“Aaarhahahahaaarrgh….fooled the buggers again!”
We should ignore the smoke and mirrors, and keep up the pressure
Those of us who have wanted to deport Newscorp and all it stands for since the Falklands War Sun headline ‘Gotcha!’ could feel justified in seeing the closure of Murdoch’s News of the World as a victory. We should think again.
All the Wapping Liars are doing here is throwing a turkey to the wolves. For one thing, given almost all its advertisers have pulled out, all Murdoch is doing via the NotW closure is saving costs. In particular, a lot of perfectly decent and entirely innocent journalists will lose their jobs as a result of it……almost none of whom had anything to do with the Coulson/Brooks regimes. It’s a clever feint – and after the dust has settled, you can rest assured that the Sun will come out on a Sunday to peddle its mindless celeb-harassment seven days a week.
If you had asked every critic of Murdoch’s Newscorp yesterday if they expected the NotW to close, they would’ve said no. Had you asked them, however, if they thought Coulson, Brooks and James Murdoch should be arrested on an eclectic range of charges, they would’ve answered yes. None of that is going to happen – and the last two still haven’t resigned.
Finally, the closure of ‘the Screws’ distracts attention from what will be the inevitable next stage in Murdoch’s cynical survival strategy: to draw an Inclusion Zone around the defunct title, and shovel up the usual tosh – which will this time be ‘rogue title in an otherwise spotless organisation’.
This is bollocks. The political Establishment, the Met Police, everyone in Fleet Street, and the chatterati in possession of a discerning brain know that. Rebekah Brooks went on to edit the Sun, and there are a hundred clouds over some of the stories she ran there. The idea that she went on holiday at the exact time of both murder-hackings is up there with the defence about Edmondson’s pocket accidentally making his phone ring 37 times to patch through to Sienna Miller’s voicemail: it is treating the British police, legal system and People as if they are asses. Journos must now rigorously investigate Ms Brooks’ movements in 2002 and after 2007. The police must demand solid evidence for her alibis. She should be asked to explain – properly this time – why she admitted to bribing police in the 2005 Commons hearing. And above all, her Sun colleagues at the time must be quizzed and cajoled to come forward and prove that she continued to ply her ghastly trade once arriving at the infamous tabloid. Steve Whittamore needs to explain how, given she hired him to hack the Dowler victims, she somehow later had not a clue what was happening.
But here too, the Murdoch family is being extremely clever: the News of the World was caught, and it closed. So the pour encourager les autres principle applies….they closed the screws and Fred lost his job – if they close the Currant Bun, I’ll lose my job. It’s a very easy way to create a wall of silence. Never forget: we are dealing with genetically-inherited, evil genius here.
Media attention should cast the net wider still, towards other journalists with suspicious pasts, politicians being targets for perhaps political reasons, any evidence of collusion between Newscorp and the Tory Party while in Opposition, and, frankly, already existing evidence of collusion between senior Met Officers and equally senior Newscorp management. Parliamentary Committee members who claim they were threatened during previous investigations should now be interviewed by the police. And of course, the dozens of outstanding civil cases against the Murdoch empire should be fully examined and reported in the media – with a view to any contradictions, new admissions or logical conclusions being given the oxygen of publicity.
In particular, I think it is time the quietly Murdoch-employed former senior Met officer Andy Hayman was given the Third Degree. Mr Hayman being a notoriously litigious piece of work, I am not in any way accusing this gentleman of any wrongdoing. I merely think we should know how and when he first met Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks….and why the News of the World used a double-page spread to print a pack of lies about the De Menezes shooting in July 2005. As the lies admirably supported Mr Hayman’s position – and as he was renowned for his willingness to court the media – it is surely not out of order to ask him to explain his relationship with Mr Magoo Andy Coulson at the time. Or is this just me being picky?
My point remains the same: Essex voter still doesn’t really grasp the depths of cultural decadence with which we’re dealing here; the Murdochs have yet more escape options. While the medium-term aim for people like me/us is to help bring about a sea-change in media accuracy and the protection of personal privacy, by far the most important target going forward is the Murdoch dynasty and its pernicious influence on our politico-cultural life. Forget the NotW now, and stay real: not until the six silver bullets have been fired into its brain, the stake driven through the heart, and its lead-lined coffin is at the bottom of the Pacific, will we have won our freedom from Newscorp.
From Day One of the Slog devoting a site section entirely to Hackgate, I have maintained that this is, in truth, the only real Watergate the UK has ever had. Believe me, we are not even at the resignation of John Ehrlichman yet. There is still a long way to go.
Related: Murdoch’s desperation to do the BSkyB deal
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