How devious is former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes? Following his July resignation, amid an internal inquiry into his serial sexual harassment (and worse) of female employees, a clearer picture of the infamously vindictive Nixon aide’s tactics has begun to emerge. For instance, according to a report this morning from Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine, he used Fox News resources to secretly spy on reporters critical of him and his network—including two employees of Gawker Media:

Louise Mensch, an English author of popular fiction and unpopular political columns, as well as, for a few years, a Conservative member of Parliament, will start a new website, called “Heat Street,” for News Corp, Buzzfeed reports.

Former News Corp executive and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, who, last year, was found not guilty of hacking a murdered 13-year-old's cell phone, is about to be rehired by her old employer (and possibly lover) Rupert Murdoch, The Guardian reports.

A man who reportedly worked for a Fox affiliate in Austin, Texas, killed himself this morning in front of Manhattan's News Corporation building, which contains the Fox News headquarters.

Weeks after a guilty verdict for former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, two more senior editors have been charged with phone hacking at the shuttered British tabloid.

Huge media conglomerate Time Warner rejected an $80 billion takeover offer from News Corp today, but the company may still be "in play," so it's not too late for an even more enormous portion of the U.S. media to fall under the control of Rupert Murdoch, a rich old climate change denier.

Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor and aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron, will face retrial for bribery. Last week, Coulson was found guilty of conspiracy to intercept voicemail messages.

So here is an intriguing media rumor: Rupert Murdoch is angling to purchase Gawker Media. Yesterday, at least two media reporters approached at least two Gawker Media employees about a potential sale to Murdoch’s News Corp—or, more likely, 21st Century Fox. Apparently the rumor was first posted to Secret, the anonymous messaging smartphone app, though we couldn’t find a copy of the actual post. Efforts to determine the rumor’s origin came up empty.

Rebekah Brooks, the former News Corp executive and News of the World editor charged with hacking a murdered 13-year-old's cell phone, was found not guilty today. Andy Coulson, Brooks's lover and successor at News of the World, who later became David Cameron's communications director, was found guilty on one count of conspiring to intercept communications.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch says Fox News “absolutely saved” the Republican Party by giving “voice and hope to people who didn’t like all that liberal championing thrown at them on CNN.”

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.

Less than a week before News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks was arrested for her involvement in the phone-hacking scandal that rocked Britain, she received an offer of help from an unlikely source: The country’s former Prime Minister. The Guardian reports:

Australia’s Financial Review reports today that a massive cash payout of $882 million AUD (approximately $800 million USD) to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has decimated the Australian government’s annual budget:

RadarOnline is reporting that 90-year-old Viacom founder Sumner Redstone paid Bo Dietl, the private investigator and Fox News contributor, to smear Rupert Murdoch after his beloved New York Post went after Redstone in 2008. Because if you want to smear your rival, your best bet is hiring his own employee.

Journalist Mark Seal’s long Vanity Fair profile of Wendi Deng, the 45-year-old ex-wife of News Corporation titan Rupert Murdoch, reveals how the couple splintered over Deng’s newfound desire for the company of famous men—and, apparently, her penchant for elder abuse.

In December The Daily Mail reported that News Corp billionaire Rupert Murdoch had divorced his third wife, Wendi Deng, over some kind of “intimate note” indicating Deng’s crush on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Today Vanity Fair published a portion of the impassioned letter:

All good things must come to an end. The Chief Executive Officer of Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones, Lex Fenwick, is leaving the News Corp subsidiary, according to an announcement posted on the company’s website. Fenwick joined Dow Jones in 2010 after 25 years at Bloomberg LP, and oversaw the development of DJX, a product designed to compete with Bloomberg LP’s wire service. Fenwick was also the subject of an ex-Bloomberg employee’s unhinged resignation letter. The pertinent bit:

News Corp's first quarterly results since the company spun off its profitable half are in. They suck, just like everyone knew they would.

The twelve jurors in Britain’s phone-hacking trial against several staffers of the shuttered Murdoch tabloid News of the World were told on Thursday that former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, both charged with several counts of conspiracy to intercept communications and impede a police investigation, had maintained a six-year-long affair over the course of their employment at News International. The relationship apparently lasted between 1998 and 2004, during which both were married to other people.

This morning marked the official start of the long-anticipated U.K. trial of two former News of the World editors (and a few other peripheral individuals) for several criminal charges of conspiring to obstruct justice, hacking a murdered child’s cell phone, and interfering with a police investigation. Predicted to last around six months, the trial will place the News Corporation and its Australian owner, Rupert Murdoch, under even more glaring scrutiny. Here’s what you need to know.