Friday 8 July 2011

News of the World

We had the News of the World when I was a kid. I remember being vaguely embarrassed and bemused by the nature of the publication, recognising I suppose that all the other papers we had (morning and evening) only contained 'news'. I didn't really understand why my parents took it. There was a story once, about a man recalling being caned at school for telling the careers master that he wanted to be the person who painted women's bodies for stage shows. The rub of the story being that, amazingly, that was the job he went on to hold!

Today, we live it seems in a less innocent world, where there is no morality whatsoever at the paper. Well, I say that, but the revelations about phone hacking do all seem to carry the past tense. So the seemingly dim James Murdoch has decided to shut the paper down because it's name now has such terrible associations and put out of work journalists who had nothing to do with the emerging scandal and probably didn't work there at the time. One clearly involved though, Rebekah Brooks, is to stay in her post. She is currently running with the line that she is paid the big bucks (at the time as editor) to not know what is going on, not set the tone and the standards expected nor to take any responsibility. She must have had a lot of spare time. Otherwise, these extensive and long running phone hacking episodes were something that at the very least those actually involved knew those above would not criticise, or perhaps turn a blind eye. Maybe taking convenient and well-timed holidays.

The questions for me are; who knew what and when, why is Cameron so pally with too many of the executives involved, why did the initial police investigation not reveal these stories coming out now and how do we prevent it happening again?

The amazing thing though is that Blair and Campbell's names haven't cropped up, this is surely right up their street, the sort of thing they would normally be involved in.

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