07 Jul 2011, 11:21 am
Well, it looks like a tactical decision. Apparently there were rumours that in order to cut costs News International were likely to merge the Sun (Mon-Sat) with the News of the World. Now it seems that they can do that and try and throw a bone to the baying masses.
Will it be a meaty enough bone?
As far as I am aware, in the USA journalists tend to go through journalistic courses at college, in which they are taught ethics (just as lawyers and doctors are). But in the UK, they tend not to have done this - our degrees tend to be single-subject anyway, and there are few 'journalism' degrees, although 'Media Studies' is a course that can be taken and yet at the same time is massively maligned.
So I expect that our journalists are far less scrupulous about ethics to start with on average. But tabloids are driven to sell salacious stories and sensationalised views. In a time when 24-hr news renders normal stories old hat before presses can be warmed up, and when the internet can deliver gossip globally in seconds, dead-tree tabloids have a major problem. The responses have included trying to beat everyone else to the stories and find ones that no-one else can. To do this they appear to have used illegal methods.
What you may not realize, Steve, is that it's the profits from the tabloids that help prop up the other papers in the empire. The Times & Sunday Times over here make a loss, about equivalent to the profits from the Sun and NotW. If it wasn't for the tabloids, the quality papers would go under, but the quality papers are what gives the group gravitas. Still, the decline in newspaper sales has been a concern for some time. Desperate times, it seems.
Steve, you describe the investigation as 'embryonic'. The claims concern a period covering 2001-2007, and the police were involved from 2006. If it's still at a stage we'd describe as 'embryonic' then that itself is a massive scandal.
In the announcement made by James Murdoch concerning the closure of NotW, he admitted several failings on behalf of not just the journalists, but the newspaper and the owning group. It's not that they simply didn't detect wrongdoing, it is that they paid people off rather than admit failings; that they told parliamentary and police enquiries that nothing bad was happening beyond a single 'rogue reporter'. Their position is, of course that their sins are only of omission.
However, I mentioned Rebekah Brooks before - she heads News International and Rupert Murdoch a day or so ago said that the company would investigate internally 'under her leadership'. Given that she was editor for some of the time, and is subject to some of the allegations, this seems highly irregular. I can't think any company would be considered ethical if it allowed someone to preside over investigations into wrongdoing that they themselves are accused of complicity (at best) in.
I think this aspect of it is worrying. It's not just the culture of one grubby tabloid, but the corporate ethics of the Group that are in question. While US print journalists may be better coached in ethics, are US media company executives?
Will it be a meaty enough bone?
As far as I am aware, in the USA journalists tend to go through journalistic courses at college, in which they are taught ethics (just as lawyers and doctors are). But in the UK, they tend not to have done this - our degrees tend to be single-subject anyway, and there are few 'journalism' degrees, although 'Media Studies' is a course that can be taken and yet at the same time is massively maligned.
So I expect that our journalists are far less scrupulous about ethics to start with on average. But tabloids are driven to sell salacious stories and sensationalised views. In a time when 24-hr news renders normal stories old hat before presses can be warmed up, and when the internet can deliver gossip globally in seconds, dead-tree tabloids have a major problem. The responses have included trying to beat everyone else to the stories and find ones that no-one else can. To do this they appear to have used illegal methods.
What you may not realize, Steve, is that it's the profits from the tabloids that help prop up the other papers in the empire. The Times & Sunday Times over here make a loss, about equivalent to the profits from the Sun and NotW. If it wasn't for the tabloids, the quality papers would go under, but the quality papers are what gives the group gravitas. Still, the decline in newspaper sales has been a concern for some time. Desperate times, it seems.
Steve, you describe the investigation as 'embryonic'. The claims concern a period covering 2001-2007, and the police were involved from 2006. If it's still at a stage we'd describe as 'embryonic' then that itself is a massive scandal.
In the announcement made by James Murdoch concerning the closure of NotW, he admitted several failings on behalf of not just the journalists, but the newspaper and the owning group. It's not that they simply didn't detect wrongdoing, it is that they paid people off rather than admit failings; that they told parliamentary and police enquiries that nothing bad was happening beyond a single 'rogue reporter'. Their position is, of course that their sins are only of omission.
However, I mentioned Rebekah Brooks before - she heads News International and Rupert Murdoch a day or so ago said that the company would investigate internally 'under her leadership'. Given that she was editor for some of the time, and is subject to some of the allegations, this seems highly irregular. I can't think any company would be considered ethical if it allowed someone to preside over investigations into wrongdoing that they themselves are accused of complicity (at best) in.
I think this aspect of it is worrying. It's not just the culture of one grubby tabloid, but the corporate ethics of the Group that are in question. While US print journalists may be better coached in ethics, are US media company executives?
