Andreas Whittam Smith
Andreas Whittam-Smith shows how experience and insight drive good journalism
If you haven’t yet read it, I urge you to read Andreas Whittam Smith’s piece in today’s Independent. Not only does he nail the grubby cowardice of the decision to sacrifice 200+ jobs at the News of the World, he also makes a terrific parallel highlighting the degree of desperation behind it:
‘When the late Robert Maxwell, the owner of the Daily Mirror, sold his original company, Pergamon Press, I immediately thought that the group’s problems must be much greater than I had realised. And thus it turned out.’
Two days ago The Slog posted to the effect that Murdoch doesn’t just need this BSkyB deal, there is every chance that it is his last lifeline: that Newscorp will implode without it. Follow that link and you will see a straightforward analysis of how and why old Rupe has been making some terrible decisions over the last few years. The bottom line is that he now needs this one, or he will die knowing that he has left the spawn with no inheritance.
In this context, I am dismayed to see the mainstream UK press yet again indulging in commoditised news. Every article about Cameron questions his judgement, but none of them his potentially hidden agenda. Once more we see this online press fantasy that their role is to be a 24/7 TV news organisation with very few moving pictures. This is like thinking of radio as television in the dark. Everyone is now running minute-by-minute updates proclaiming ‘News of the World Drama Live’. In the last few hours, the lead has become ‘Rupert Murdoch to fly to London’.
I couldn’t give a baboon’s backside about Murdoch’s flight plans. Good journalists are now hunting for further elucidation as to why Cameron has not distanced himself much further from the Newscorp cesspit, what may have bought Coulson’s silence (or not), and why the Digger won’t fire Rebekah Brooks when he could very easily do so. But the web’s news sites are treating Murdoch’s arrival as if it might be the same as Wills and Kate on tour in Canada.
Media contacts, for instance, are confirming my experience over the last 24 hours: that while Wapping journalists are as angry as hell, they still won’t go on the record with stories. It is obvious to me that they’ve had a carrot dangled under their jobless noses by the Murdochs: ‘Don’t worry chaps, there’ll be a new Sunday tabloid along in a minute, and you’ll be on board’. This is what we want to know about, not the Flight Number of Rupe’s Qantas jaunt.
At the age of 74, Andreas Whittam Smith is still raising the awkward questions. We need more of this.
The Slog 