I’m still in shock after hearing that the News of the World is to close. As a young cub reporter I used to admire its undercover work and stand against injustice. However, in its desperation for sales and survival, it overstretched the limits of human decency, arousing national revulsion – and a swift withdrawal from advertisers. Its fate was sealed.
I wonder how many more sickening revelations would have unfolded over the next few days, and I hope that those responsible are still held to account for their illegal phone hacking activities.
I remember once being asked to “doorstep” Clive James for the News of the World. I was commissioned by them to call at his house in Cambridge with a tape recorder and ask about reported sightings of him being seen Latin American dancing with a lady.
I shook as I rang his doorbell, feeling a bit of a lowlife, and felt even worse after his daughter answered who I had taken under my wing when she did work experience at the Cambridge News where I was working at the time. I could barely look into her face as I explained why I was there, and had get her answer on a tape recorder. Thankfully, her parents were out, and I scuttled off, unable to hold my head up high.
This work was not for me, but even with the demise of the News of the World, it’s still the bread and butter stuff of our other tabloids. As the debate over super injunctions continues too, our media’s reputation is as low as it gets. However, it’s still a vital core for our democracy and most journalists are decent and professional and pushed beyond the limits to get a scoop. But the deliberate invasion of privacy by phone tapping of individuals in the most terrible circumstances takes the gutter press to an all-time low.
I am personally against newspapers paying for stories. If this was banned, it would no longer feed the parasite that feeds the media…..
I think this is important, Ellee: why did you continue to do the door-stepping when you didn’t want to and knew it was wrong?
Hi Pip, it was a one-off! I didn’t do any more door-stepping for the NoW.
“But the deliberate invasion of privacy by phone tapping of individuals in the most terrible circumstances takes the gutter press to an all-time low”. I absolutely agree with you.
As someone deep in marketing / PR, presumably you have had a very cosy relationship with the media you now cannot abide, not to mention making money out of Soham.
I bet you don’t print this story!
spose the express is above all wrong-doing?
http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/135069/I-m-the-Soham-psychic%20?%3E
Ellee I dont think it was anything to do with ” fighting for sales and survival ” .
I think it was in the main by Murdock deciding to put an ex secretary into the job of editor of what was a highly succesful and long established newspaper that had a great reputation for sorting out the low life inc politicians .
The woman has neither the background nor the ability to fulfill such a role ( stupid old fool comes to mind regarding Rupert Murdock and a fat lot of good its done him )
She is clearly mainly driven by a distorted view of her own ability as well as a blatant desire to mix with top people .
Of course this includes David Cameron .
The mans an equal idiot who clearly has no judgement , what on earth did he think he was playing at getting so close to Colson and Rebeka Wade , he even went to her wedding !
This will come back to haunt him again and again as did Iraq with Blair.
Bet there are those on the back benches even now planning his demise .
As for those now dancing on the grave of the News of the World such as Prescott and Hugh Grant ( Cameron has it seems invited that boyo round to Number 10 to talk about this isssue , hes absolutely bonkers ) you would think messing about with your underlings for years at the tax payers expence and having oral sex with a prostitute made them victims not low life.
There a huge amount of pure unadultarated hypocracy going on in the country.
Why did so many people buy the paper ?
Where and how did they imagine it got its stories from , a nursery rhyme book .
They really didnt give it a thought when it concerned ” celebrities ”
Hacking , paying bent coppers , didnt matter a bit but the minute they find that it was also used on ” ordinary folk ” they go off at the deep in .
Dont get me wrong , what the paper has done is horrible and had to be dealt with but there was no need to close it down .
The 250 or so staff have Im sure really done nothing wrong of late .
If Murdock had sacked Rebekah Wade / Brookes at the start of the week the boil would have been properly lanced and no doubt all the staff jobs would have been saved.
Instead ghe decided to hang on to her , why ?
Is it to act as a buffer between his son and the fall out that might have been the end also for him ?
The real bad news on all of this is that we are now in danger of having a muted press ,scared stiff to do real investigative work in the future .
We should remember it was one of the great British papers that got to the bottom of the MPs expenses story not the BBC .
Cameron is already homing in on the free press by getting rid of the Press Complaints Commision .
I expect that he will not be unhappy if the press was hampered in being able to bring him amd many others to book when required.
Why do we think he was cosying up ( like others before him ) it was Im sure it was to try to influence the Murdock empire to go easy on him and his plans for government.
This is a very sad day for free speech .
I fear that we will also soon see other papers financially struggling as they were dependent of the N of the W to keep them afloat with its profatability.
I told you the Tories had picked the wrong man .David Davies must be cock a hoop .
If they didn’t pay then they wouldn’t get stories. Remember that the veracity of the stories is not in question. It’s the phone-hacking methods – particularly where it’s used against small/innocent people.
‘Arousing national revulsion’ ???
Well I’ve done a straw poll of my depot and my social group and none of them are angry about this. They are angry about gas and water bills, immigration, crime, EU meddling (those are the subjects I hear people ranting about) but not telephone-hacking.
The moral outrage is being hyped and engineered by politicians and broadcast media types who have the ‘right wing’ tabloids in their sights. They couldn’t do it on superinjunctions, exposing bent politicians et al because the public were (rightly) glad of the NotW’s work. So now they’re starting to push through a takeover of the print media on a ‘justice for Milly’ ticket – or a ‘justice for war dead ticket’.
Are we seriously to believe that people will take to the streets in favour of press censorship in the same numbers that they did in protest against the Iraq war or a ban on fox hunting ? Yet those two causes were completely ignored. The likes of Shirley Williams stating on QT “The public will not wait for a delayed inquiry” What cack ! They’ve had to accept being ignored over their open desire for a judicial inqiry into the ‘dodgy dossier’ or MP’s expenses but – with no shred of evidence that the public wants one -but, by golly, they’re going to get a judicial inquiry (and likely government press controlls resulting) on phone-hacking. Why ? Because the politicians and celebs are itching to emasculate the free press.
So it’s OK to send a soldier to fight an illegal war, ill equipped, underpaid – our politicians will continue to quaff subsidised wine on the Westminster terrace. They don’t really give a shit if he comes back mutilated, better for all if he gets killed outright (don’t have to contest rehab and compo bills that way) “Wooton Bassett has become an embarassment. Get his body out of the back door at RAF Lynham instead.”
But woe betide any hack who intercepts his voice mail. All of a sudden the politicos get out of their prams then. Why ? Do they think that this is the worst insult that this soldier has had to endure ? Because it most certainly isn’t. I smell a rat.
The indignance and outrage is entirely false. They smell the blood of the tabloids and now is the opportunity to silence the one last bastion of our democracy.
I’ve been expecting this for some while now. The completion of the death of our democratic nation and absorption into the EUSSR.
Our grandchildren (if not our own children) will live in the shadow of gulags.
PS, There might not have been such an appetite for salacious press gossip had Shirley Williams not dumbed down our education system.
The main issue is being missed. The celebrities and many politicians have been out to emasculate the tabloid press for some while now.
They see this as their opportunity to do so. They have already started to tar all journals with the same brush. Censorship may well come to pass.
Spot on Kevin , especially about the military who continue to be shafted by the bl–dy politicos
My son in law goes to Afghanistan in a months time and we are all afraid for him and his men .
Cameron doesnt give a stuff about them hes even talking about pulling out a good number of them soon.
All this will do is leave the rest with not enough troops to be able to do the job they have been landed with , that also means that those left will be in even more danger .
I hate this damned gov.as full of the proverbial as Blair ever was but under the pretence that they are Conservatives .
An interesting memory, Ellee. It’s a shame that all journalists are now being regarded in a bad light, as you say.
You could always “demonstrate” your opinion as I have done. Following the press debacle over the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989, I was that disgusted with how the press handled the reporting of the disaster that I have not bought any newspapers since, and I have no intention of buying another one for as long as I live.
The whole story has now turned into a farce. Father Murdoch, son Murdoch and their ex-employee, Rebekah Brooks will appear before parliament next week to answer questions. Now that the FBI and Scotland Yard are involved, Rupert Murdoch will obviously use the huge publicity next week to bring any unwelcome skeletons out of the cupboards of the accusing UK politicians and onto the TV sets, YouTube, laptops, and mobiles all over the world. He’s lost the BSkyB takeover battle. He’s lost the News of the World and the Democrats will see that he loses the Wall Street Journal.
He’s got nothing more to lose and so he’s looking forward to have his say, next week, to an audience of 200 million people!
Spot on , next week will be Murdocks time for revenge.
Bet he know every murky little secret of everyone on the committee . Keith Vaz should be very very worried !
Its getting worse by the hour for ” call me Dave ”
It seems that months after Andy Coulson had had to resign he was being wined and dined by the PM at Chequers .
The mans judgement is non existent .
It seems he also had Chris Huhne and his strange mistress there as well and we also know that he went horse riding with his pal Rebekah !
How long do we give Cameron in the job ?
If they’d made you editor, this would never have happened.
The NoW was a vile paper that engaged in criminal activities to get stories. Some were important, others were trivia. They should have used professional journalism. Can we hope a more responsible paper is born out of the ashes?
Its pure snobery to call the News of the World bad names.
You read any of the papers broadshheet ot tabloid and you will find the same types of stories in all though some using longer words .
The paper was the first to provide information to the recently educated working class and to this day was still in the main read by the same.
It actually did much good investagative journalism and its only the narrow minded that are cheering its demise.
There is a huge amount of sheer hypocracy going on regarding the hacking especially by the politicians who are simply having their revenge on the newspapers who uncovered just how shabby is the world of Westminster .Cash for questions , expenses claims grubby little affairs with secretaries , bisexuals and rent boys ,etc etc , as was said on It aint half hot mum , they dont like it up um .
They sent our lads out to illegal wars and without the right equipment and when they get home take away their tiny financial perks , who are the real villians here , not Murdock and Co for sure .
It will be interesting to see Tuesdays select comm. meeting .
That slippery individual Keith Vaz is a joke to be chairing it given his own past record.
Who is he or any of the them to be a judge of others with their own shameful records of not stopping bad behaviour.
I hope Rupert gives it to them with both barrels when they start getting clever with him .
The NOTW was the paper for whom the phrase ‘gutter press’ should (or was) invented for. It’s stories were mainly celebrities whom we caried little about and who they were in bed with next. Hardly of any concern to it’s broadsheet rivals. It DID get some real scoops, which did have a resounding effect on some people, as did all papers at some time.
The fact is hacking is a criminal offence. Their reporters went over the line with the Milly Dowler, and possibly 9/11 victims.
What needs to be exposed now are all those hiding behind super injunctions.