The demise of the News of the World

The decision to close the News of the World after 168 years came as a major shock to the United Kingdom’s media. That the Murdochs felt the need to sacrifice the UK’s leading Sunday newspaper was an early indication of the extent of the phone tapping scandal which emerged in the few days before it was scrapped.

 

The story is of course not a new one. The paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed in 2007, when it emerged that some of his stories had come from intercepted phone messages. The impact on the paper had, however, appeared to be minimal. While its activities were condemned from all quarters, the fact the News of the World had hacked into the phones of public figures was not deemed something that would stain the paper in the long run. Even when the full scale of the phone tapping began to emerge, it seemed that Andy Coulson, the editor at the time, would be the only one indelibly tainted.

 

That all changed with the revelations that News of the World journalists and others hired by the paper had hacked into the voicemail of Milly Dowler, the Surrey schoolgirl who went missing in 2002, and into those of bereaved soldiers’ families. It became clear that public figures were not the only ones targeted by the News of the World’s phone tapping. At a stroke, all the paper had campaigned for in the last decade was made to look rather hollow.

 

The News of the World had after all campaigned extensively for measures aimed at protecting children from crime, notably its campaign for ‘Sarah’s Law’ in 2000. Therefore the revelation that News of the World journalists hacked into the voicemail system of Milly Dowler was exceedingly damaging. Indeed the paper’s actions seem especially reprehensible given that her parents may have been given false hope she was alive, by the disappearance of voicemail messages from her phone. In reality they were apparently deleted by employees of the News of the World.

 

Similarly, the paper had been vocal in its support for British soldiers and repeatedly criticised the government for not doing enough in looking after the country’s armed forces. Again, the paper’s stance on the issue was completely undermined by the emergence of rumours that the families of dead service personel had had their phones hacked. The News of the World had within the space of a week completely lost any credibility and integrity.

 

This is presumably why the Murdochs felt it necessary to close the paper down and announce that the issue of 10th July would be the last in the paper’s history. This decision has however been widely characterised as a cynical move to protect the rest of the News International media empire. Many of the paper’s current staff have protested that they did not belong to the paper at the time of the phone hacking and hence have been punished for the crimes of their predecessors. Indeed one of the most intriguing things about the whole scandal is the Murdochs’ seemingly overwhelming desire to protect Rebekah Brooks, formerly editor of the paper and now chief executive of News International. It seems they hoped that the decision to shut the paper would help deflect attention away from Ms Brooks and allow her to continue in her current role. With the now reopened police inquiry, forthcoming parliamentary inquiry and intense media scrutiny it seems that this hope was somewhat naïve at best.

 

The closing down of the News of the World may in time be seen as a premature decision. Perhaps a front page apology and the promise to purge anyone from News International (including Rebekah Brooks) who had been involved in phone tapping could have saved the paper. That said, in the days since the new evidence of phone hacking emerged, new revelations such as the bribing of police officers by the News of the World have come to light. It seems probable that Rupert and James Murdoch know of other transgressions by the paper’s staffs which have yet to be seized upon by the press, which in their opinion made the News of the World’s continued existence untenable.

 

The News of the World would in any case have been a tainted brand for a number of years and by shutting the paper down News International clearly hoped to protect the rest of their media empire. With News International’s shares slumping, James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks facing police investigations and the organisation forced to cancel its planned takeover of BskyB , it seems that any hope that the scandal could be contained was misguided. The future of News International itself, until a week or two ago seemingly an impregnable media conglomerate, remains very much up in the air.