The News Of The End

The News of the World was first published in 1843, and it's about to be killed off. It seems to be a cynical move by News International, to attempt to hide behind the end of one title but keeping what it did under another name, with a streamlined staff running alongside those of the Sun. Which they'd announced they were looking at doing if I remember right. I'd assume that some of the staff of the News of the World will be offered jobs on a new title, but not all. And I doubt anyone getting made redundant as a result of this will get much more than the minimum pay off required by law, News International could afford more easily, but I get the impression the Murdochs are look after the pennies types and if they can save a few quid all the better. I've been through some redundancies, including surviving one where a whole load of friends wound up being paid off. That's unpleasant, and your senior management don't lose a penny or a second of sleep over it. It's a shit thing to go through however it works out.

Whatever you think of the paper itself, and it is/was a rag which printed a fair amount of shit and unpleasant stories, it wasn't any worse than a few other papers that are still out there. If the illegality had been stopped, and we assume they stopped hacking after Coulson resigned and the "Rogue Reporter" was jailed, then why close it now? Just to make yourself look better, and attempt to protect the people at the head of the paper it would appear. Sacrifice the people who were doing the jobs you were paying them to do, and more importantly ASKED or TOLD them to do to save the necks of those who were in the positions of responsibility who you need to protect to save your own necks. It's disgraceful behaviour, although I suppose you don't get to the positions of power without being a complete bastard in one way or another.

There is still a lot to come out on this whole story, the hacking parts can't get much worse, there was no reason for them to hack Milly Dowlers phone, the police would have been checking it you'd think, so by deleting messages to check for stories they were in a sense perverting justice. Doesn't get much worse than that really, although perjury is also a possibility with regard to the Tommy Sheridan case apparently. But this isn't the fault of the journalists, you could even blame the press generally. We're proud of our freedom of the press, to write what they want without fear. And they give us who premiership footballers are shagging, what the stars of big brother are doing now, and other crap I'm not interested in. Although it seems plenty are, how many people buy Heat Magazine after all? That's an argument I may make sometime, but not today.

The people working at the News of the World have been cut adrift, to try to save the News International empire, to put a cover on it where they can say we've dealt with it, that title no longer exists so nothing else needs to happen. This should not be the end of things, there are issues with the bribery of police, paying for information to corrupt cops, hacking phones as what appears to be a matter of course. And the management of the time who were at best operating the US army model of Don't Ask, Don't Tell with regard to the illegal acts. They need to answer the questions, they should not be protected at the expense of the staff of the News of the World. I hope they've maxed any corporate credit cards they had access to and are getting rat arsed somewhere. I hope they find some other workplace that treats them better. It may have been a rag, but that was under the command of the proprieter. And he's apparently going nowhere. And neither is his lieutenant so far.