Well, I know that I posted one of these only yesterday, but there's been lots of things happening today in the news which has made me ponder things and I thought I'd share these musings with the people/person who may read this.
Today, the News of the World had to close after 168 years in publishing. Now, I'm not going to talk about the morality and what they did or anything- the phone hacking of murdered school children, criminals etc was dispicable and horrible, so I'm glad that the paper's been brought to justice. However, surely it was the people involved in the editing of the paper who should have been punished, rather than the actual publication itself (my personal opinion of the quality of this shall be inferred). Surely, the paper itself is completely innocent, it's the editors, investigators, hackers and writers involved in the relevant stories that should have been punished. The editor, I believe, Rebekah Wade (was it? If I'm wrong, then correct me) was forced to quit, so she should be prosecuted now for it, rather than all of the people involved in the publication being published for a minority of people's balls-up. However, the closing down of the paper surely has very little impact at all, the News of the World was the Sunday version of the Sun. Now, the Sun is now going to be published on Sundays and the people in the company will now have similar jobs but as the Sun instead. Which, as a mate of mine put it, is "a bit like getting rid of Blair and bringing in Milliband." i.e. there's literally no difference underneath, just a slightly different face.
There should be something done to make sure that people who are in control of any media are more responsible than they are at the moment. People like Rupert Murdoch encouraging this king of phone hacking in order to get sensationalist scoops in order to try and scare people and move copies. He also needs to be brought to justice, no matter how powerful he may be and no matter how much control he may have over politicians in the country. (which I also believe is wrong; David Cameron should cut himself lose from the Murdoch empire and stop fearing the press)
Really all this is about is an excuse to change the name of a paper and to stereotype journalists as evil, immoral, phone hacking devils.
Although, one thing that I can say is good is that we can now listen to that classic by The Jam "News of the World" and be all ironic and "cool".
I still think its a cleaver move from Rupert Murdoch. A while ago he wanted to buy a larger share of bskyb but the shareholders wanted 50p a share more than what the value was actually worth.
ReplyDeleteBy closing NoW it should cause the share price of bskyb to fall significantly has there is some major problems.
Hence letting him buy bskyb at a much cheaper price he can cover his loss with NoW and gain his larger share at the same time
wayne