Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Milly Dowler Family Pressures Rebekah Brooks to Quit News International

At Yorkshire Post, "Do honourable thing and quit, Dowlers urge Rebekah Brooks."

RELATED: There was a really good piece earlier at Pajamas Media, from Mike McNally, "Victory for the Anti-Murdoch Alliance as 'Phone Hacking' Scandal Shuts UK Tabloid."

... there’s a widespread sense of Schadenfreude at seeing a publication that dealt in scandal and sleaze brought down by a scandal of its own, and I’m certainly no fan of the paper. However, there’s a disturbing political dimension to this affair. Few are talking about it – understandably, as no-one wants to be seen as trying to defend the paper’s appalling behavior – but the crusade against the NoW has been driven at least as much by the desire to damage the Murdoch empire and Cameron’s Conservative government as by any concern for those whose phones were hacked, or for the reputation of British journalism.

After the 2007 court case and jailings, the phone hacking affair appeared to be closed. It was the left-wing Guardian newspaper which reopened the saga with a series of reports in July 2009 – and it’s no coincidence that this was at the time when it was becoming clear that Murdoch was switching his allegiance, and that of his papers, from the Labour Party to the Conservatives. The story was enthusiastically taken up by the BBC, which coordinated its coverage with the Guardian; both organizations saw the phone-hacking story as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to attack both a powerful rival media group, and (through the Cameron-Coulson connection) the Conservatives. Just for good measure, and lest anyone doubt the political and business motivations involved, the New York Times piled on last year.

Other UK news organisations were slow in taking up the story, either because they were Murdoch owned, or sympathetic to Cameron, or because they knew their own journalists had also engaged in phone hacking and other illegality. But with the BBC driving coverage on its prime-time broadcasts, 24-house news channel, and website, the story became impossible to ignore, and the chance to damage Murdoch became irresistible to other rivals. Coulson’s resignation was the first victory for the anti-Murdoch alliance, and they’ve been keeping up the pressure in a bid to derail News Corp’s bid to take a controlling stake in British satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
I find it revolting, but check the Guardian's coverage for more information. They're out for blood over there.

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