did social media bring down the news of the world?

On Friday night I found myself watching BBC2’s Newsnight programme (a topical news analysis programme). Unsurprisingly, the closure of the News of the World was still dominating the news agenda.

A number of discussions took place into various angles of this issue.

I was struck by remarks made by Justine Roberts the co-founder and CEO of Mumsnet. Essentially, one of her opening remarks was that News International was forced to close the News of the World because of social media.

Great, I thought, now the angry mob has bigger pitchforks, more flaming torches and a megaphone.

One would have to be implausibly naïve to truly believe News International had bowed to Consumer Pressure 2.0 – of course that isn’t how it happened.

Did social media amplify people’s voices? Well, if it didn’t something would have gone terribly wrong with one of the cornerstones of the new social order.

Do big brands kowtow to such amplification?

No. Of course not. This industry (by which I mean all things smedia and digital) is still very much in its infancy. Any business that is serious about listening to its customers, understanding and delighting them, ought to be using social media.

There is a clear three-pronged strategy most businesses have adopted (or ought to adopt) where social media is concerned – listen, analyse, engage.

But the hard facts are, very few brands have got this right.

If there’s one sector that ought to be fearful, suspicious and maybe even hostile in the face of social media it would be the newspaper industry. They’ve seen circulation and advertising revenues go the way of all flesh in the aftermath of mass adoption of the internet.

Within a few days of some appalling revelations about phone hacking and related activities,  there was indeed a huge outcry on twitter and Facebook, not to mention countless blog posts. Some advertisers pulled out of the News of the World, but not all of them.

News International’s decision to pull the plug on the News of the World was, of course, a damage limitation strategy (albeit one of the worst I can remember in its execution).

Its roots are in an organisation where journalists, editors and their managers felt they had a right to break the law and access the private lives of well-known and the everyday people. Its branches extended into police corruption. It has blossomed into a tangle of compromised politicians, journalists-turned-PRs, and private investigators receiving six-figure sums from more than one source in the newspaper world.

If I was the person ultimately responsible for sorting this mess out, God knows I’d want to bury it all in a deep dark hole too. And as quickly as possible.

But I might, just might, be tempted to bury those who had created the mess at the same time. Which hasn’t happened here. Maybe it’s the residue of my journalistic spider senses that makes me want to know why not.

William Cobbett, the English essayist and reformer of the 18th and 19th Century, once said: “I defy you to agitate a fellow with a full stomach.”

When people are hungry – in a literal or figurative sense – they are more likely to rise up. Do something about that hunger and you can pacify them. Often without giving into all their demands.

News International wants to buy the whole of BSkyB - the UK satellite TV company it already owns a chunk of.

Due to concerns of media plurality (NI owns a lot of UK newspapers) the deal has to be given the green light by the UK regulators. The last thing Rupert Murdoch needed right now is a high profile scandal concerning elements of his media empire breaking the law and offending common decency.

Throwing the News of the World to the wolves is perhaps the least worst option for him. Under these circumstances I expect it wasn't a difficult call to make.

news of the world: goodbye and thanks for all the fish

Faced with a dilemma, many people (generally christians, admittedly) would pose the question: what would Jesus do?

What wouldn't Jesus do, is perhaps a better question.

But I'm not here to talk about Jesus.

I've written about the News of the World and the phone hacking scandal before. I've touched on the allegations of police collusion, which have now been linked in the public domain to the payment - by the newspaper and its owners of more than £100,000 to serving police officers.  I've voiced my take on the illegal and immoral accessing of people's mobile phone voicemails and the distress it has caused.

I've posed the question do we have the press we deserve?

When, just a few days ago, it became clear that the underbelly of the News of the World's phone hacking scandal was seedier than at first imagined.

I saw someone on twitter ask what could be done to dig the paper out of its hole.  What, I wondered, would Rupert Murdoch do?

Now we know. Holed below the water-line, the News of the World is to be closed down. The final edition will be published on 10 July.

But that's far from being the end of it. The image of British tabloid journalism is unlike to walk away from this episode pestilence-free.

Friends and colleagues in the US and Australia have talked to me about the News of the World in recent days and have all expressed surprise that a mainstream national newspaper could ever have behaved in this way.

But this is not an isolated incident, an aberration. This is a systemic disregard for the law, for privacy and for standards of common decency.

So what if on 17 July the News of the World is no longer available in your local newsagent. Do you think the people behind the decisions that led to the recent appalling incident will cease to exist? Of course not.

The list of innocent casualties in this sordid affair goes on and on, and now includes (potentially at least) an as-yet-unknown number of News International employees who were nowhere near this scandal but who have become collateral damage.

Unless the government and the police (preferably an arm of the police service that doesn't have grubby hands and sticky fingers) instigate a thorough and unexpurgated investigation the reputation of British tabloid journalism may never recover.

do we have the press we deserve?

Updated 5 July 2011

On 4 July it emerged that the News of the World had done far worse than hack into the voicemail inboxes of celebrities and politicians. Someone working for the paper had accessed the inbox of the then missing teenager Milly Dowler. At some point between Milly's disappearance and the discovery of her dead body, voicemails from her phone were deleted. This act, we are told, caused her parents - who had no doubt been franticly calling her but unable to leave further messages at a full inbox, to believe she was still alive.


This depraved act has, thankfully, been taken seriously by Parliament - the whole sordid affair will be debated by the House of Commons on 6 July.


There has already been a considerable public backlash against the News of the World, with calls for advertisers to pull out their commercial support for the paper. Some have already indicated they will indeed take such action.


I am sure I speak for most people when I say I sincerely hope the perpetrators of this criminal and morally bankrupt behaviour are subject to the full weight of the law.


I can't help but wonder, however, when similar scrutiny will fall upon the role of the Metropolitan Police and the widespread speculation concerning their collusion in the mobile phone hacking scandal.



The British press has a fearsome reputation both at home and abroad. It’s one of the reasons so many former UK journalists find high-powered jobs as corporate communications advisers to some of the biggest names worldwide.

Investigative journalism at its best has brought down tyrants, exposed fraudsters, and highlighted miscarriages of justice. It is no coincidence that in some of the most locked-down regimes there are more constraints upon what the press can effectively get away with. Indeed, the freedom of the press is one of those concepts clung to fiercely by many in this country.

Rightly so, in my opinion.

But – as anyone who has read the British press widely in the last 15 years will know – the excesses of the tabloid media have caused many a raised eyebrow.

From Fake Sheikhs to allegations of Nazi-themed sex parties there has been an unending stream of sensational stories to titillate and tantalise. Many seem to blur the lines between that which is in the public interest and those things that are deemed to be of interest to members of the newspaper-buying public.

As a former journalist, I have enjoyed the freedom to ask challenging questions and to protect my sources. I’ve had libel writs served on me, and even death threats. OK, just one death threat – but one is enough. I never felt I had to curtail my journalistic instincts in order to kowtow to the whims of publishers, advertisers, the police, the subjects of the pieces I wrote, anyone in fact.

When I hear people complain about the “rubbish that gets printed in the papers” my standard response has usually been to say we get the press we deserve and to make the point that the so-called rubbish only gets published because people flock to read it.

Shady goings on behind the scenes at some of the UK biggest newspapers have now begun to be dragged into the light in the wake of the News of the World phone hacking scandal (not a word I use lightly, but one which I think fits here).

The ins and outs of who knew what, and who sanctioned the illegal actions – namely hacking into voicemail messages on the mobile phones of a string of celebrities, politicians, civil servants and other public figures – is still the subject of debate and investigation. But some of the details to emerge are as damning of the culture of the UK media as they are downright shocking.

Top of my list of things to be concerned about is the link between News of the World reporters and the Metropolitan Police. I offer here only my opinion, but having heard that Metropolitan Police officers were paid sources for some News of the World reporters (how many news reporters wouldn’t like to be tipped off about high profile arrests, so they could be on hand to cover them) I start to feel a growing sense of unease.

You don’t need to be a genius to figure out the incredible potential for a conflict of interests when a newspaper allegedly encouraging its reporters to break the law is also regularly paying serving police officers for news leads. Throw into the mix the claim by a former senior officer in the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, that his phone had been hacked into by the News of the World and the whole thing starts to feel very grubby indeed.

It’s unpleasantly reminiscent of the script of a movie, where the mob has paid off the police to ensure a blind eye is always turned to their criminal activity.

Now that the lid has been blown off this miserable affair, I’m left asking myself do we get the press we deserve?

I worry this is more than an isolated case of a newspaper’s ethics being trampled in the rush to boost sales in the midsts of a highly competitive media landscape.

This is, I fear, as much a wider dereliction of societal morality - an attitude of if I can get away with it, then I’m going to do it.

In October 1987, in an interview with one of the least combative publications imaginable, Woman’s Own, the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said: “... who is society? There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”

Clearly this is nonsense. Dangerous nonsense though, which set the tone for the next two decades and beyond.

The promotion of the individual, and their so-called rights, that took place in this country and in others (yes America I am looking at you) has spawned a generation of individuals who simply don’t care about the implications, or even the legality, of their actions.

That there were journalists working for the most widely-read British Sunday newspaper who felt breaking the law was an acceptable route to scoops and stories is, for me, an indication that the UK's moral compass may be broken.

Do we have the press we deserve?

Yes, we do.

And that is a reputation to be feared.




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