{"id":41310,"date":"2011-07-09T21:13:41","date_gmt":"2011-07-10T01:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=41310"},"modified":"2011-07-10T13:07:11","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T17:07:11","slug":"news-about-news-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/media\/news-about-news-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"(More) News about News of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you may have read, Sunday’s is the last edition of News of the World<\/em>, the British tabloid that been sacrificed to the escalating News Corp scandal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Cover of the last edition of News of the World, from the Twitter feed of former writer Rachel Richardson (RachelFabMag). The mother of all tabloids, News of the World has been in print since 1843. It's closure is a turning point in the history of scandal sheet journalism. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We got a tip that former News of the World journalists<\/em> were setting up independent blogs and Twitter feeds. Tracy Delaney, the author of the Serennu<\/a><\/strong> astrology research website, scoped out some of those new content streams and is linking them together through a special Twitter feed<\/strong><\/a>, which she’s still adding to. If you hear of anything that belongs there, please let me know. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, here is a recap written by Reuters<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are some less sentimental tweets from News of the World’s<\/em> detractors at #NOTW<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Here is a BBC compilation of News of the World<\/em> editors and News Corp executives issuing denial after denial at the parliamentary select committee hearings on phone hacking<\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n

I was trying to explain to my friend Dominick yesterday what News of the World<\/em> was, and a little about the culture of the British tabloids. There is absolutely no American equivalent (there is in Australia). These newspapers are like the The New York Post<\/em> mated with National Enquirer<\/em> digging into the lives of the most notable people in society, with no boundaries, no rules, no ethical framework, read by millions of people, pumped up on hormones and smoking some form of journalistic crack. My involvement in this culture happened over the course of four years as a horoscope writer standing in for Jonathan Cainer in two different titles, The Mail<\/em> and The Mirror<\/em>. These newspapers thrive in a viciously competitive environment that is digging for information any way that it can. The result can be all-out wars between the papers, with everyone being fair game.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of the more legitimate tabloid stories in recent years came out when Ryan Parry of The Mirror<\/em> posed as a royal footman<\/strong><\/a> and revealed how shoddy security was at Buckingham Palace (where he got the job, as a personal attendant to the royals, with only one fake reference). Ryan was one of the first people I tracked down in the UK when I arrived in 2004. We went out for beers near the Trinity Mirror headquarters, and he told me his adventure stories working as an undercover journalist (we were, at the time, writing for the same newspaper). He told me how the last thing he did before he quit and went public with the story was put mints on the pillow of Condaleeza Rice and other members of the U.S. diplomatic team that was visiting the UK at the time.<\/p>\n

“Good thing it was me,” he said with a little grin. The story was funny, embarrassing and considered fair play; in the United States you would be taken to Guantanamo if you did something like that. And this is one of the more legit, friendlier reporting methods.<\/p>\n

News of the World<\/em> thought nothing of hacking the phones of royals, families of terrorism victims, a young girl who was kidnapped and murdered, government ministers, members of parliament (MPs) or sports figures. News Corp itself seems to collect this kind of information on anyone of note, whether it plans to use it or not, and it has plenty on file to blackmail or threaten anyone it wants. The police are routinely bribed for information. These methods of journalism are more like what we think of as the mafia than what we think of as reporting; the people who carry it out make arguments about free press and how they do things ‘in the public’s interest’. That is always the excuse. In reality, of course, they are feeding on pain, suffering and embarrassment, and cultivating the appetite for such in the readers.<\/p>\n

As you may be reading, there are criminal investigations underway and there have been several arrests, even discussion of arresting James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son, for allowing all of this to go on unchecked.<\/p>\n

The result is that News Corp, owners of Fox News, has become a kind of global intimidation network, a private intelligence agency that nobody will stand up to because it has information on everyone. They sway public consciousness into supporting wars and then directly profit covering those wars, which are of course always good for circulation and ad revenue. The political process is subverted, and nobody really feels safe telling the truth. You keep your cards well hidden and hope that nobody has a reason to go after you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you may have read, Sunday’s is the last edition of News of the World, the British tabloid that been sacrificed to the escalating News Corp scandal. We got a tip that former News of the World journalists were setting up independent blogs and Twitter feeds. Tracy Delaney, the author of the Serennu astrology research … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[601],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}