The News International story needs to stay in the headlines, otherwise a golden opportunity to clean up a moral, abhorrent journalism and the untrammelled power behind it all will go abegging.

How Rupert Murdoch, in his innate bloodthirstiness for a big story must have welcomed Amy Winehouse’s death, and even more so, the shocking atrocities in Norway. However, Murdoch usually loves scoops of such magnitude for their money spinning nature. This time, it was for different reasons. These events provided him with some craved respite and time to gather himself and has removed his empire from the front pages. If he has his way, News International will now stay out of the glaring spotlight they had been sweating under for the past few weeks. Yet this is exactly what we don’t want to happen, as this whole story has been more than just standard tit for tat headlines with a short shelf life. It goes much, much further than that. It is far too important for us to allow it melt into the shadows of an unknown murkiness once again. This is an issue which illustrates a widespread and deep rooted blight, and has spread like an aggressive cancer to other areas you could never have foreseen. Whilst the core of it all seemed to lie with gutter journalism, we soon realised it had polluted so much more. Standards of media reporting and journalism in general were initially the crux, which led to the exposure of blatant criminality, corruption, abuse of power and exploitation, shameless profiteering, an unforeseen disdain for morals and ethics, a blatant mangled web of deceit and perhaps above all, hiding the darkest truths from a public that really deserves to know such shameful carry on. Jeez, pretty all encompassing, isn’t it? Particularly when you put it like that…

For some, the News of the World probably already seems like a distant memory. But it’s not all that long ago they were still doing what they did ‘best’. Scurrilous gutter journalism. But now we know a bit more about that. Classic Red Tops behaviour, but even worse than you could imagine. Phone Hacking, the leap from Celebs to murdered children, Andy Coulson, David Cameron and his suspect recruitment policies. All resulting in the Murdoch’s being hauled up for questioning, alongside everybody’s favourite Simply Red tribute act, Rebekah Brooks. Shock factor should really be still at a plateau, with the Milly Dowler example of phone hacking the acid test of just how appalling and abhorrent this morally bankrupt mess had cut so deep. But then again, what did you expect with the classy reputation the big tabloids had built over the years? Anyone who ever signed a contract of employment and walked in the doors at Wapping with any journalistic notions were a different breed. Dare I say it, as vacuous as their readers, but clearly with a more hardnosed deviance, hell bent on eroding any ounce of professionalism, class, or ethics in order to get a tackier story, and increase the revenue by any means. And as we know now, any means at all. From various sources, we have now heard that the pressure on journalists to come up with these approaches to stories was ‘enormous’. Yet from whom these orders were given is still brushed under the carpet. Everyone wants to know whoever gave them of course, just as much as everybody wants a scapegoat. The Murdoch’s and Brooks remain shamelessly in denial of course, but at the bottom of it (pun intended) this still shouldn’t matter. Those who received the orders and carried them out are just as morally bankrupt and should have nowhere to hide. I know business is business. But I also know that morals are morals, and the law is the law. If the actions that have been exposed either made your heart sink, or your blood boil, then deeming those culpable as odious characters would be a gross understatement.

Personally, I think a lot of it stems from the foundations; that is, the mentality and human resources of News International and the people who thought it was ok to deploy these tactics and practice such ‘journalism’. Paul McMullan is a fine example. He was the NOTW journalist to whom Hugh Grant ceremoniously gave a taste of his own medicine, and was initially a lamb put out to the slaughter, coming out as an impromptu defendant for all things pro tabloid, and essentially, News International. Usually sympathy is an emotion associated with a lamb to the slaughter, but not for McMullan. Whilst in the spotlight, he sat like a brazen and insolent schoolboy, down the back of his class, back answering a teacher in the most immature tones. On Newsnight, up against the far more respected and brilliant Steve Coogan and Greg Dyke, he was utterly exposed as to exactly what he is. That is, a low rent, gutter journalist, without an ounce of the intellectual clout that is so necessary in the profession he claims to be a part of. Claiming his work was part of a democracy and free press, and that it was all worthwhile because the payments to politician’s scandal broke, McMullan simply dug himself into a further chasm with his inane defences. He uttered the same pointless and inaccurate claim to both Grant and Coogan that they were publicity hungry, and will happily take ‘5 million quid for a movie’, and have therefore got double standards, despite the fact that both actors have extremely divergent careers and approaches to their craft. The throwaway claim was wildly inapplicable to both, in many different ways. Even worse was his defence of the tittle-tattle, such as coke taking and celebrity affairs, which he claimed was a ‘bit of fun’, and it would be a shame if it was regulated. Greg Dyke summed it up best when he said ‘I have spent most of my life being a journalist, and I am nothing to do with him’. All of this, along with McMullan’s cretinous nature and inarticulate defences, ensured that he was a walking PR disaster for the NOTW and News International’s defence, and indeed, their raison d’etre. There is a reason that this was unavoidable. It is that Paul McMullan is utterly representative of everything News International is about, and everybody else involved has the same mentality. It was fitting he was such an accurate depiction of the bigger picture.

But the NOTW, and in all likelihood, Brooks and Andy Coulson, were probably aware that the likes of McMullan were a bit lacking. Hence the need to turn to the likes of Private Investigator and ace spiv Glenn Mulcaire to do the really dirty work and hack the phones. Both the employment of Mulcaire, and Mulcaire’s own willingness to hack the phones of Milly Dowler and Soham girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, amongst countless others, was the most transparent example of this morally bankrupt epidemic. He now cuts a wounded figure, with his tail between his legs and pleading for peace, and one who has been keeping a distinctly low profile. No doubt that was closely linked to the fact that News International were paying his legal fees, an important, yet hardly surprising revelation. He too will now also claim incessant pressure forced his hand, but if you heard any of his recorded conversations in relation to the phone hacking at the time he committed the unlawful offences, he came across as a Derek and Clive or Arthur Daley type character, revelling in the slimy undertow he was immersed in. No doubt he was also revelling in the 100k plus salary the NOTW paid him for ‘research and information services’. Whether it was a footballer’s casual affair, or a missing schoolgirl whose family were desperately praying with hope for her survival, the same approach applied, not just from Mulcaire, but from above, and further above, and further above again. The drill down effect and message throughout the hierarchy was the same on every level. Get a story, sell papers, make money, by any unethical, unlawful means possible. 

So McMullan and Mulcaire are fitting examples of the News International cavalry. Perhaps I’m being naïve, but one would really want to have had their eyes opened, and be reviled by the type of protocol the red tops use to operate. However, I’m sure their readership won’t really mind too much. The demise of the News of The World was merely a drastic and knee jerk PR stunt by Murdoch and co to steady the numbers of his buyers. Hardly surprising then, that the web domain for The Sun on Sunday was snapped up immediately in the announcement of the closure of the NOTW then. One wonders how the readership will genuinely be affected. Despite being more aware of the calibre of the ‘journalists’, and their disturbingly unethical practice, there’s little doubt in my mind the revenue won’t stop rolling in.

It is for that reason why, while the story is still ongoing, it is so vital to aim for the top and to deliver a firm knockout regulatory knockout blow to the reeling Murdoch’s. Standards and ethics of journalism are one matter, but the more overbearing concern is the using the opportunity to check the power of Rupert Murdoch’s previously impenetrable empire.

The worry is that Murdoch’s media power runs so deep, and so murky, that we may get plenty more mileage and revelations, although probably with little real change, sanctions or effect. That is precisely why the questioning of both James and Rupert Murdoch before the select committee was so crushingly frustrating. For me, his sense of power reigned supreme still, even despite the fact he performed poorly and was rattled, and endured lengthy pauses for many questions.

It reminded me of a classic clip of the Simpsons, where Homer is at the Superbowl and sneaks in only to end up in a corporate box, and is told that a man in his presence is Rupert Murdoch. Homer says, ‘you’re not Rupert Murdoch!’, to which Murdoch replies ‘Yes I am’, and when Homer asks him to prove it, Murdoch claps his hands twice and all the players, spectators, and cheerleaders out on the pitch immediately synchronise and choreograph into a giant ‘HI RUPERT’. It’s funny, because it’s the Simpsons, but its also funny because its so subtly true.

So although he struggled at times, Murdoch still came through the ‘questioning’ on a wave of sycophantic awe, with a sense of the aforementioned power and influence permeating the room to some extent. This meant that a golden opportunity to throw the slingshot at the media Goliath was essentially squandered. You would think that your electorate would want you to go for the jugular in the wake of such a scandal but only two of the MP’s, Louise Mensch and  Tom Watson, emerged with any sort of credit. Just about though. In the wake of the cringeful shaving foam ‘attack’, Mensch repeatedly praised Murdoch senior for his ‘immense courage’. Not the kind of icy demeanour and necessary form of attack the public would have hoped to see. Far from it. More akin to a doting carer in a nursing home with statements like that.

So Murdoch, his son James, and Brooks predictably ducked and weaved their way through some weak questioning and we didn’t get any nearer to concrete results or action. All we got was endless citing of legal reasons and an inability to comment. More depressingly, we could still feel a still lingering sense of bowing down to all things Murdoch related, and crumbling in fear when presented with a chance to take him to the cleaners. Instead, we got News International’s share prices rising by 3% mid ‘interrogation’. As things stand, Anders Breivik is grabbing all the headlines for the wrong reasons. This means News International are adapting to their feathers being ruffled behind the scenes as we speak. However, with this scandal so widespread and affecting so many levels, it is vital for its controversy to be utilised to some extent, and exploit the displeasure into something tangible, like more regulation, and further erosion of the Murdoch stranglehold on media. Because if they survive this, and ride out the storm, there may not be another opportunity to pick the shots everybody had waited for so long to see.

In the meantime, lets hope it rears its head back into the limelight again for a second bite at the cherry. That will mean some more revealing revelations will no doubt have to come to light. So bring it on. And on that note, thank god for the Guardian, i.e real journalism.

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