Real estate developer and media mogul Mort Zuckerman has picked Colin Myler to be the new top editor for his New York tabloid, the Daily News. That's a surprising choice on at least a couple of accounts.

One is that Myler's last job was at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, which was shut down while he was boss due to the scandal over News reporters hacking into people's voicemail for scoops. True, the phone hacking seems to have happened before Myler got there--but he seems to have been brought in by Murdoch not so much to clean up as to cover up, to judge by his acknowledged deception (Guardian, 12/15/11):

Giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry into press standards, Myler was challenged over a letter he wrote to the PCC in August 2009--a month after the Guardian first wrote that phone hacking was widespread at the News of the World (NoW).

Jay, counsel for the inquiry, told Myler his reply to the PCC was "disingenuous" given that he had seen the so-called "for Neville" email a year earlier, which revealed that hacking at the NoW went wider than a single "rogue reporter" and prompted a £700,000 payment to football boss Gordon Taylor.

Responding to Robert Jay QC, Myler said: "I had no reason not to give them a full and frank answer. For that I apologize."

But Myler's involvement in scandals hasn't all been after the fact. Before being sent to the News, he worked at Murdoch's New York Post when that paper's scabrous ethics came under scrutiny. Here's Rolling Stones' summary (8/3/11):

The newspaper was rocked by a scandal in which a star Page Six reporter allegedly attempted to shake down billionaire Ron Burkle for "protection" from the gossip sheet, telling him, "It's a little like the Mafia."

Burkle secretly recorded Page Six reporter Jared Stern offering to go easy on him in the gossip sheet in exchange for a hefty payoff. "We know how to destroy people," Stern reportedly threatened. "It's what we do." To shield himself from character assassination, Stern allegedly suggested, Burkle could make a one-time payment of $100,000, followed by monthly installments of $10,000.

News Corp. axed Stern, dismissing him as a rogue reporter and calling his behavior "highly aberrational." But according to a 2007 affidavit by a fellow Post veteran, the alleged shakedown was an integral part of the company's culture. "The spineless hypocrites in senior management at the New York Post and News Corp. have always used 'expendable' employees as scapegoats for the misdeeds of its senior executives," Post reporter Ian Spiegelman testified. Spiegelman revealed that Page Six's top editor Richard Johnson and two others had accepted cash from a restaurateur whose business had received a positive mention the day before. Johnson also allegedly accepted a $50,000 all-expenses-paid bachelor party to Mexico from Joe Francis, the founder of Girls Gone Wild, whom the Post subsequently hyped as "the next Hugh Hefner." Spiegelman further charged that Col Allan, the Post's top editor, received free lap dances at the strip club Scores in return for favorable coverage by the paper.

Myler, as the Post's managing editor, was Johnson's superior when all this going on; it was Myler who handled Burkle's complaints when the billionaire wrote to the paper to complain about the shakedown (New York Times, 4/7/06).

Tom McGeveran of Capital (7/8/11) last year wrote up some more Myler-related scandals, including his resignation as editor of the Daily Mail in 2001 after his paper's interview in a soccer-related assault case led to a mistrial,  another mistrial that stemmed from the Post' s singling out a juror in a corporate corruption prosecution, and his defense of News of the World "investigations" that involved prostitutes tape-recording  orgies and the like.

It's been suggested that part of the appeal of hiring Myler for Zuckerman is that neither of them like Rupert Murdoch. That's true of plenty of people; it's not a good enough reason to put someone in charge of your newspaper.

Yesterday the New York Post--Rupert Murdoch's down-market tabloid, for those who are blessed to live beyond its circulation area--ran this front-page editorial demanding that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg shut down the Occupy Wall Street encampment to reclaim the city's "dignity":

Uhh.... that message would be coming from the paper that ran this dignified cover, waaay back in August:

And don't forget the Post's Iraq War weasels covers:

And why not this, while we're at it?

And let's not forget the paper's stellar work during the Anthony Weiner scandal: "Weiner Exposed," " Hide the Weiner," "Weiner: I'll Stick It Out" and "Obama Beats Weiner."

Today's Post cover, for the record:

Mr. Mayor, please return a sense of dignity to the proud city the New York Post calls home. At least until the next time the Phillies are coming to town.

Having your ethics challenged by a Rupert Murdoch-owned media outlet is like having your honesty challenged by Bernie Madoff.

Take the recent story about CNN hiring former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned from the office in 2008 following revelations that he had patronized prostitutes.

When rumors of the CNN hire began circulating weeks ago, Fox pundit Cal Thomas remarked on the Murdoch-owned network (Fox News Watch, 5/29/10), "Clearly, CNN is going after the adultery demographic." When the story broke, Murdoch's New York Post (6/24/10) scoffed at the hire with a piece  quoting anonymous sources saying it signaled the "destruction of a brand" and showed that CNN had "lost the struggle for its soul." Last year, the Murdoch paper (9/2/09) scoffed at the very notion that Spitzer should ever show his face in public life again with a story headlined  "You Can't Keep a Bad Man Down."

But patronizing prostitutes and committing adultery have never been a barrier to cable news stardom at Murdoch's cable channel. Think of pay-for-player Dick Morris, and serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, just the most prominent of Fox's stable of anointed johns and adulterers. In fact, Fox routinely embraces and elevates conservative men who’ve paid for sex and/or cheated on their wives, while condemning non-conservatives who've done the same.

Still not convinced that of the ethical vacuousness of Murdoch outlets? Consider this: Murdoch's New York Post gave a weekly column (e.g. 12/13/09) to Ashley Dupre, who the paper's editors introduced as "the former escort who brought down Gov. Eliot Spitzer."

Perhaps the key to Dupre's acceptability is hinted at in the Post's report about Spitzer's new CNN job, where she is quoted saying everyone "deserves a second chance," but adding, "As for the show, if it's not on Fox, I'm not watching it."

In looking at "all the angst over online appropriation of newspapers' work," Nieman Foundation blogger Zachary M. Seward (Nieman Journalism Lab, 9/4/09) thinks that "information actually flows in all directions, right?"

As "blog posts inspire newspaper articles, newspapers lift from other newspapers, and radio stations do the rip-and-read," Seward writes that "when a blogger uncovered a major zoning violation in her Brooklyn neighborhood last month, it was only natural that the New York Post would pick up the story":

But credit the blogger? That would be a violation of policy.

The Post prohibits crediting blogs and other competitors for scoops, according to the reporter, Alex Ginsberg, who noted the zoning violation two weeks after it was reported by the blogger, who calls herself Miss Heather. "Post policy prevented me from crediting you in print," Ginsberg wrote in a gracious comment on the blog. "Allow me to do so now. You did a fantastic reporting job. All I had to do was follow your steps (and make a few extra phone calls)."

The policy may have more to do with the Post's rival, the Daily News, than with blogs, but it appears to apply across the board. In an email to Miss Heather, Ginsberg wrote, "The rule is this: If every detail, fact and quote can be independently verified, then we don’t have to credit anyone."

Seward finds it "hard, of course, to defend this rule on journalistic grounds," particularly when "News Corp., which publishes the Post, has described the way Google handles its content as parasitic. How would the company describe relying on someone else's work without credit?"

Read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Did Google Kill the Newspaper Star?" by Peter Hart (7/09).

A New York Post feature headlined "A Day in the Life of Bill O'Reilly" offers this insight into life working for the Fox host:

"The staff of 15 meets 7:30 every morning. Working for me, you've got to be a Navy SEAL. No mistakes. I need facts, or it'll get rammed down my throat."

Huh. When did this "no mistakes" policy start?

Of course, some former employees of O'Reilly recall a slightly different workplace experience....

For the New York Post (3/27/09), it's "Free Dumb Tower." For the same day's New York Daily News, it means "No More Freedom." They're talking about 1 World Trade Center, which is what the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced it was calling the skyscraper it's building on the site of the old World Trade Center destroyed on September 11--rather than Freedom Tower, as it had been previously referred to.

And the tabloids, naturally, are outraged. "Freedom is out of fashion at Ground Zero," declared the Post. "Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Freedom Tower has been stripped of its patriotic name -- which has been swapped out for the more marketable 'One World Trade Center.'"

It's worth recalling that despite the popular media line at the time, there's little evidence that Al-Qaeda targeted the towers because they hated our freedom. The main association between "freedom" and the past or future buildings on the site is "free enterprise." Not only is that more clearly conveyed by the old World Trade Center name, but it's exemplified by the fact that the developers of the building are changing its name in apparent reaction to the preferences of the kinds of businesses that are likely to rent there.

But even commercial freedom looks too free for the Post and the Daily News--they seem to prefer the kind of "freedom" that can be used to shame people who are insufficiently patriotic.

If you look at the front page of the New York Post today (3/23/09), you see a big headline about New York State's "Secret Deal to Tax 'Rich.'" The scare quotes are there to indicate, presumably, that the taxpayers in question--whom the Post refers to as "anyone making more than $500,000 a year"--are not really rich.

It's true that such taxpayers aren't as wealthy as, say, Rupert Murdoch, the guy who owns the Post, who has an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion. But they're still doing pretty well, with an income that puts them well into the top half of 1 percent of U.S. households. This is a group that sociologists variously refer to as "the rich," the "upper class" or the "capitalist class."

Interestingly, if you go inside the paper, the actual article bears the headline, "Gov Plots Secret Tax Hike on Rich"--no scare quotes necessary. Maybe Murdoch just reads the front page?

In his online column (2/26/09) for the Maynard Institute, Journal-isms, Richard Prince reports on those who see the New York Post's recent cartoon of a chimpanzee shot-dead--so that now "they'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill"--as "an opportunity to examine the factors that led to the cartoon's appearance in the paper." Specifically, "the NAACP plans to focus on diversity in newspaper newsrooms," calling the incident "a reminder that when we get through with Fox and the New York Post, we need to focus on the newsrooms in the country":

In December, an NAACP report pointed to "an ongoing trend where African-Americans and other minorities continue to be under-represented in nearly every aspect of television and film businesses, while largely being denied access to significant positions of power in Hollywood."

The NAACP has been issuing such reports at least since 1999.

Diversity efforts in newsrooms have stalled and many have given the issue lower priority as economic and survival issues consume the time of editors and publishers.

Citing a poll showing "a majority of voters... believed the Post's cartoon had racist undertones," "was directed toward Obama" and that the Post "should be responsible for dealing with the repercussions," Prince also notes that there has "not been an African-American editor on the local news desk since 2001, when the late Lisa G. Baird, who had cancer at the time, was fired."

Read about the Post's regrettably still relevant history of racism in the FAIR magazine Extra!: "New York Post: Militant White Daily" (1-2/93).