I'm going to try to explain the situation as best as I can in case you've been living in a cave recently.
It begins with the News Of The World, AKA the Screws of the World, one of Britain's longest running and probably most salaciously notorious tabloid newspapers. For over 168 years it fed the British people's hunger for low behavior in high places. It was low class, obnoxious, sued regularly for libel and wildly popular, selling in the millions, even today, when most dead tree media is gasping for breath.
However, it's ongoing quest to see how low the rich and famous will go, has led them to go way too low for anyone's taste. The paper hired private investigators to hack the mobile phone's of the rich, the famous, the infamous, and even the victims of crimes, and the families of fallen soldiers, looking to for the elusive scoop. Important messages were deleted by the hackers, police investigations were hampered, and now there's talk of policemen on the paper's payroll, and a former editor's been arrested for his part in the scandal, and more arrests are on the way, if not already happening.
Rupert Murdoch, the grand poobah of NoW's parent company News International has ordered the entire newspaper shut down. In fact, it's last issue is already out, and no doubt wrapping fish and chips as you read this.
But that's not enough for some people.
Some are demanding that the government bar Murdoch and News International from turning their majority ownership of Brit Pay TV network BSkyB into total ownership, for fear that the editorial stance of this reorganized network won't play well with their media competitors at the Guardian newspaper, and BBC News.
But even that is not enough for some people, especially these people:
They want the government to jail Rupert Murdoch, and his top executives, and replace the toothless Press Complaints Commission with a more muscular government body. This new agency would forcibly break up the New International media conglomerate, and then regulate what they, and other media outlets, can print or say, so their content doth not offend the sign waving folks in the picture.
The scientific term for these people are "Idiots."
You don't have to agree with Murdoch about anything to know that state regulation of media is a really stupid idea.
That's because states are run by governments. Governments are run by politicians and bureaucrats. Politicians and bureaucrats are interested in only two things:
1. Getting power.
2. Keeping power.
Do you want those people controlling the only means the people have of finding out what they are really up to?
Sure, it sounds great and all when your favorite party is the one in charge, and that party's talking points are already being parroted in your favorite media outlets, but guess what:
Governments change.
Yep, they can screw up so bad, even their friends can't save them anymore, and then you get a government you don't like in power. Suddenly your favorite media outlets are being told that they can and can't say, and how they can say it by the government.
Then what do you do?
Do you complain?
Well, guess what, you can't, you're not allowed to complain anymore under the media control rules that you demanded as a way to "get Murdoch."
You have to sit on your hands, and wait until everything pretty much collapses to the ground before you can see things change, but there's no guarantee that said change will be the one you want. If it isn't the change you want, forget about saying anything about it, because once the government takes over something, it is extremely rare to get them to let go of it without anyone standing in front a wall pockmarked with bullet holes, and spattered with bloodstains.
Now I know that a lot of people want to see Rupert Murdoch jailed because his opinions are different from yours, but remember, you need Murdoch in order to be free enough to disagree with Murdoch.
I've written before that Murdoch's entire modus operandi is to look at a media market, see what the competitors are not doing, then do what the competitors don't do in such a way as to goad them into a frothing raging frenzy. This frenzy then provides his outlets with loads of free publicity that attracts the all important eyeballs he needs to make money.
Do I think he ordered the hacking?
I don't think he did, and here's why:
1. Murdoch tends to delegate day to day management of his outlets to the people he appoints to run them. I've never seen any reports of him micromanaging individual outlets over content, preferring to stick to the big picture of buying, starting, or selling more media outlets. He sets a publication's attitude through hiring management he is supposed to trust, but otherwise moves on to the next challenge.
2. Murdoch's not stupid. He wants full ownership of BSkyB more than anything right now and he knows that people will oppose the buy-up just because it's him, regardless of what he intends to do with it. Murdoch could personally invent a cure for cancer and a noisy segment of the population will call for it to be banned under the banner of the "save the tumor" movement. He has to be cleaner looking than Caesar's wife during a time like this, and having one of his bigger newspapers in one of his bigger markets going bug-shit with bugging could completely bugger the deal, and that will really, really bug him. And let's not forget the decades of litigation that's going to follow this scandal, and the millions it's going to suck from the company's coffers and his own wallet. I doubt he'd think getting the scoop on Hugh Grant's latest sexual conquest would be worth all that.
So unless they find unadulterated video of him directly ordering all this mess, and signing notarized memos reiterating such orders, I will take all demands that he be jailed with a grain of salt. Those who are making those sorts of demands, or otherwise reveling in his troubles should step back and think twice about it, like I have.
It's easy to complain about Murdoch and his companies, but remember, without them and all the stuff they do that makes you complain about them, you might not be able to complain about anything at all.
That's the magic of free speech.
It only works if people are allowed to say stuff you don't like.
It begins with the News Of The World, AKA the Screws of the World, one of Britain's longest running and probably most salaciously notorious tabloid newspapers. For over 168 years it fed the British people's hunger for low behavior in high places. It was low class, obnoxious, sued regularly for libel and wildly popular, selling in the millions, even today, when most dead tree media is gasping for breath.
However, it's ongoing quest to see how low the rich and famous will go, has led them to go way too low for anyone's taste. The paper hired private investigators to hack the mobile phone's of the rich, the famous, the infamous, and even the victims of crimes, and the families of fallen soldiers, looking to for the elusive scoop. Important messages were deleted by the hackers, police investigations were hampered, and now there's talk of policemen on the paper's payroll, and a former editor's been arrested for his part in the scandal, and more arrests are on the way, if not already happening.
Rupert Murdoch, the grand poobah of NoW's parent company News International has ordered the entire newspaper shut down. In fact, it's last issue is already out, and no doubt wrapping fish and chips as you read this.
But that's not enough for some people.
Some are demanding that the government bar Murdoch and News International from turning their majority ownership of Brit Pay TV network BSkyB into total ownership, for fear that the editorial stance of this reorganized network won't play well with their media competitors at the Guardian newspaper, and BBC News.
But even that is not enough for some people, especially these people:
They want the government to jail Rupert Murdoch, and his top executives, and replace the toothless Press Complaints Commission with a more muscular government body. This new agency would forcibly break up the New International media conglomerate, and then regulate what they, and other media outlets, can print or say, so their content doth not offend the sign waving folks in the picture.The scientific term for these people are "Idiots."
You don't have to agree with Murdoch about anything to know that state regulation of media is a really stupid idea.
That's because states are run by governments. Governments are run by politicians and bureaucrats. Politicians and bureaucrats are interested in only two things:
1. Getting power.
2. Keeping power.
Do you want those people controlling the only means the people have of finding out what they are really up to?
Sure, it sounds great and all when your favorite party is the one in charge, and that party's talking points are already being parroted in your favorite media outlets, but guess what:
Governments change.
Yep, they can screw up so bad, even their friends can't save them anymore, and then you get a government you don't like in power. Suddenly your favorite media outlets are being told that they can and can't say, and how they can say it by the government.
Then what do you do?
Do you complain?
Well, guess what, you can't, you're not allowed to complain anymore under the media control rules that you demanded as a way to "get Murdoch."
You have to sit on your hands, and wait until everything pretty much collapses to the ground before you can see things change, but there's no guarantee that said change will be the one you want. If it isn't the change you want, forget about saying anything about it, because once the government takes over something, it is extremely rare to get them to let go of it without anyone standing in front a wall pockmarked with bullet holes, and spattered with bloodstains.
Now I know that a lot of people want to see Rupert Murdoch jailed because his opinions are different from yours, but remember, you need Murdoch in order to be free enough to disagree with Murdoch.
I've written before that Murdoch's entire modus operandi is to look at a media market, see what the competitors are not doing, then do what the competitors don't do in such a way as to goad them into a frothing raging frenzy. This frenzy then provides his outlets with loads of free publicity that attracts the all important eyeballs he needs to make money.
Do I think he ordered the hacking?
I don't think he did, and here's why:
1. Murdoch tends to delegate day to day management of his outlets to the people he appoints to run them. I've never seen any reports of him micromanaging individual outlets over content, preferring to stick to the big picture of buying, starting, or selling more media outlets. He sets a publication's attitude through hiring management he is supposed to trust, but otherwise moves on to the next challenge.
2. Murdoch's not stupid. He wants full ownership of BSkyB more than anything right now and he knows that people will oppose the buy-up just because it's him, regardless of what he intends to do with it. Murdoch could personally invent a cure for cancer and a noisy segment of the population will call for it to be banned under the banner of the "save the tumor" movement. He has to be cleaner looking than Caesar's wife during a time like this, and having one of his bigger newspapers in one of his bigger markets going bug-shit with bugging could completely bugger the deal, and that will really, really bug him. And let's not forget the decades of litigation that's going to follow this scandal, and the millions it's going to suck from the company's coffers and his own wallet. I doubt he'd think getting the scoop on Hugh Grant's latest sexual conquest would be worth all that.So unless they find unadulterated video of him directly ordering all this mess, and signing notarized memos reiterating such orders, I will take all demands that he be jailed with a grain of salt. Those who are making those sorts of demands, or otherwise reveling in his troubles should step back and think twice about it, like I have.
It's easy to complain about Murdoch and his companies, but remember, without them and all the stuff they do that makes you complain about them, you might not be able to complain about anything at all.
That's the magic of free speech.
It only works if people are allowed to say stuff you don't like.
That's the magic of free speech.
ReplyDeleteIt only works if people are allowed to say stuff you don't like.
A-freaking-men.
Every extremist, whatever their political leanings, needs to have this tattooed on their forehead so they read it every morning when they brush their teeth.
Not that this affects the points made in your post (which I happen to disagree with in several places, but that's another matter), but:
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's ongoing quest to see how low the rich and famous will go, has led them to go way too low for anyone's taste. The paper hired private investigators to hack the mobile phone's of the rich, the famous, the infamous, and even the victims of crimes, and the families of fallen soldiers, looking to for the elusive scoop. Important messages were deleted by the hackers, police investigations were hampered...
seems an oddly reticent way of describing the short-term trigger for this public outrage. The NotW hacked into the voicemail of a missing schoolgirl and deleted messages, causing parents and others to believe she might still be alive, at a point when in fact she had already been murdered. Even if one puts aside the fact that this is morally beyond the pale for many people, it shows that desperation/greed had over-ridden any sense of prudent self-interest. A paper that doesn't think that's going too far, and a corporation which condoned such conduct, is one that has some sclerosis.
You also don't mention Brooks/Wade, who I think for many people *not* in your photograph is the immediate target of public outrage, calls for action against NI, etc (since she is now ever so slightly important there, and quite clearly let the NotW stuff happen on her watch as editor).
To be slightly more on topic: the issue is not muzzling free speech, but about mitigating the effects of monopoly. (Cf. Berlusconi)
Moreover, if Murdoch is timing his closing of the NotW in order to draw the wagons around Brooks, as seems to be the case, then that is just bad business sense. I think that decrying Socialist Worker shoutiness may be misplaced on this particular set of issues, whatever the rights and wrongs of regulation of media companies as a general issue.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your claim of my reticence, I was simply laying out the basics to get to my point about people calling for state regulation of speech, which goes beyond a few street level sign wavers. Pundits & politicians are already sharpening their talking points to get what they think they want.
ReplyDeleteAs for the responsibility of the individuals involved, that's for the criminal investigators & civil litigators to determine. I'm neither, merely someone telling people to be careful what they wish for simply because they want to "get Murdoch."
You're free to disagree with me, because that's is the fundamental truth of free speech.
As for the responsibility of the individuals involved, that's for the criminal investigators & civil litigators to determine. I'm neither, merely someone telling people to be careful what they wish for simply because they want to "get Murdoch."
ReplyDeleteFair enough. My hasty reading of my biased sample of the press is that even Guardian Media journos are cautioning against heavy regulation, restricting journalists' scope to investigate, etc. But I suppose "they would say that, wouldn't they?" regardless of their actual desires vis-a-vis News International.