Worldview 5.8.12

By Alexandra Salomon
Protesters dressed up as Rupert Murdoch, center, with puppets of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, left, and Minister of Culture Jeremy Hunt, demonstrate outside the High Court in London in April.
Protesters dressed up as Rupert Murdoch, center, with puppets of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, left, and Minister of Culture Jeremy Hunt, demonstrate outside the High Court in London in April. AP/Helen Allman
Protesters dressed up as Rupert Murdoch, center, with puppets of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, left, and Minister of Culture Jeremy Hunt, demonstrate outside the High Court in London in April.
Protesters dressed up as Rupert Murdoch, center, with puppets of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, left, and Minister of Culture Jeremy Hunt, demonstrate outside the High Court in London in April. AP/Helen Allman

Worldview 5.8.12

By Alexandra Salomon
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Protesters dressed up as Rupert Murdoch, center, with puppets of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, left, and Minister of Culture Jeremy Hunt, demonstrate outside the High Court in London in April. (AP/Helen Allman)

Tuesday on Worldview we delve deep into the Murdoch scandal.

Rupert Murdoch and his $50 billion global media empire have been mired in a phone hacking and bribery scandal since evidence emerged that the News of the World tabloid hacked into voicemails of a missing British schoolgirl. Since the scandal broke last summer, several News Corp executives have been arrested and Murdoch’s son James has stepped down as chairman of BSkyB, which is controlled by News Corp.

Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, sent a letter to the British parliament asking if their inquiry has uncovered any misconduct by Murdoch’s News Corp in the United States. Henry Porter, a novelist who writes a political column for The Observer, joins Worldview to discuss what the British inquiry has uncovered and shares his own observations of how the scandal is unfolding.

Then, Foreign Policy’s associate editor Joshua Keating tells Worldview about a whole group of CEO’s in their 80s who are still running empires — but who might not have all their wits about them. (A British parliamentary inquiry into the News Corp hacking scandal declared  81-year-old CEO Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.”) 

Finally, we look at Chicago’s annual Fair Trade Day. Before Jerome makes his trek to Daley Plaza for the 2012 Fair Trade Expo, he chats with Nancy Jones of Chicago Fair Trade about her “Fair Trade Tour.” The self-guided tour highlights spots that contribute to Chicago’s growth as a fair trade city.