Holy crap! This week we found out jounalism ISN'T squeeky clean!
Not that we ever thought that of course. We're not idiots. Well, except you in the back there. But with the news this week that the News of The World has completely gone off the rails, in a fashion which Charlie Sheen himself has described as, "a bit much"*, I, as well as pretty much most of the people who have read/heard/tweeted, am genuinely shocked.
For those of you that are part of the 1% that are uninformed (or not from the UK), the Sunday tabloid 'News of The World' has been accused of paying private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, to hack into the answering machines and voicemails of the parents of murder victim Milly Dowler. We were all shocked. We knew that tabloid's were not saint-like, but how low COULD they go?
Then, in what can only be described as them saying "challenge accepted!" We found out it wasn't just Milly Dowler's parents. Day by day this week it seemed like the NoTW tried to out-do itself in this how-to-be-a-git-olympics. It was also the families of the July 7th London Bombings. Then it was the families of our dead servicemen and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. I'd say words fail me, but then this would be a pretty short blog. We then found out that it was common practice that NoTW was paying corrupt police officers for information which in turn led to stories. (Good to see that the police watch 'The Shield' too by the way).
Anger! Rage! So who's to blame for all of this?! Glenn Mulcaire? The journalists who paid him?..
...or possibly the two editors-in-chief over the past ten years, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson? Probably all of the above, but lets look at the editors because personally I feel these are the most culpable in my opinion.
Coulson has already been accused once already for authorising hacking the phones of a smattering of celebrities that nobody cares about earlier this year. So he's clearly knowledgeable of the practices. But it has been argued that he was only carrying on the work of his predeccessor Rebekah Brooks, and I for one agree.
But...PLOT TWIST! Both former editors are claiming that they didn't have a clue that this was going on. They didn't know that P.I's were being paid, with company money, to the tune of £100,000 over x-amount of years, to hack in to people's voicemails to get a story for their journalists.
...What?
How in the hell did they not know about it? It had to be company money, because ask any journalist, they earn sweet FA for their craft. Those editors authorised those payments. Also I have a degree in journalism, and in my three years at university studying the subject, I don't ever once remember taking the module, 'How to siphon thousands of pounds from under your editor's nose without them knowing 101'. I'm no expert (I only got a 2:2), but that just cannot happen.
So what happened next? Well Murdoch jr. (no doubt with orders from daddy Rupert) decided to shut the whole newspaper down. Gone. July 10th is the last edition. No ifs no buts.
I for one am in two minds as to whether this is a good thing. Before you get ready with the pitchforks and screams of "BUT THEY'RE BASTARDS MIKE!" let me say this. The NoTW needed to be punished, and I guess in a way, this is punishing it. However, I feel for all of the journalists who are currently employed there. They are innocent in regards to the phone hacking scandals that have happened in years gone by, because most of the staff there now were not around when all of this depravity was going on.
But the reason I feel most for them is that Rebekah Brooks has been told that her job is safe at News International by Murdoch. The head of this beast gets to survive, yet the people on the ground have been told to clear their desks. That just doesn't sit right with me at all.
So what now? We've been promised a public enquiry after the police undertake their own enquiry into this entire sordid mess. I've heard people say that Brooks and Coulson will get away with it scott-free. And that Murdoch will just fill his now vacant Sunday slot with a Sunday version of NoTW's sister weekly print 'The Sun'.
Who knows? I just hope there is some sort of ramifications for the people involed. But more importantly, that people don't start losing every ounce of faith in journalists. They're not all bad people y'know. Remember, it was journalists from The Guardian that uncovered this wrong-doing in the first place.
I guess we won't know until the fallout has settled, but I for one haven't lost my faith in real journalists. I just hope that everyone else doesn't.
*Disclaimer - I am lying. Duh.
