Every time someone says it can’t get any worse – it does! Many of us knew that hacking was more extensive then the press was admitting but you could never prove it. I didn’t think it would have happened in these horrific murder cases. I would have hoped common human decency would have prevailed.
I think Rupert Murdoch has some important questions to answer about the way large payments were made – including allegedly to the police – without him knowing about it. He keeps a very close eye on the Sun and the News of the World so what did he know about these practices? It is hard to believe that he was ignorant of all this.
Where do we go from here? Today’s debate in Parliament is important and a powerful enquiry after the police have finished their investigations is obviously necessary. Journalism is an important protection of our freedoms so getting the balance right between freedom and responsibility of the press is vital. That is what I tried to do with my Freedom and Responsibility of the Press Bill back in 1992/3. ( http://www.freepress.org.uk/body.php?id=974&selpanel=1 ) The Bill was talked out and we have all learnt much since then.
The present Press Complaints Commission ( http://www.pcc.org.uk/index.html ) has improved over the years but getting them to become more effective was like drawing teeth and the crucial failing is still this central problem of being more of a conciliation service than a regulatory body. They claim to be a self regulating body and they do more of that then they did in previous years but press power is still largely unaccountable and driven by the desire to maximise newspaper sales which is why the threat to withdraw advertising from the News of the World might have a big impact.
Self regulation has to become more effective or be replaced a by a statutory body. It works for the TV and radio channels without inhibiting investigative journalism and it works in other countries. Perhaps it is the answer we have all been trying to avoid because we wanted self regulation to work. Sadly the hope we placed in self regulation appears to be the triumph of hope over experience.
It’s just a fig leaf. The Lords and MPs are going to use it to prevent investigations of their crimes and misdemeanour’s.
From the Business Tycoons ‘upper crust’*,
and so-called Professional Press Journalism; and from the Constitutional Establishments, Parliaments, Civil Services, Religious, and Educational Sectors,
it is to be fervently hoped that various mind-and-morality-dysfunctions** such as ‘hacking’ and ‘private-injunctioning’,
are one-off-at-a-time opportunistically criminal or malfeasant acts,
rather than constitutionally-&-legislatively-loopholed, deliberately entrenched policies and high-professional skill-banks.
Against their ‘Rot’, downwardsly ‘infecting’ and ‘paralysing’ all lower-levels of People, and indeed bearing major responsibility for extincting increasing amounts of renewable-lifesupports and over-destroying non-renewable resources,
we have neither defence nor Defenders.
The ‘Top-Dogs’ operate a behind-closed-doors win-win dealing-directorate;
to the total exclusion of the life-battling needs & hows of all the Third Parties who can not take equal, no in effect any, part in
our National Strategy, Planning, and Budgeting processes.
——
* ‘upper crust’ ironically so true of these lifeless ‘rulers’.
** further instances abound:
even the newest hundreds of elected Commons Members were reported to have angrily ‘asserted’ “Leave our Expenses-Rules and Entitlements alone !”;
the Parliament backed-off and cowed down to the RBS Board when as a clique those directors threatened to emigrate taking all their billions-of-pounds with them if their Super-Salaries, Bonuses and Pensions were touched (limited).
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1607W060711.JSDM.
The press complaints commission always denies vehemently that it preordains crime, ordain not being the right word at all, but there are so many crimes over the years which have been promoted by the press for their own financial advantage that such accusations about the Milly Dowler murder does not surprise me one bit.
Being vaguely conservative until 1990, I presented myself at the Grand hotel in Brighton to see what would happen after the big event (the bombing) was advertised extensively in the Times earlier in the August.
Nothing could have been more obvious. I categorically state that I saw the man in question walk up the stairs with the bomb case in his hand, and actually held it over the heads of all the senior cabinet secretaries and PM as he did so.
Somebody asked me if I wanted to stay the night, but the Times of London had forewarned me.
I went home and waited awake for the news.
‘Murder She Wrote’ is ever-present, in this too-often spendthrift, Media-dominated, educational-depth-&-discipline-starved World;
and the big ‘professional-skill-&-liberty’ of the Media that actually teaches journalists to set their own definitional-meanings, not necessarily at the outset of the Article, and not necessarily overtly either,
is (I now likewise do stipulatively declare)
part of the ‘Rot’ that imprisons those who read or are otherwise affected by such stipulatively-biased media-presentations.
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We make our contribution, towards a clear-or-clearer-public-mind, Twm;
but since before 1990 I have been having to to “wait, but asleep”, for the (usually-bad) “News”.
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0039Th07
@Twm O’r Nant:
The media has been used for decades as a propaganda machine, you only have to watch Oliver Stones movie on the JFK assassination to realise that.
This is a clip only. It is riveting from start to finish. The film reveals how the media manipulates the public and the manipulation is world wide. And you know what, journalist have kept this quiet under the auspices of protection for the people. Which people are they protecting is the real question?
http://www.myspace.com/trailerpark/videos/video/107698961
http://johnfitzgeraldkennedy.net/orvillenixfilm.htm
I am so cynical about the exposure of the Murdoch empire over this phone tapping business. It’s been known for years this was going on. And only ‘now’ we get the public version.
Maude might be interested in the Distributist theories which inspired Blair’s political campaign.
In fact it was referred to as The Third Way,
a sub species of Distributism, which was Catholic Socialism espoused by pope Leo X11
Chesterton and Belloc were keen Christian socialists too, possibly Bruce Kent too, but don’t quote me on him.
Capitalist greed is the worst failing of the modern world, the Murdoch empire included.
Distributism Third Way Wikipedia
Tom,
I agree of course;
but surely the Murdoch Empire is a “huge Success Story”
look you, it is dominantly-supported by the purchasing Peoples of the whole world
who thereby support the plundering of Rainforest, the Extinction of lifesupports, the Destruction of non-renewable resources;
plus the doping of their own human-intellect, the Impairment of most other human mind-functions, and the unrelenting stifling of democracy*;
isn’t it ?
————
* via Google “Group size for a functional democracy”, evidently pursuit of more-effective participatory-democracy is lacking;
as is any concerted attempt to provide the People with the requisite generic skills for becoming progressively participant in any sort of democracy: in which latter stifling I put major direct blame upon Parliaments and both the Printed and the Electronic Media; and secondary blame upon the Education, Religions, and Community sectors;
none of whom propagate Method III , moral-reasoning & honest-argumentation, nor even two-way communication microskills.
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@Twm:
Thank you for drawing my attention to the ‘The Third Way.’
Blair can hardly blame Pope Leo X111’s encyclical Rerum Nevarum for his duplicity and betrayal of his country. He also betrayed his God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
They say that before long we won’t need news but will just have a chip implanted in the brain which provides all the propaganda news we need.
If it tells men to go like lemmings to their death, they will instantly go, unless they have opted out of chip implantation, which will seem like a wonderful thing
@Twm:
Well, you have it in one, population control supremo. No more fear of human overload akin to Mark of Gideon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdsbuJfMpr0
Actually, the future Elite Surviving Human-Community will be the super-rich, each drawing/being given at least £1,000,000 a year
or 9,999 human-livings (each) more than one human being has already been legislated to Need.
But since that small Elite must be wholly comprised of the most Creative & Productive human-beings on Earth
and since the many Billions of less creative and productive humans will have been (as Twm intimates) “controlled”)
– gone out of existence –
there will be so much more Cash & Capital to go round, from both the Common Purse and the Earth’s Resources Bank, that the human Future will be ultimately-assured and irreversibly-entrenched.
0334Th14
There is no such thing as a free press – there is too much cash involved in all quarters (just a fact) that render ‘freedom of speech’ null and void. There is little point in changing the rules.
Lord Soley says: “I think Rupert Murdoch has some important questions to answer about the way large payments were made”.
Excuse me?
How about asking questions to the hundreds of politicians of both major UK political parties about their involvement and support for and by Rupert Murdoch in the past 20-30 years.
This is the real crime and injustice – politics without integrity.