Murdock's Dowler Tsunami
Murdock’s Dowler Tsunami.
The long running newspaper the ‘News of the World’ at 168 years, has been closed because of an initial quiescent small scandal that has opened up the illegal and dubious practices that elements of this paper employed to make news. That the practices were probably also undertaken by other papers is still to be proven, does not mean that they are all clear of similar malpractice in endeavouring to bring scooped news to the populace.
Will the closure of this paper be missed; it is unlikely, other than by those readers that regularly purchased that paper for its tits, bums, chumps, sleaze, exposes, scuttle-bugs and bent news, little of which was uncensored by editorial slants to hype what it thought readers wanted. Moreover, unfortunately what they wanted to dish out appealed to a great many people given its circulation of 8M in the 1950s down to 3m at it closure today, yet a circulation that was by far higher than any other paper. In this aspect most readers of the paper were in the lowest social classes and band in the age group around 25 – 44 years old making up 41% of its readership.
Again the question, will it be missed or alternatively indeed what function did it and perhaps other papers do in performance of bringing the news to public attention?
In a short time past, the only means of raising attention to ‘the news’ was via word of mouth, pamphlets and more successfully by radio and newspapers. In a purely news reporting role they did a very important job, thrusting into the public domain the affairs of the nation and world events to a public that had no others means of knowing what was going on. From the 1900s, the papers increasingly became not just news reports but influential in the power that they had to lay on the reading public, interpretation of events and each paper had its own particular favourite persuasive tone. That this was not un-noticed by Politian’s was evident in the attention paid by all senior Politian’s in courting the ‘media barons’ of the day. It soon became apparent that after the 2ww no government could ignore that use to which the newspapers coverage could be put, as a vehicle of political pressure for their own ends however a 'quid pro quo' arrangement came into play that soon got out of control with illusions of authority and balance of power. The duplicitous arrangement became secretly tendentious and overtime the government, for political dogmatic reasons looking to foster market supremacy, gave way to pressures of media self-interest to allow a concentration of media influence to fall into too few hands, the most powerful of which, became News international. From this power base an unhealthy renegade was born.
For too long political influence and governments thought that papers could make their case for electoral support or actually undermine their arguments to effect a shift in core voters sufficient to make a difference in winning an election or not.
Although all governments since the 1900s have fallen into the duplicitous trap of dependency it appears that it was the conservatives’ party and its dogma that held the most sway with many of the papers and barons supporting their particular mood. This support was always under a off the record form of détente cordial that was hardly ever referred to and difficult to deny pandering to.
Up to the James Murdock Mac Taggart lecture of 2009, both elements, political and media, kept their public place however the charade was broken when he asked for the virtual vivisection of the BBC and OfT (Office of fair trading) because they were too powerful. They stood in the path of progress, stifled digital media, operated in areas that the private sector covered and being reliant on the taxpayer was in effect, “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it," he said.
Soon after this the new ‘condem’ government started the process of cutting back the budget of the BBC, told it to drop services and pay for the roll out of digital media and it laid down the pathway to abolish the OfT . All this chimed with the long-standing distrust that the Conservative had against the BBC and its own continuing privatisation sell off agenda, that now included getting rid of the BBC. Disregarding the fact that as a public service the public mostly trusted its independence, it had a depth of coverage via radio and TV into nearly every home in the UK and was essentially ‘free’ it was this that was what he wanted to stop in favour of News International and BskyB and its extension of monolithic control of media news.
From this and other activities it became obvious that both the government and the news corporation were acting in unison to a common goal. Nothing was to be made publicly evident other than the application of the famous nudge tactic to slowly move forward the strategy of the transfer of media power to a digital provider and wither the position of free public paid media access.
Such was the clear objective as a challenge to the continuance of independent news reporting and papers that only one The Guardian saw the impending implication and started a challenge to wake the public and politicians up the danger that was being allowed to be created. It was ignored. Ignored until a small item of celebrity phone hacking became exposed, the implications of which were again strangely ignored by all until evidence came to light that clearly showed the extent to which the NOW would go too, seemingly unimpeded, to generate news. Although some players were made the fall guys and activities ‘smoothed over’, the intent was to bury the nefarious activities of NOW, the cosy links with senior Politian’s and by association News International.
The public having a short media memory and generally no strategic connective ability in political or corporate terms would have moved onto other matters of limited interest and this would have suited all main participants nicely until the murder of Milly Dowler and the subsequent abhorrent behaviour of hacking and deleting from her own phone, while a police investigation was still under way, text. This together with later revelation of the wide extent of the illegal activities and the cover-up that politicians, police and NI media participated in to avoid scrutiny of the activities being voiced by The Guardian and a few back bench MPs; was enough to raise the distaste of the public, at last.
It is, and possible will always be true that, as has been said before, it only takes good people to remain silent, to suffer, to look the other way for evil to stride forward and sadly this has been the case now. But it can take just one event of such ignoble magnitude that strikes at the sensibilities of such good people that a wave of wrath sweeps in to force a realignment of attitudes and bring justice.
What happened to Milly Dowler and the infringement of her person that did not seek a public stage, was such an event. Unknown to her and possibly the greatest thing she may have unwittingly done was to raise the wrath of a tsunami in her name. It is to be hoped that it does not just end with the scurrying around now of guilty conscious, the realignment of a balanced media and the re-education of people like Murdock and those directly responsible but also it should extend to the activities of other large corporate lobbyist that also attempt to circumvent and bend the political power to serve their own interest against the betterment of the public. However any investigation is not likely to go further than this tsunami against the Murdoch debacle.
© Renot 2011
147111500
The long running newspaper the ‘News of the World’ at 168 years, has been closed because of an initial quiescent small scandal that has opened up the illegal and dubious practices that elements of this paper employed to make news. That the practices were probably also undertaken by other papers is still to be proven, does not mean that they are all clear of similar malpractice in endeavouring to bring scooped news to the populace.
Will the closure of this paper be missed; it is unlikely, other than by those readers that regularly purchased that paper for its tits, bums, chumps, sleaze, exposes, scuttle-bugs and bent news, little of which was uncensored by editorial slants to hype what it thought readers wanted. Moreover, unfortunately what they wanted to dish out appealed to a great many people given its circulation of 8M in the 1950s down to 3m at it closure today, yet a circulation that was by far higher than any other paper. In this aspect most readers of the paper were in the lowest social classes and band in the age group around 25 – 44 years old making up 41% of its readership.
Again the question, will it be missed or alternatively indeed what function did it and perhaps other papers do in performance of bringing the news to public attention?
In a short time past, the only means of raising attention to ‘the news’ was via word of mouth, pamphlets and more successfully by radio and newspapers. In a purely news reporting role they did a very important job, thrusting into the public domain the affairs of the nation and world events to a public that had no others means of knowing what was going on. From the 1900s, the papers increasingly became not just news reports but influential in the power that they had to lay on the reading public, interpretation of events and each paper had its own particular favourite persuasive tone. That this was not un-noticed by Politian’s was evident in the attention paid by all senior Politian’s in courting the ‘media barons’ of the day. It soon became apparent that after the 2ww no government could ignore that use to which the newspapers coverage could be put, as a vehicle of political pressure for their own ends however a 'quid pro quo' arrangement came into play that soon got out of control with illusions of authority and balance of power. The duplicitous arrangement became secretly tendentious and overtime the government, for political dogmatic reasons looking to foster market supremacy, gave way to pressures of media self-interest to allow a concentration of media influence to fall into too few hands, the most powerful of which, became News international. From this power base an unhealthy renegade was born.
For too long political influence and governments thought that papers could make their case for electoral support or actually undermine their arguments to effect a shift in core voters sufficient to make a difference in winning an election or not.
Although all governments since the 1900s have fallen into the duplicitous trap of dependency it appears that it was the conservatives’ party and its dogma that held the most sway with many of the papers and barons supporting their particular mood. This support was always under a off the record form of détente cordial that was hardly ever referred to and difficult to deny pandering to.
Up to the James Murdock Mac Taggart lecture of 2009, both elements, political and media, kept their public place however the charade was broken when he asked for the virtual vivisection of the BBC and OfT (Office of fair trading) because they were too powerful. They stood in the path of progress, stifled digital media, operated in areas that the private sector covered and being reliant on the taxpayer was in effect, “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it," he said.
Soon after this the new ‘condem’ government started the process of cutting back the budget of the BBC, told it to drop services and pay for the roll out of digital media and it laid down the pathway to abolish the OfT . All this chimed with the long-standing distrust that the Conservative had against the BBC and its own continuing privatisation sell off agenda, that now included getting rid of the BBC. Disregarding the fact that as a public service the public mostly trusted its independence, it had a depth of coverage via radio and TV into nearly every home in the UK and was essentially ‘free’ it was this that was what he wanted to stop in favour of News International and BskyB and its extension of monolithic control of media news.
From this and other activities it became obvious that both the government and the news corporation were acting in unison to a common goal. Nothing was to be made publicly evident other than the application of the famous nudge tactic to slowly move forward the strategy of the transfer of media power to a digital provider and wither the position of free public paid media access.
Such was the clear objective as a challenge to the continuance of independent news reporting and papers that only one The Guardian saw the impending implication and started a challenge to wake the public and politicians up the danger that was being allowed to be created. It was ignored. Ignored until a small item of celebrity phone hacking became exposed, the implications of which were again strangely ignored by all until evidence came to light that clearly showed the extent to which the NOW would go too, seemingly unimpeded, to generate news. Although some players were made the fall guys and activities ‘smoothed over’, the intent was to bury the nefarious activities of NOW, the cosy links with senior Politian’s and by association News International.
The public having a short media memory and generally no strategic connective ability in political or corporate terms would have moved onto other matters of limited interest and this would have suited all main participants nicely until the murder of Milly Dowler and the subsequent abhorrent behaviour of hacking and deleting from her own phone, while a police investigation was still under way, text. This together with later revelation of the wide extent of the illegal activities and the cover-up that politicians, police and NI media participated in to avoid scrutiny of the activities being voiced by The Guardian and a few back bench MPs; was enough to raise the distaste of the public, at last.
It is, and possible will always be true that, as has been said before, it only takes good people to remain silent, to suffer, to look the other way for evil to stride forward and sadly this has been the case now. But it can take just one event of such ignoble magnitude that strikes at the sensibilities of such good people that a wave of wrath sweeps in to force a realignment of attitudes and bring justice.
What happened to Milly Dowler and the infringement of her person that did not seek a public stage, was such an event. Unknown to her and possibly the greatest thing she may have unwittingly done was to raise the wrath of a tsunami in her name. It is to be hoped that it does not just end with the scurrying around now of guilty conscious, the realignment of a balanced media and the re-education of people like Murdock and those directly responsible but also it should extend to the activities of other large corporate lobbyist that also attempt to circumvent and bend the political power to serve their own interest against the betterment of the public. However any investigation is not likely to go further than this tsunami against the Murdoch debacle.
© Renot 2011
147111500
Labels: Dowler, Murdock, News of the World., Tsunami
posted by Renot at 11:34 pm
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