A mourning nation weeps, and wails, but keeps the sales of evil tabloids healthy
So, as of this weekend, Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper[*] will cease publication.
Cause for celebration? I'm not really sure it is, to be honest.
It's possible that someone, somewhere, who understands more about business than me, genuinely thinks that the NotW is damaged beyond repair. They may even be right. The Hillsborough scandal didn't do for the Sun (though allegedly their circulation is still poor in Liverpool), after all. Although admittedly in the '80s you had to put in real effort to show your displeasure instead of just sitting around on Twitter.
However, to me it sounds more like damage limitation. The Murdoch Empire, which is completely innocent of the whole affair, is seen to be Doing Something, and we can now be certain that all those nasty voicemail-intercepting reporters have been taught a lesson. OK?
Possibly, if the Murdochs had an unblemished reputation and a famous devotion to the truth, I'd even believe they were genuinely shocked by the whole thing. Maybe I'm being unfair, and they are. But the NotW's practices somehow seem so indicative of the Murdoch way of doing things that it's difficult to believe the organisation wasn't taking its tone from the top.
I had thought that, a few years back, there had been accusations of phone-hackery levelled at other papers. If there are, however, my google-fu isn't equal to locating them. But I find it difficult to believe - if it was so rife at the News of the World - that other papers seeking sensational stories weren't doing the same. If by closing down the Sunday Scapegoat we can draw a neat line and leave other papers to get on with the job of ferreting out secrets by fair means or foul, then we are no further forward. And when News International grinds into action and produces a whole "new" Sunday paper to fill the gap, everything can continue undisturbed.
I wonder if journalists are about to become the new bankers, openly reviled by just about everyone. Everyone knows what journalists look like, haggard hacks with a foot in the door and a long lens hovering behind. I actually found this image genuinely confusing when I was a kid, unable to reconcile it with the mother and her red biro patiently correcting the spelling of Charollais in the weekly sheep sales report for a provincial weekly.
Now, I'm fairly sure (despite having never read it) that the NotW doesn't cover the local livestock marts in any great detail, but even a screaming red-top doesn't have a staff entirely of paps and hackers. I can't guess at how many of the people writing the sensationalist headlines knew what was going on with the voicemails of the famous or unfortunate, but I imagine there are departments at NotW who were carefully putting together this week's Fabulous magazine or writing film reviews who were wholly uninvolved and unaware. All these people are now going to lose their jobs - not to mention becoming the new hate figures everywhere they go - and that's not a cause for celebration.
ETA: And while I was writing this, news has started leaking out that the closure was announced to the press before the NotW staff. That is a shabby way to treat anyone, and does not incline me in any way to think better of News International.
[*] Yeah, surprised me too.
Cause for celebration? I'm not really sure it is, to be honest.
It's possible that someone, somewhere, who understands more about business than me, genuinely thinks that the NotW is damaged beyond repair. They may even be right. The Hillsborough scandal didn't do for the Sun (though allegedly their circulation is still poor in Liverpool), after all. Although admittedly in the '80s you had to put in real effort to show your displeasure instead of just sitting around on Twitter.
However, to me it sounds more like damage limitation. The Murdoch Empire, which is completely innocent of the whole affair, is seen to be Doing Something, and we can now be certain that all those nasty voicemail-intercepting reporters have been taught a lesson. OK?
Possibly, if the Murdochs had an unblemished reputation and a famous devotion to the truth, I'd even believe they were genuinely shocked by the whole thing. Maybe I'm being unfair, and they are. But the NotW's practices somehow seem so indicative of the Murdoch way of doing things that it's difficult to believe the organisation wasn't taking its tone from the top.
I had thought that, a few years back, there had been accusations of phone-hackery levelled at other papers. If there are, however, my google-fu isn't equal to locating them. But I find it difficult to believe - if it was so rife at the News of the World - that other papers seeking sensational stories weren't doing the same. If by closing down the Sunday Scapegoat we can draw a neat line and leave other papers to get on with the job of ferreting out secrets by fair means or foul, then we are no further forward. And when News International grinds into action and produces a whole "new" Sunday paper to fill the gap, everything can continue undisturbed.
I wonder if journalists are about to become the new bankers, openly reviled by just about everyone. Everyone knows what journalists look like, haggard hacks with a foot in the door and a long lens hovering behind. I actually found this image genuinely confusing when I was a kid, unable to reconcile it with the mother and her red biro patiently correcting the spelling of Charollais in the weekly sheep sales report for a provincial weekly.
Now, I'm fairly sure (despite having never read it) that the NotW doesn't cover the local livestock marts in any great detail, but even a screaming red-top doesn't have a staff entirely of paps and hackers. I can't guess at how many of the people writing the sensationalist headlines knew what was going on with the voicemails of the famous or unfortunate, but I imagine there are departments at NotW who were carefully putting together this week's Fabulous magazine or writing film reviews who were wholly uninvolved and unaware. All these people are now going to lose their jobs - not to mention becoming the new hate figures everywhere they go - and that's not a cause for celebration.
ETA: And while I was writing this, news has started leaking out that the closure was announced to the press before the NotW staff. That is a shabby way to treat anyone, and does not incline me in any way to think better of News International.
[*] Yeah, surprised me too.