And now the backlash against the backlash has started. Last night on Twitter, Alan Sugar appeared to suggest that Rebekah Brook's resignation from News International should be an end to the whole thing. This morning, Jeremy Clarkson has come to the defence of the tabloid press, warning "we may well end up with a press that can't expose a thing." Why I should still be interested or irritated by anything Clarkson says after all these years is anyone's guess, but this kind of nonsense beggars belief even coming from him.
Even after the last two weeks, it appears that the tabloid press still don't get it. This isn't just about phone hacking, and it isn't a freedom of the press issue either. In a free society, we all have the right to free speech but we don't automatically have the right to a massive platform from where we can abuse that right to manipulate others. And the right to free speech doesn't come with the right to violate the law either.
The phone hacking scandal is just the latest in a long line of examples where the tabloid press has violated the right of privacy in order to sell newspapers. It has nothing to do with "the public interest" when reporters hide cameras in women's bathrooms in order to see if they're doing cocaine. It has nothing to do with the public interest when police are paid for information on celebrity arrests. It has nothing to do with the public interest when a reporter dresses up as a sheikh in order to entrap people into committing crimes in public. It certainly has nothing to do with the public interest when they print medical details of the prime minister's son having cystic fibrosis (and however that story was obtained, it still should not have been published). This is about one thing, and one thing only: selling newspapers.
The defenders of the tabloid press are so out of touch, they don't realise that this isn't only about the phone hacking anymore. Members of the public have been complaining for years about the focus on celebrity and the cut-throat approach of tabloid reporters. Whilst politicians, celebrities and other journalists have been restrained by fear of the tabloid press, the general public has been clamouring for years for something to be done about it. Murdoch and his cronies have abused the "freedom of the press" argument, not to expose truth but instead to fuel people's love of gossip and prejudice.
It is terrible, yes, that some pathetic excuse for a human being thought it was okay to hack Milly Dowler's phone. And yes, it's a good thing that Rebekah Brooks has now resigned. But it doesn't even scratch the surface. Taken together, the accumulated stories reveal a newspaper that felt a sense of entitlement when it came to accessing private information, a culture fuelled by arrogance and disregard for the human consequences. That's why, unlike many in the press, I will not mourn the News of the World. Even if nobody working there in 2011 ever had any knowledge of phone hacking, these were still people who used unscrupulous means to violate the privacy of mostly innocent people. These were people who sought to manipulate the political agenda, to sit in judgement of celebrities and ordinary people and to ultimately sell as many newspapers as possible without ever taking responsibility for the consequences. The final News of the World was a sort of "greatest hits" issue, featuring reminders of past scoops such as a shot of Michael Jackson's deathbed. If this is the stuff they're NOT ashamed to be associated with, then it really is a good thing that the miserable little rag is gone for good.
It started out as being about phone hacking. Now it's gone beyond that. This is about a tabloid press that focuses on the insignificant and trivial, that has too much influence over our elected representatives and that uses a culture of fear to keep itself beyond the reach of the law. Most of all, it's about one man who owns a larger share of the British media than is legal in many other countries, who has used that platform to push forward his own free-market neo-liberal political views and who has made an enormous amount of money by exploiting the British people, without even paying tax in this country.
It's not over until Murdoch is gone.
