British FM met Murdoch firm executives 16 times
Britain’s finance minister George Osborne has met executives from Rupert Murdoch companies 16 times since the general election in May 2010, according to data published on Tuesday. The details were published by government departments in response to a phone-hacking scandal at one of Murdoch’s newspapers, which turned the spotlight on the close relationship between politicians and media organisations, in particular Murdoch’s News Corp.
A list of Osborne’s meetings with proprietors, editors and senior media executives since May 2010 shows he met News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, who resigned this month in the wake of the hacking scandal, five times.
He met Rupert Murdoch twice for “general discussion” and his son James Murdoch four times. Osborne met media executives from other organisations on 38 occasions.
Business secretary Vince Cable, stripped of power to regulate the media sector for saying he had declared war on Murdoch, records two meetings with News Corp papers: a general discussion with James Harding, editor of The Times, and a business lunch with the Sunday Times. Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary who took over responsiblity for overseeing the proposed takeover of BSkyB by News Corp from Cable, met James Murdoch twice in January to discuss the process around the proposed bid. —Reuters
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