Murdochgate may just taken a detour into the tragic following reports that two senior Murdoch journalists have attempted suicide. MSNBC reports: "Two senior journalists working for Rupert Murdoch's News International have apparently attempted suicide as pressure mounts at the scandal-hit publisher of the now-defunct News of the World. The suicide attempts follow weeks of intense scrutiny of the role of The Sun, another Murdoch paper, in the phone-hacking scandal and police bribery case. The man and the woman, who were reportedly involved in separate incidents, were rescued in time, a friend of one of them said, according to a report Tuesday on stuff.co.nz....The two journalists who attempted suicide have been checked into the hospital, according to a report Tuesday by the Financial Times. The newspaper reported that their care is being paid for by News International. The London Evening Standard reported that other News International journalists are “terribly stressed and many are on the edge.” The company has reportedly offered psychiatric help to any journalist who wants help." While certainly sad, it is curious why one would move to such a dramatic step instead of simply putting one's belongings in a box, and walking out of the office door for good. Especially if one is innocent of anything. Just how putrid will the Murdoch spying stench be when all is revealed, and just how high up does it go in other parallel media organizations who most certainly acted in comparable ways in the pursuit for that most elusive commodity - information? And will this be the end of any near-tragic stories associated with the billionaire media mogul? Somehow we doubt it.
More from MSNBC [6]:
"It was not a suicide pact," the friend told the New Zealand-based news organization. "The attempts were not simultaneous and there is no suggestion of a pact."
Eleven current and former staff of the Sun, Britain's best-selling daily tabloid, have been arrested this year on suspicion of bribing police or civil servants for tip-offs, Reuters reported Tuesday.
Their arrests have come as a result of information provided to the police by the Management and Standards Committee, or MSC, a body set up by parent company News Corp to facilitate police investigations and liaise with the courts.
The work of the MSC, which was set up to be independent of the conglomerate's British newspaper arm News International, has caused bitterness among staff, many of whom feel betrayed by an employer they have loyally served.
"People think that they've been thrown under a bus," one News International employee told Reuters. "They're beyond angry - there's an utter sense of betrayal, not just with the organization but with a general lynch-mob hysteria."