News International

The big story these days is the major unravelling of News International following the triggering news that came out in the trial of Levi Belfield, the man convicted of murdering 13 year-old schoolgirl Millie Dowler. It was revealed that a person or persons working for the News of the World had accessed and in fact deleted messages on the girl's phone after she went missing. The repeated activity led police to believe she was accessing her voice mail, and thus, it's implied, thinking of her as a runaway rather than an abductee in the first few days of her disappearance.
Then we learn her family's phones were also hacked.
And the whole scandal picks up momentum.
We knew they'd been doing it to movie stars, royalty, cheating sports personalities, and we knew there had been investigations. But celebrities don't tug at the heartstrings like a bereaved family of ordinary people, people like us.
And so it rolls on, this crumbling of a once-mighty empire. It thought itself untouchable. It thought politicians were in its pocket, it thought it owned the police.
But now it seems the politicians fear the people more than the Murdoch empire, and that empire is crashing around his ears. The first step of damage limitation was to announce that News of the World would print its last edition, 168 years from its inception. The staff mostly heard about it from the BBC, before their employers told them.
People were resigning too, an inch before they were pushed. Police chiefs. bent detectives.
Then we hear that just prior to announcing the death of news of the world, they've registered web domains for "The Sun on Sunday". Ha! so they think they'll just fill the void with another, indistinguishable paper with a different name? Business as usual?
Oh no.
The prime minister's erstwhile aide, a man with links to the phone tapping is arrested, but hey. they're non-denominational, they've cultivated pals of whatever stripe, dined with the scions of labour as well as the conservatives, oh yes, they'd all thought inviting the tiger to dinner was a good idea, appeasement on a grand scale.
Well. It looks as though it's all over in Britain for Murdoch's business empire. He owns the Wall Street journal too, and Fox News, a network not  famed for journalistic integrity. Now it seems there are allegations that News International played the same hacking tricks with the phones of 9/11 victims and their families, of fire crews, police, medical personnel. The FBI is investigating.

I can't see the company surviving in the U.S. if these stories prove to be true.

Few tears will be shed for Murdoch's losses. I don't imagine this ushers in a new wave of honest press, but I'm glad that some of the scummiest journalists around have reaped their just rewards, and will find no other paper dare employ them.

I never read the News of the World, it's always been an offensive rag. Good riddance.