Did News Corp. inspire Bushies?

Here is a theory and it’s just a theory. Perhaps all the secret squirrel shenanigans perpetrated by the former Bush administration – assassination squads, wiretapping and the like – were inspired by the journalistic practices of newspapers headed by the man who exemplified that administration’s propaganda program. I’m talking about Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire News Corp. includes Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

News Corp. now finds itself in a bit of a pickle. Due to some rather aggressive and, even in the jolly old United Kingdom, somewhat illegal practices.

Britain’s The Guardian newspaper recently broke a huge scoop that News Corp’s tabloids paid out an estimated $1.6 million to settle lawsuits alleging the tabloids’ reporters used private investigators to access phone records of various English public figures. One editor was imprisoned a couple of years back, convicted of paying a private investigator to tap the phones of the royals.

British police have said they will not reopen the case. However, a review of evidence is taking place and more lawsuits against Rupert and his merry men and women are a distinct possibility.

Is it going too far to see a possible link between the Big Brother actions of Murdoch’s tabloids and the alleged illegal activity undertaken by spy agencies in the United States under the Bush administration? Perhaps. But who is to say the cheerleaders for that administration and the right wing – that being Murdoch and Fox News – didn’t inspire some ideas among Dick Cheney and the boys. Such revelations also kind of makes one wonder just how fictitious is Fox TV’s thriller “24?”