Murdoch's Last Stand

The bid for BSkyB was withdrawn an hour ago, and while there isn't quite dancing in the streets, there certainly is on the internet. Murdoch has as many defenders as Moamar Ghadaffi.

The announcement came after the formal statement to Parliament by Cameron, and a PM's questions which must have convinced NewsCorp lawyers that to go ahead would have been ridiculous, especially considering the Commons unanimous vote of no-confidence in Murdoch tonight. And naturally, the ordeal of answering questions to next Tuesday's select committee can now be avoided.
What might not be so easy to duck are the possible charges under US law related to allegations that the families of 9/11 victims were hacked. Or the continuing market dive in in NewsCorp shares. And if, as everyone believes Murdoch is not a fit and proper person to own all of BSkyB, then he is not a fit and proper person to own any of it. But exactly how far NewsCorp falls depends on how much effort ordinary people put into pressurising companies not to advertise with any of their outlets, as they did last week when sinking the News of the World.
And if NewsCorp is vulnerable to public outrage, which corporations are safe? Murdoch is being run out of town on a rail. This is what happens when you give people to much power over information in an age when information is power.
Murdochosaurus Rex is just another dinosaur destroyed by a change in the technological climate, and a meteor called Milly, in his case. In Tunisia, the meteor was called Mohamed Bouaziz, but the climate was just as inhospitable to tyrants.
Anyone who thinks nothing has changed is beyond hope. A dinosaur. You simply cannot go about giving vast numbers of people control over information without giving them power. And in an age when information is power, that is lethal, especially to those whose business is the monopolisation of information (and therefore power). Murdoch was destroyed by the shift from the capital intensive push-media world to the mad internet world which gives us all a voice. And it is instructivbe that the branch of the media which resisted all attempts to smother the truth were the least profitable, like the Guardian, or the one which has no shareholders to answer to at all, namely the BBC. Thank god for the BBC. If Murdoch had not been exposed, future of the the BBC was very shaky. It was the main target in his sights after the BSky B acquisition.

NEWS OF THE WORLD TRUTH SCANDAL HORROR SHOCK EXPOSE REPORT

Whatever the News of the World might have been once, for as long as I can remember it has exploited every 'victim' it pretended to champion. From abused children to abused inmates of corrupt care-homes, it has taken its readers for a ride with every hypocritical expose. If it really had cared about The Truth, it would have investigated itself as soon as any allegations came to light. But it didn't. It ignored its own crimes in pursuit of the far more profitable sex and drugs stories. It stands condemned by its lack of action, and by its depraved agenda. It will not be the great loss some are claiming. 

GOTCHA!

'Murdoch Papers Use Criminal Methods to Get Stories'

'Murdoch Papers Use Criminal Methods to Get Stories'

Shame that it won't be Jon Gaunt or Murdoch going to jail. Still, it's a start.
After the bankers and politicians, now it's the the turn of the press to get knocked off its high horse. And who would complain about those tax-avoiding, expenses-inflating fatsos getting a kicking?
As that agent of the Devil, the Guardian reports:

"The evidence also poses difficult questions for:
• David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts
• Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, have misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public
• The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel"

There will be a flood of legal action by the likes of John Prescott, who was allegedly spied on for years. This is good news. Not because Murdoch and his Empire of Lies deserve to be torched with lasers and the ground beneath drenched in Nitric acid to prevent any vestiges of its spoor from surviving. And not even because it buys some breathing space for the BBC in its constant battle for civilised decency against the barbarians of Wapping, Teacosy England and the Mary Whitehouse Memorial Society. But because it is the first step in debunking the so-called Fourth Estate. The professional lie machine which has been riding its moral horse pretty high for a long time and which is as much to blame for the mess we're now in as anyone - including bankers and politicians.
The Wapping Spin Machine has to make money. And the way to make money in this primitive competitive economic system we endure is at the expense of others. Greed is good, but not practicable without liberal doses of hate. Too little hate would make us share too much, and there would not be enough greed at work either to run a newspaper like the Sun, or for its relentless message of conflict to be marketable. So it is also in the interest of the gutter press to make us hate each other as much as possible. Naturally, we find it easier to trample on colleagues we dislike than those we feel natural human sympathy for. Hate is a skill which needs constant practice. So every piece of dirt the News of the world and the Daily Mail can unearth, by whatever methods, and use to exercise the hate glands of the nation, is just money in the bank. If their proprietors weren't such gigantic hypocrites, every redtop masthead would brag about how it supplies the capitalist system with the anger and confusion it needs to keep going.
The allegations made yesterday involve thousands of victims. As even Homer Simpson would say; I'm no fancy city lawyer, but that suggests a class action to me.
I wish I was on the News of the World's hack-list, I could do with a cool million or two. But more significantly, in the interest of being 'Fair and Balanced' I would like to know the nett political effect of the entire alleged operation. If the political smears which eventually emerged are all lined up against the stories which were supressed, which side comes out least effected (I wonder)?
In other words, if these allegations are proven, which they will be, just how much do Rupert Murdoch's mouthpieces manipulate the British political system, and just how illegal are their methods? More illegal than the 'scandals' of the politicians on the redtop hitlists, with their scandalous expenses claims for toilet seats and taxi rides? Probably. Which raises the entire question again of the hidden Wapping archive.
If the gutter press has a right (in the public interest) to spy on elected politicians, supermodels and drunken musicians, why shouldn't the nation have a right to know what information Wapping holds on all of us? And to know (in our interest) which information finds its way onto the front pages and which is swiftly hidden in the lead-lined vaults under Fortress Wapping, never to be seen again.
Since media corporations have become unelected fiefdoms with laws of their own, which exert huge political and economic power, and now, it emerges, have the capacity to spy on all of us, it is time they came under the same sort of scrutiny and regulation which other bodies of the same power and influence have to endure. In practise this might well mean disclosing all hidden archives of images and other data under amended Freedom of Information law. Then we might discover how many stories the media have suppressed over the years, what their political implications might have been, and even who killed Blair Peach. 'Public interest' my arse.
Then we would know how 'Fair and Balanced' they have been, and even why.
The price might well be to discover just how widespread this abuse of power has become - because if the hacks at the News of the World can do it, there is no reason why their counterparts in other newspapers can't. We might have to face the systemic sleaze of a profit-driven media market, which will not be a pretty sight. But that would be a price most decent people would be prepared to pay.