X

News International Balks at Paying for Sienna Miller Snoops

Yes, we’re a mega powerful news source with billions in backing, yes we’ve sunk so far as to hack email accounts and bug phones to get the latest scoop, and yes you caught us. But asking us to pay $160,000 to settle that claim is just asking too much.

This seems to be the sentiment of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, who think Sienna Miller, star of the television show “Alfie,” is asking too much in her claim for 100,000 pounds.

Murdoch has however suffered some major legal fees for their newsworthy misuse of the news. In the last quarter of 2011, they spent $87 million, mostly in legal fees, bailing them of hot water.

They are also in trouble for accessing 13-year-old Milly Dowler’s voicemail account. They deleted old messages to make space for new ones, giving false hope that Milly was still alive.

“The Dowler family then granted an exclusive interview to the News of the World in which the talked about their hope, quite unaware that it had been falsely kindled by the newspaper’s now intervention. Sally Dowler told the paper: ‘If Milly walked through the door, I don’t think we’d be able to speak. We’d just weep tears of joy and give her a great big hug,'” reported the Guardian.

Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News channel has been proven to twice order its reporters to hack computers, and in a 2004 investigation, a Sky News journalist demonstrated how easy it was to buy an Uzi by going out and buying one, blurring the line between reporting the news and making news. Such Gonzo reporting, combined with billion dollar backing, and even illegal phone taps and internet hacks, make the foreboding media tyrant even more suspect.

Daniel June: Daniel June studied English literature at Michigan State University, graduating in 2003. Working a potpourri of jobs since, from cake-decorator to proofreader, his passion has always been writing, resulting in books of essays, novels, and children’s novellas.