We’re looking at this now as fact more than what it still is: an accusation. A very damning accusation which, owing to the nefarious tactics of journalists associated with News International’s earthier title, is believable. Found readily guilty by history and association is a bad state for your publication.
Every Daily Newspaper – including The Times – is squeezing the dank sponge of inhumanity dry on this story, a Guardian scoop from yesterday afternoon. All are covering the news with at least a degree of fair comment inches and personal opinion to damn the News of the World’s alleged tapping of Milly Dowler’s phone and manipulating the investigation into her then disappearance.
Brookes of course is part of the under-reported Chipping Norton Set, an Oxford-based journalistic and legal Illuminati of powerful minds (Google it) including David Cameron
We’re amongst the hundreds and thousands backing the calls for a full independent public inquiry into the whole hacking affair; of which this is the most bankrupt story. Disconcertingly, BBC business guru Robert Peston Tweeted earlier that after speaking to News International executives, the scurrilous depths of their hacking may plunge further south. Case in point here sees us cite Hugh Grant’s clandestine recording of a pap for a self-penned New Statesman article in April and we could be looking at the Soham murders on the same charge sheet.Rebekah Brookes – then NoTW editor – has said today that it is “inconceivable” she knew anything about the Milly Dowler phone hacking (NB not untrue, but inconceivable. Yes Rebekah – agreed, it is inconceivable) which flightly a sentiment as that is, still compares – as some point out – to Sharon Shoesmith, the official who lost her position as Head of Child Services at Haringey after the death of Baby P.
Early calls for Brookes to resign will likely go unheeded until we have something resembling a conclusion to this most dirty affair.
Thinking back to the staged photographs of British soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq which lost Piers Morgan his editorship of the Daily Mirror, there is form for scandals and getting rid of editors in a timely fashion; and with the help of the Press Complaints Commission. Not so News International titles. Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie’s targetting of Liverpool fans for theft and abuse of victims in the tragedy which caused the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters attracted widespread condemnation and a boycott of the paper that exists on Merseyside to this day, but Mackenzie has stayed with the group basically until last month when he signed on for the ever-popular Daily Mail to spout his bigoted guff to middle England.
You may consider that someone so powerful within News International as Brookes will survive a potentially paralysing professional and social conviction such as this. Brookes of course is part of the under-reported Chipping Norton Set, an Oxford-based journalistic and legal Illuminati of powerful minds (Google it) including David Cameron who has predictably condemned the actions of his neighbours and print-media fanboys and girls. In the unlikely event that she – and any other learned Murdoch scalps – roll for this one, they’ll probably get a comfortable consultancy job and be invited back to the head table in a few years when there’s been enough of the Tabloid-despicable to eclipse this story. It happens at the top: Lord Mandelson anyone?
But there are certain things we can do to massage the process and make it so the newspaper feels the pinch, some after all believe that the phone hacking scandal as a whole – with this case sitting as a particularly fusty cherry on the top – could finish the News of the World.
Here are certain steps you can take to ensure maximum damage is incurred.
- It perhaps goes without saying if you find yourself agreeing with this article, opinion and the general standpoint of the public at large, but don’t buy the News of the World, it’s a bastard plague on journalism as a whole and has been for a generation anyway. We like kicking things when they’re down as a public, don’t we?
- Go here www.pint.org.uk and hit the buttons as thousands have already done today, pressure NoTW advertisers to withdraw the funding that allows this greasy beast to creep not only under the beds of fairer game celebrities but real people, in real situations, deserving of gallons more dignity and respect. Should their offers, products and spiel remain atop the NoTW website, and their print copies, simply boycott the products and companies until their names are disassociated. Brand integrity, it’s important these days.
- Get legal on them and demand to know – what is yet unclear – who is paying the legal expenses of the private dick behind the actual doing of the deed, the incarcerated Glenn Mulcaire. If the PCC find that any facets of News International has been financially assisting him there are further and more gross legal implications for the group, not to mention further sullying their brand.
- Back the call for an independent public inquiry into the whole hacking affair. The Lords are meeting tomorrow. Scores of names and brains are adding their cranial weight to this, so visit hackinginquiry.org website.
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