It has been a tumultuous week in the news media this week and most of that news has been about the media industry and one particular newspaper, the News Of The World but that parrot is now a dead parrot.
When Andy Coulson resigned his position as the Prime Minsters spin doctor he said that the spin doctor could no longer perform his job when he became the news story himself and he was certainly right about that.He claimed to be innocent of the various accusations made against him and News International certainly didn’t come out and say he was wrong to make those denials.
Now that the NoW has become the big story it could hardly continue gloating at finding finding fleas on other people when it was a maggot farm itself. It had to do something drastic to change its image. As it turns out they were not given the opportunity to try to make ammends. So now the News Of The World is no more.
It is a sad day when a newspaper that has existed for 168 years is closed. Not for lack of interest or sales of the paper but closed in a vain attempt to staunch the bleeding body of News International and Rupert Murdochs empire.
The NoW has always seemed to be a newspaper more interested in title tattle and finding a vicar who was sleeping with a parishoner than it was in educating the nation about the state of the world but it had its place in the market and a lot of people liked it enough to buy it every Sunday.
I found it annoying that it could be so hypocritical as to have a story about someone sleeping with someone elses wife on one page and the next page was semi naked women and a story that suggested we should all be out having more affairs but it was a very popular newspaper. People liked it and it continued to sell millions of copies each week. Perhaps it was all those Vicars wondering if they had made the paper that Sunday?
In a stroke 168 years of history has been killed off. Was it the newspaper that was evil? No. Did the building have evil spirits within it that corrupted the journalists who worked there? I think not.
It has been suggested that there was intrinsic corruption throughout the staff during the period of the phone hacking cases. We are expected to assume that every journalist that was employed at that time had a secret agenda and they wanted to perfom their evil acts. I don’t buy that line at all.
I do not believe for one moment that it is the journalists who run a national newspaper. Especially a newspaper in the Murdoch empire. I do not believe for a moment those journalists who were involved with phone hacking did so off their own back without any pressure or encouragement from management. I do believe it was a pressured environment where they were expected to get results and that pressure may well have turned decent people towards the darkside.
I have no doubt that all newspapers sail a little close to the wind when it comes to legality and obtaining stories. Sometimes they may overstep the mark and break the letter of the law to get a story and if that can be shown to be in the public good then I would say well done to them for taking the risk because we need people prepared to go out on a limb to challenge authority. So long as there is a justifiable and legitimate story to be told.
The NoW went way beyond anything anybody with any sense of decency or honesty would have considered acceptable and they did it under the editorship of Rebekah Brooks, the woman who is now Chief Executive of News International. How come she wasn’t sacked when the news of this debacle first came to light? How can she be defended while all the decent and honest workers who are now at the NoW face the prospect of unemployment?
It is so remarkable that it makes the mind wander and speculate what it is that makes her so special as to be armour plated. I have little doubt that if it had been anybody else she would have been long gone and she would now be busking for her supper.
This is a story that has some way to go. The Guardian is reporting that Andy Coulson is to be arrested tomorrow over phone hacking which is sure to spoil his nights sleep. It seems that the Murdoch empire has thrown him to the wolves and destroyed the NoW with its 168 years of history in a damage limitation exercise intended to stop the rot from spreading ever upwards. It remains to be seen if it can succeed.
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