid of power, and your way up is blocked by a bigger bully, that frustration has a tendency of making the ruthless ever more determined to topple the old man at the top of the heap.

Yeah Murdoch is immensely rich and powerful and has "made" politicians/political parties.   Not many rich and powerful men like that in the World.   Media mogul with a lot of clout indeed.    I do not believe his head will ever be served on a platter so to speak.

Has he 'made' politicians and political parties?

I can't think of any.

What HAS he made?

He's given people who wanted attention attention.

He's given people who wanted to skew the flow of information the ability to skew the flow of information.

He's blessed some people with very favourable coverage.

BUT

He's also done the opposite. He's burned people. He's ticked off people with power and wealth. He's switched sides numerous times, depending entirely on reading the public mood and shifting when the shift would be in vogue, rather than being late to the party. And he's clearly misreading the public mood on a colossal scale since his dishonesty, greed and insidious manipulations have been revealed.

You cannot, CANNOT, work so selectively and discriminately among the echelons of the politicos, blessing some and cursing others, without expecting a day of reckoning. And that very truth is the demonstration that his power only exists in the moment. In those halls of power, if everyone is not afraid of you, even those who are afraid of you will be eager to hide behind those who aren't, simply in order to see removed that thing which causes them fear.

Can you think of a single politician who would say proudly 'Rupert made me, and I love the man and shall stand by him forever?'

Kingmakers - as we've called him - don't do what they do out of the kindness of their heart. They require favours. They make demands. They manipulate. And the more they manipulate the more they irritate. And the worse the publicity they get for their misdeeds, the closer they get to making someone who wants to appear whiter than white look grubbier than a child in a mud pit. Men of influence are men of pride. They don't like constant reminders that they are someone's manufactured product, in someone's debt, having to ask permission to do anything. They rise up, they look for an escape, their indignance grows, and they become very aware that the former association is now a liability.

Not only that, but they won't pass their loyalty into the ownership of a corporation, nor will they pledge their allegiance to an idiot son. The power and the influence dies with Rupert, and there will be an awful lot of people eagerly awaiting that day, and plenty more who would like to see him fall completely from grace before that happens.

If you haven't read just how many politicians Murdoch has been associated with then I cannot help you RogerR.   Google will probably help you.  
Powerful friends will never let Murdoch "have his head served on a platter"  no way (IMO of course).

He has given people more than attention reportedly.   It woz them that won the 1992 general election don't ya know!!!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It

ultimaThule wrote:'Old coot' he may be, but nevertheless he presented Cherie with Tone's head on a plate and this should serve as a example of what Mr Murdoch is capable of should anyone have the temerity to cross him, or get across one of his wives as the case may be, Joss.

Oh yes the Old fella is very powerful alright.

Don't take the public face for the the private face.

Beneath the blustering Uncle look lies a very shrewd brain.

He has built a powerful media empire in the U.S. and in the rest of the world ( China and India next ) and you don't plan and do that
without having the brains or the Machiavellian instincts.

I suspect contary to the received wisdom that he doesn't have his hands on every tiller and trusts his editors and Executives to run the local show as it were. Lovely Rebbekah was given free-ish rein to pick and choose who to support and who to expose in the News Corp media in the UK.Politically or socially.

The main thing for Murdoch is the political influence here and in the US as he will not be voting or backing leftish candidates of any stripe.

Sky News is certainly very busy lining up another Coalition Government and the fall back position is a restricted Labour Government if that
plan fails.


The thing is though as with all the great Corporations is that the shareholders tend to be Banks and if there ever was a downfall it would be the Banks who usurp him. Not the politicians.

He knows far too much about all of them and I am in no doubt that he and his acolytes have the back up evidence to prove it.

The problem for all Media Moguls is that Financiers run the world and no finance means no media empire.

They won't pull the plug unless they think their interests will be damaged. Read Peter Oborne and the Telegraph as an example.

The McCanns are a whim of Rebbekah not Murdoch.

They will come and/or go as far as he's concerned.

Brunty too if need be.

Like Coulson.

Nah murdoch was sharp cookie..problem he has no one to continue his legacy...which is why at his age he still has to keep so much control. The murdoch empire won't last long after

Nah murdoch was sharp cookie..problem he has no one to continue his legacy...which is why at his age he still has to keep so much control. The murdoch empire won't last long after his passing imo

mad world wrote:Nah murdoch was sharp cookie..problem he has no one to continue his legacy...which is why at his age he still has to keep so much control. The murdoch empire won't last long after his passing imo

I agree, empires come and go like most things in life, and everything has its use by date, just like us, nothing lasts forever.

plebgate wrote:If you haven't read just how many politicians Murdoch has been associated with then I cannot help you RogerR.   Google will probably help you.  
Powerful friends will never let Murdoch "have his head served on a platter"  no way (IMO of course).

He has given people more than attention reportedly.   It woz them that won the 1992 general election don't ya know!!!!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It

Plebgate,

Sorry, I think you missed my point. It is totally irrelevant to list the number of politicians that Murdoch has 'blessed' for the simple reason that the nature of his business means he's ticked off just as many, if not more. You cannot, by nature, be in the good graces of every politician in every party within and without government. This is a power structure, full of backstabbing, vendettas, rivalry, bitterness and ego, not to mention corruption. Politicians don't have singular friends or singular figures of influence or enabling. They are always in the centre of a matrix of influential forces which are often conflicting. I would wager that the Lodge is infinitely more influential on politicians than Murdoch and his personal agendas. You make one king, you keep another one back. You throw in a favour, you do a disservice to someone else's interests. It is for situations like this that the phrase 'the chickens come home to roost' was made.

It would be true to say that Murdoch's powerful friends might not want to see his head served on a platter. It would be even truer to add 'Murdoch's powerful enemies would love to see him in just that state' and infinitely more realistic to say also that there are no friends in politics, only expediencies and everyone has a price. It took two things for the assassination of Caesar to be successful. First, his enemies had to be bold and come out in force. Second, his friends had to do nothing. Revolutions never stop at the main man, and when the tide is turned and push comes to shove, Rupert's nearest and dearest will look away when the knives come out, because they know they'll be next.

This is the myth of Murdoch, and you appropriately summed it up... 'It was the Sun wot did it?' Was it? Really? A tabloid rag read by a relative fraction of the population? The myth. A convenient myth. A myth that fuels the legend. But the truth? Tabloid media shamelessly rides the wave as close to the edge as it can, taking the most dangerous risks, playing the most illegal games, in order to create the appearance of being influential, astute, leading, cutting edge, tip of the sword, rubber meets the road. But that's all it is. An appearance. And if you look closely enough you can see just how much they make their decisions and create a lot of noise based on nothing so mysterious as mathematical probability, human psychology and reading the tell tales.

Did Hackgate teach nothing? Murdoch wasn't selling headlines because he was creating them. He wasn't even doing it because he had such an in-touch, embedded, involved, credible and confided team of people out there reporting back for him. He was doing it because his organisations were employing the most illegal and underhand techniques to steal information before it could processed and passed on - and published - by any other outlet.

The only actual power that Murdoch has is the power that other people give to him. If every person in this country stopped paying for Sky, watching Fox movies, and reading News Corp publications, Murdoch's empire would be over. No relationship with politicians would create any effect anywhere in the country. He'd be talking to himself. He is a man, with an empire, that can be defeated by something as simple as refusing to give him what he demands and feels entitled to. So where is his power? The rest is, as they say, bread and circus. And that's exactly what he's useful for, to the people with the real power. Providing bread and circus.

That's all the media has ever been.

And now the power of traditional media is at an end.

This is literally how much influence Murdoch has: if 'the Sun did it' over the course of a sitting cabinet, or an election campaign, 'YouTube' could undo it in 24 hours.

XTC wrote:

ultimaThule wrote:'Old coot' he may be, but nevertheless he presented Cherie with Tone's head on a plate and this should serve as a example of what Mr Murdoch is capable of should anyone have the temerity to cross him, or get across one of his wives as the case may be, Joss.

Oh yes the Old fella is very powerful alright.

Don't take the public face for the the private face.

Beneath the blustering Uncle look lies a very shrewd brain.

He has built a powerful media empire in the U.S. and in the rest of the world ( China and India next ) and you don't plan and do that
without having the brains or the Machiavellian instincts.

I suspect contary to the received wisdom that he doesn't have his hands on every tiller and trusts his editors and Executives to run the local show as it were. Lovely Rebbekah was given free-ish rein to pick and choose who to support and who to expose in the News Corp media in the UK.Politically or socially.

The main thing for Murdoch is the political influence here and in the US as he will not be voting or backing leftish candidates of any stripe.

Sky News is certainly very busy lining up another Coalition Government and the fall back position is a restricted Labour Government if that
plan fails.


The thing is though as with all the great Corporations is that the shareholders tend to be Banks and if there ever was a downfall it would be the Banks who usurp him. Not the politicians.

He knows far too much about all of them and I am in no doubt that he and his acolytes have the back up evidence to prove it.

The problem for all Media Moguls is that Financiers run the world and no finance means no media empire.

They won't pull the plug unless they think their interests will be damaged. Read Peter Oborne and the Telegraph as an example.

The McCanns are a whim of Rebbekah not Murdoch.

They will come and/or go as far as he's concerned.

Brunty too if need be.

Like Coulson.

Well, that's a slightly different take on Murdoch. He could be the J Edgar Hoover of the media world. The problem with that is that Hoover used his knowledge and his techniques to - as he saw it - keep the American establishment honest and to protect America's place in the world. At the same time, his own proclivities precluded his imperviousness in a dog eat dog world.

Murdoch knows a lot about powerful people. Perhaps so. But by extension powerful people know a lot about him too. The myth of the Murdoch Legend is that his ability to drop a nuclear bomb on a political party, or a figure, is strictly unilateral. Not so. This is mutually assured destruction. It's a mechanism that only works while it works, but is fragile enough to be broken enough to stop working at all. It's a game of poker with no limit involving players with infinitely deep pockets, and it will go on until someone calls. All it will take is someone bold enough to call, and then it's over. Whether it is the one righteous man who calls it, or a collective of unrighteous men remains to be seen. There's nothing more effective than fear to fuel paranoia and push a man to take an action that he'd have otherwise rationalised himself out of. People - especially people in power - don't like to have guns held to their heads and their tolerance wears down and then out very quickly.

I agree that Murdoch's empire might not be so powerful once he no longer heads it, but as for others bringing Rupert down - I still say NO WAY JOSE.

I still think there is something 'has been' about the whole Murdoch 'empire'. The model is dated. It looks crude, unsophisticated, crass.

The world has changed so much since the whole union-bashing Wapping stuff. I don't think he really has the finger of popular culture at all. And his children, imo, lack charisma or that certain 'something.'

The general public it would seem are pretty bored of the whole Madeleine McCann case and if the comments are anything to go by in MSM there is very little sympathy for the McCann parents. The MSM version of the story is just so old and tired. 

Unless you dig behind the headlines and discover what a giant can of worms it is, the story is now just incredibly boring.

The Mcs, in fact, have done absolutely nothing, imo to help prevent child abuse. Or help find missing people. By pretending that their daughter was the victim of a stereotypical abduction by a stranger, when all the signs are that it was not, they have actually done a disservice to children.

Who continue to be abused at the hands of their parents, wider family, relatives and others who are known to the child and have gained the child's trust.

That the Mcs and their friends were ever given any kind of platform to peddle their stupid story is incredible. What was the 'end game' Rupert? A knighthood for Gerry? Micro-chipping children? Medical experiments?

What a farce.

So many aspects of this case are thought-provoking.  If a journalist or newspaper would be brave enough to break ranks and become vocal it could be sensational and the big hitters in the industry would know this.  Which leaves me wondering how long the super-inaudible is in place for - until MBM is found (dead or alive), a criminal conviction, if the case is shelved?
I sincerely wish for positive developments soon and hope GA is well.
Just some thoughts.

Does any one on this forum know the answer to the question just posted? 

How long does a super-inaudible last? Is it forever? Does it have to be reviewed or reapplied for every so often?

I don't know the answer to the question but it does really tickle me that we call it a 'super -inaudible' 

Ladyinred wrote:So many aspects of this case are thought-provoking.  If a journalist or newspaper would be brave enough to break ranks and become vocal it could be sensational and the big hitters in the industry would know this.  Which leaves me wondering how long the super-inaudible is in place for - until MBM is found (dead or alive), a criminal conviction, if the case is shelved?
I sincerely wish for positive developments soon and hope GA is well.
Just some thoughts.

Hear, hear!

Dr What wrote:Does any one on this forum know the answer to the question just posted? 

How long does a super-inaudible last? Is it forever? Does it have to be reviewed or reapplied for every so often?

Presumably an injunction can last for as long as the person can afford to keep it going.   I have read that they are very expensive to keep in place.

Haven't seen this link before, but I thought it was very interesting:

http://www.theguardian.com/law/datablog/2011/aug/05/superinjunctions-gagging-orders-injunctions-list

Good lord... its is all about the extra-marital affairs of the rich and famous and the risk blackmail connected with them. Who'd have thought it!

comperedna wrote:Good lord... its is all about the extra-marital affairs of the rich and famous and the risk blackmail connected with them. Who'd have thought it!

There is one case on the list where criminal activity had been alleged.    Who knows how it all works, and they cannot even say how many super injunctions are in place.

It's all in place for the rich - it seems that money sure does talk still.

So the MCs are paying - or supporters/Fund - to suppress any information being published?

Dr What wrote:Does any one on this forum know the answer to the question just posted?

How long does a super-inaudible last? Is it forever? Does it have to be reviewed or reapplied for every so often?

Injunctions granted by the civil courts typically last for 6 months, after which further application(s) can be made to extend for a similar period.

Those High Court injunctions obtained by footballers (Ryan Giggs?) and the like which have come to public knowledge will have cost in the region of £100-120,000 a throw with a further 50-60 grand or so every 6 months for as long as required.

However, those with more sense than money can obtain similar results by utilising the services of counsel whose fees are considerably less than their more high falutin flying colleagues.

ultimaThule - how much do you estimate the Mcs have paid out so far for their super-inaudible?

Ftr, a so-called 'super injunction' is a legal gagging order which forbids public disclosure of information on a particular issue and also any disclosure of the existence of the injunction itself.  

Given the McCanns' penchant for hot shot expensive lawyers and the figures I've given on the previous page, to have kept such an injunction in place for the past 8 years would have cost some £8-900,000, Lir.  

That said, there's no sign of any such expenditure in the McCanns' limited company's accounts and, while it may be that non-uncle Brian Kennedy has been digging deep into his capacious pockets to fund legal action of this nature, it seems to me more probable that other factors have prevailed.

Assuming, of course, that the Mcs would be the initiators of a supernoodle... Its remotely possible that they've ended up becoming the object of a supernoodle set in motion by someone else, or simply become a beneficiary of one.

Perhaps the media themselves were not the intended victims of a noodle, but by the nature of the supernoodle they became subject to one anyway, and became equally limited by the 'super' part of the supernoodle.

RogerRabbit wrote:Assuming, of course, that the Mcs would be the initiators of a supernoodle... Its remotely possible that they've ended up becoming the object of a supernoodle set in motion by someone else, or simply become a beneficiary of one.

Perhaps the media themselves were not the intended victims of a noodle, but by the nature of the supernoodle they became subject to one anyway, and became equally limited by the 'super' part of the supernoodle.

That's a lot of Noodles  

whatsupdoc wrote:

That's a lot of Noodles  

Sure is, but I understand they're a tastier alternative to prison food, albeit more expensive.

Some court cases shouldn't be published in newspapers but I think all these injunctions are so highly priced that many can't afford them. They should cost just a minimum amount and not a rediculously exhorbitant figure to allow the rich to buy their way out of trouble.
Easier still, the Judge could just say not for publication with high penalties for a breach.

Roger Rabbit

Are you saying what I think you are saying?

That dark forces noodled themselves up, dragging the unsuspecting Mecs with them, into the bargain? 

If that were so, is not the question then: What the H''l is really going on in this world?

30 years after 1984, to boot!

Portia wrote:Roger Rabbit

Are you saying what I think you are saying?

That dark forces noodled themselves up, dragging the unsuspecting Mecs with them, into the bargain? 

If that were so, is not the question then: What the H''l is really going on in this world?

30 years after 1984, to boot!

I wouldn't use the word 'unsuspecting.'

The McCann's know exactly what they did or didn't do. They know exactly what they deserve or don't deserve. And they also know that their importance in the scheme of things is marginal. I wouldn't even say that the 'forces' that might have noodled up are necessarily inherently 'dark' ones... A supernoodle could simply be a measure intended to protect the children until they're adults. As I said, someone somewhere could well be directly protecting the Mc's, but by the same token they could well be indirectly protecting them - and they themselves might not be the object of this kind of legal protection, it's just that it makes a nice, quiet advantage to be able to bask in the good grace of protection. Protecting them might simply be a byproduct, a lesser of two or more evils.

It was just a thought. Nothing I'm claiming, or would hang my hat on.

Here's a shocking idea... Would it be possible, given the secret nature of a supernoodle, that someone behind a media corporation could financially facilitate a supernoodle protecting certain people, taken out to all appearances by a 'supporter' of theirs, but actually intended to simply prevent EVERY media outlet from reporting certain things, while the shadowy originator of the scheme knew EXACTLY when he was going to have the supernoodle relinquished and therefore just when to turn his attack dogs, and release a hidden cache of accusation upon which he's been sitting for some time? As I read it, supernoodles are not taken out per se in 'national interest' or 'out of the kindness of a judge's heart.' As such, it would seem, that they are literally the tool - one way or another - of whoever set them in place. They stay in place as long as you maintain them, and as far as I know they can be challenged, and at the same time the initiator could conveniently fail to uphold the supernoodle, causing it to lapse as it is no longer being defended.