Relationship With News International
Until January 2012 the Bugle was distributed by TimesOnline, a division of The Times, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International. During the News International phone hacking scandal of 2011, The Bugle satirised its parent company in a manner which the New York Times characterized as "blistering" in an article published 15 August. Over the course of a few weekly episodes prior to the New York Times' article, Zaltzman and Oliver had gone "straight for the jugular" regarding News International, its newspapers, and Murdoch himself. Their barbs included a comment that The News of the World "would not be missed at all", as well as the assertion by Oliver—in response to the shaving cream pie attack on Murdoch—that despite the humor inherent in the attack, " just don't want to find yourself with any misplaced sympathy for Rupert Murdoch." The comedians jokingly marveled with one another that no one in News International had yet shut down their podcast, with Oliver tapping his microphone and asking, "Should this not have been stopped by now? It doesn’t make sense!" In response to the report from the New York Times, in an episode of the Bugle released 19 August, Oliver gave this opening monologue:
"Welcome to any first-time Buglers who are here because they might have read The New York Times' story on us earlier this week…but now that the story's in a newspaper that I'm guessing reads cover to cover every day, I'm thinking there's an even smaller chance of us managing to not get fired now. So thanks very much, New York Times! Your trumpeting of this podcast may well turn into bugling the Last Post. I guess what I'm saying is—to our new listeners—'Hello and goodbye!'"
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