The main reason for this is my england thus far remaining silent about the News of the World furore is just that it's been hard to know where to start. What had been a relatively slow-burning story, albeit a compelling one, for around five years has suddenly exploded, spraying us all with an eruption of filth that for days now has shown few signs of abating. The sheer volume of sordid information has been overwhelming, with further disgusting revelations coming to light on an almost daily basis.
Unapologetically, I am celebrating the demise of News International's best-selling Sunday tabloid. Perhaps all of the hacks made redundant last week were innocent of specifically illegal activities. But they all earned a crust while working on a rag whose output has contributed to a coarsening and dumbing down of our culture and our public life in this country. So I have no sympathy. I don't care if muck is raked legally or otherwise. It's still muck. It still degrades those who write it and those who read it. Lost your job on the News of the World? Boo fucking hoo. Try to see it as a wonderful opportunity to do something more worthwhile.
We might not all want to read a somber and serious broadsheet newspaper, but it is not to the credit of the United Kingdom that so many of its people choose to buy grubby little comic books that peddle tittle-tattle about the entertainers who are paid to divert our attention from the fact that we are merely units of production and consumption trained from infancy to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to impress people we don't like.
We might not all want to read a somber and serious broadsheet newspaper, but it is not to the credit of the United Kingdom that so many of its people choose to buy grubby little comic books that peddle tittle-tattle about the entertainers who are paid to divert our attention from the fact that we are merely units of production and consumption trained from infancy to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to impress people we don't like.
My fervent hope, then, is not just for News International to fail to reestablish its place in the Sunday newspaper market. No, I'd like to see all current tabloids go out of business. After all, how much would the public good be served if former News of the Screws readers are drawn to Paul Dacre's depressingly shrill and bitter organ? I also have no special wish to see either of Trinity Mirror's Sunday titles gain from Murdoch's loss, not least because, if allegations aired today (by everybody's favourite right wing libertarian blogger) have any substance, that group has not been above a little phone hacking of its own. This specific case was actually raised last week in Parliament by Lib Dem MP Adrian Sanders, who claimed that "the Daily Mirror, when under the auspices of Piers Morgan, is suspected of using voicemail interception to reveal Sven-Goran Eriksson's affair with Ulrika Jonsson". That story, as Guido Fawkes reminds us today, was an award-winning scoop back in 2002 when the scandalously overpaid former England football manager was found to have been swapping fluids with his fellow Swede.
As Fawkes points out today, Trinity Mirror has responded to Sanders's remark with a denial. Fawkes, however, gleefully reports how former Mirror hack James 'Scottie' Scott, has long "dined out on the truth", the truth allegedly being that he (Scott) had listened to Ulrika's voicemails and thus stumbled on evidence of her affair with Eriksson and that Piers Morgan decided to credit "the illegally obtained story" to Jessica Callan, a gossip columnist who had long been criticised for failing to offer up drivel as exciting as that featured in Murdoch's papers. Morgan, then, alleges Fawkes, knew of his 'paper's use of illegal phone hacking.
I'd love this to be true and for the consequences to be serious. If any peddlers of soul-destroying crap are to end up in jail in the aftermath of the various enquiries and investigations getting underway, I would be overjoyed for that smug, preening prick Morgan to be one of them. Were further proof needed, anyone who has seen his ceaseless childish baiting of Alan Sugar and Rio Ferdinand via Twitter in recent months would know what an odious little turd Morgan really is. That he somehow got Larry King's former gig at CNN is baffling.
I heard someone the other day talking about the very large number of newspapers that have been shut down by their proprietors in the USA in recent times. It seems that when one title disappears there, it isn't usually the case that rival publications pick up the failed 'paper's readership. Rather, it appears that the overall market shrinks a bit, with former newspaper buyers looking elsewhere for whatever it was they used to gain from the defunct title.
So I hope to see this pattern replicated here in the UK. I'd like to see the appetite for tabloid fare waning and for the red tops' influence to decline in the months and years ahead. Specifically, I hope for the baleful influence of Rupert Murdoch to be gone from these shores. It is a scandal that successive democratically elected (kinda) governments have run scared of a seedy smut peddler whose activities have been a major contributory factor in making British politics a laughing stock at home and abroad. We're somehow better than Berlusconi's Italy? Are we fuck.
For a collapse in support for tabloids generally to come about, though, the current widely felt disgust for the ghastly antics of the News of the World would surely need to infect other titles. Wouldn't it be something to discover that the Sun and the Daily Mail can be proven to have relied on illegal methods for their stories? I'd love to see a NoW-scale backlash against those newpapers. What fun that would be.
As Fawkes points out today, Trinity Mirror has responded to Sanders's remark with a denial. Fawkes, however, gleefully reports how former Mirror hack James 'Scottie' Scott, has long "dined out on the truth", the truth allegedly being that he (Scott) had listened to Ulrika's voicemails and thus stumbled on evidence of her affair with Eriksson and that Piers Morgan decided to credit "the illegally obtained story" to Jessica Callan, a gossip columnist who had long been criticised for failing to offer up drivel as exciting as that featured in Murdoch's papers. Morgan, then, alleges Fawkes, knew of his 'paper's use of illegal phone hacking.
I'd love this to be true and for the consequences to be serious. If any peddlers of soul-destroying crap are to end up in jail in the aftermath of the various enquiries and investigations getting underway, I would be overjoyed for that smug, preening prick Morgan to be one of them. Were further proof needed, anyone who has seen his ceaseless childish baiting of Alan Sugar and Rio Ferdinand via Twitter in recent months would know what an odious little turd Morgan really is. That he somehow got Larry King's former gig at CNN is baffling.
I heard someone the other day talking about the very large number of newspapers that have been shut down by their proprietors in the USA in recent times. It seems that when one title disappears there, it isn't usually the case that rival publications pick up the failed 'paper's readership. Rather, it appears that the overall market shrinks a bit, with former newspaper buyers looking elsewhere for whatever it was they used to gain from the defunct title.
So I hope to see this pattern replicated here in the UK. I'd like to see the appetite for tabloid fare waning and for the red tops' influence to decline in the months and years ahead. Specifically, I hope for the baleful influence of Rupert Murdoch to be gone from these shores. It is a scandal that successive democratically elected (kinda) governments have run scared of a seedy smut peddler whose activities have been a major contributory factor in making British politics a laughing stock at home and abroad. We're somehow better than Berlusconi's Italy? Are we fuck.
For a collapse in support for tabloids generally to come about, though, the current widely felt disgust for the ghastly antics of the News of the World would surely need to infect other titles. Wouldn't it be something to discover that the Sun and the Daily Mail can be proven to have relied on illegal methods for their stories? I'd love to see a NoW-scale backlash against those newpapers. What fun that would be.
Outstanding insight! I too would love too see smarmy Piers being hauled out of Larry King's old seat and forcibly repatriated to face the music. Along with current and past editors of the red tops he is shitting himself that he will be named and shamed as a hacking instigator.
ReplyDeleteSoon though, one of the slimy reptile tabloid journos with an axe to grind will turn Queen's evidence and point to where the bodies are buried. It's going to be a long and deliciously bumpy ride!
So TNOTW is gone as is £.s.d and margarine, not missed by too many but like knotted hankies and rude seaside postcards an English institution R I P.
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