Last week, we learned that former British prime minister Tony Blair emailed called disgraced News Corp. executive Rebekah Brooks in 2011 to offer his "unofficial" consulting services as she faced arrest over the company's metastasizing phone hacking scandal. And last year, we learned that Blair had also been allegedly fucking Murdoch's then-wife Wendi Deng in a bizarre love triangle. Today, we learned that, according to tax documents Gawker has obtained, Murdoch's News Corp. was paying Blair's private foundation while all this incestuous, wheels-within-wheels melodrama was going on.

It turns out that one point of launching an ostentatiously renegade bad-boy media company is so that one day it can be inherited by an upwardly failing scion. More than a year after resigning from his chairmanship at News International, Rupert Murdoch's son James has found a new position as director of at Vice Media, according to the London Evening-Standard.

ExaroNews a British investigative web site, has just published the full transcript of a secretly recorded meeting between media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the staff of The Sun, a U.K. tabloid owned by News Corp., in which Murdoch admitted that he was aware for decades that journalists from his newspapers had been bribing both police and public officials.

Ink may run in Rupert Murdoch's icy veins, but he's dumping his first love—newspapers—for the bitch-whore of film. News Corp. announced today that all of its newspapers and publishing assets (the dying, scandal-ridden ones) will be spun off into a new stand-alone company called Papers'n'Shit, leaving its film and television assets to make fistfuls of money unmolested by dinosaur media.

The neverending News Corp phone hacking scandal continues to chip away at the Murdoch family's prestige. James Murdoch—son of Rupert and onetime heir to the company throne—is stepping down as the head of News International, News Corp's UK publishing arm. He'll be, ah, setting up shop here in New York in order to "Focus on expanding international TV businesses," according to the company.

Lies: They travel halfway round the world before the truth gets its boots on. If you don't tell them, you never have to remember anything. Ask me no questions and I won't tell you any. The year that now comes to an end was, like all years, riddled with them. Grand lies and small ones, grave ones and frivolous ones, true ones and false ones—check that. They were all false. Here is a list of some of them that really caught my attention.

Whoops! Remember when Rupert Murdoch's News of the World was revealed to have illegally listened to the voicemails of teen murder victim Milly Dowler? And how the bastards actually erased the voicemails, leading Dowler's family to falsely believe that their little girl was still alive and checking her messages? And how Murdoch killed off NOTW in shame and a panicked attempt to avert scandal when it all came out? Well, there's a slight wrinkle.

Brittle fabulist James Murdoch, who's been under fire for months on account of how he lied to Parliament, twice, about the criminal hacking enterprise he presides over as chairman of News International, has stepped down from the boards governing the defunct News of the World and the Times.

Neville Thurlbeck, the former News of the World reporter whose name in the subject line of an e-mail—"For Neville"—was the thread that unraveled the whole hacking mess at News International, has spoken out for the first time. And he insists that James Murdoch had no idea what was going on.

James Murdoch, the News International CEO and News Corp. scion who has been identified by an overwhelming array of documentary and testimonial evidence as having been made abundantly aware that the company he runs engaged in widespread and routine criminal conduct by repeatedly hacking into celebrity's voicemails, told Parliament this morning that he didn't know anything about widespread hacking and all the people who say he did are liars.

As News Corp deputy CEO James Murdoch prepares to make his second appearance before Parliament on Thursday, here's what you need to know about his testimony over the News Of The World phone hacking scandal.

In your sunny Wednesday media column: News Corp's Australian head departs, James Murdoch goes back to Parliament, a newspaper CEO sees the light, Univision is massive, and Newark Politico vs The Politico.

The final tally of victims in News International's hacking scandal looks like it will eventually reach 5,800, according to the Guardian. Which may explain why News Corp. has set up a dedicated web site for victims to apply for an out-of-court settlement. Think of it as a MySpace for targets of Rupert Murdoch's criminal surveillance operation.

According to Sarah Ellison's new Vanity Fair story on the Murdoch clan, available in pdf form here, Rupert Murdoch's children hired a family counselor to help them work through the delicate issue of which one of them will wrestle News Corporation from their father's cold, dead embrace.

The parliamentary committee investigating illegal voicemail hacking at News International has released a cache of internal company documents showing that the firm was well aware of just how deep its phone hacking scandal went way back in 2008, when it was still publicly claiming that the problem was limited to a few bad apples.

No one likes James Murdoch! Not his dad—News Corp CEO Rupert, who's not pleased with James' handling of "hackgate"—and not independent News Corp shareholders, three-quarters of whom voted against returning James to the board of directors.

The New York Times' Jeremy Peters dives into the father-son relationship at the heart of News Corp., and learns that Rupert and his son James do not see eye to eye.

In your finally Friday media column: Carlos Slim parsed, a Miami reporter has a bad day, Michael Wolff lives on at Adweek, James Murdoch's board seat in jeopardy, and Disney's CEO will peace out in four years.

In your torpid Tuesday media column: Bill O'Reilly has another idiot book coming out, MSNBC is doing poorly, Salon.com relaunches, James Murdoch's flack quits, and speculation on Time Inc's next CEO.

In your even-keeled Wednesday media column: masthead changes at the NYT, women vs. men in journalism, the WSJ loves video, Shep Smith's pad is for sale, and News Corp paper analyzes James Murdoch's future.