As the BBC has reported, “The publisher of the Sun newspaper has set aside £127m to cover the costs of phone hacking court cases, according to recent company filings … A case brought by Prince Harry is among those covered, the BBC understands … News Group said the sum was not a sign it accepted liability”. So how does the £127 million break down?
“News Group earmarked £46.8m for damages and claimant's legal expenses relating to phone hacking and inappropriate payments to public officials in the twelve months to 3 July 2022, and another £53m for future costs, totalling £99.8m, according to accounts filed at Companies House. It has budgeted a further £27.5m for legal fees relating to the closure of the News of the World”.
There is more. “That marked a significant increase from the £49m in legal fees and damages the firm disclosed in the previous year … The legal costs helped to push the company into an annual loss of £127m, up from £52m the previous year”. But it wasn’t the only loss maker, as Press Gazette noted.
“The new accounts from News UK’s subsidiaries also revealed TalkTV made £1.1m in revenue between its launch on 25 April and the end of the financial year on 3 July … [News UK Broadcasting] made a loss of £34m after it launched TalkTV”. So what’s the channel going to make in a full year - something like £5 million? That’s a GB News level of losses.
So that’s a lot more of that provision for future losses. The Murdoch empire cannot shake off the taint of illegal activity: this is a road that Associated Newspapers does not want to travel, and why it is throwing as much legal firepower as it can muster at efforts to have the action brought against it by Prince Harry, Elton John and several others struck out. It’s that simple.
Because, as the experience of News UK has shown, once you start paying off claimants while maintaining that no wrongdoing took place but making sure that none of the claims get to court, it becomes seriously expensive. A Judge has now imposed a cut-off date for new claims to be brought: Associated will have seen the mess and envisioned its own profitability heading south.
Why does the right leaning part of our free and fearless press hate Prince Harry? You might wish to ask that. I couldn’t possibly comment.
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3 comments:
Oh dear. How sad. Nevermind. Pity is in short supply. Only available to those deserving of it.
I could never understand why the unions never took Murdoch to court over the dismissal of his workforce in 1986. Unless there was a secret law in place whereby you could be sacked for what you think, they were unfairly sacked as no industrial action had been taken by the staff. I know because I was there that night the police turned up and kicked us out of the building.
I was just thinking how much more money we could have cost him if we had taken him to court for unfair dismissal [locked out].
Paul King, [printing machine minder working on the Sun].
Britain's ranting righty media hate Harry because he "infiltrated" a brown woman into the "royal" family. Just as they hated his mother for exposing the same dysfunctional people for the frauds they are - Phil the Nazi Greek wanted to reincarnate as a virus to kill off humanity opposed to his racism.
Murdoch and his brats are useful media messenger spivs. Once they croak or slide into bankruptcy they'll be replaced by other similar morally corrupt jobsworths. There'll be no shortage of spiv candidates.
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