While most journos embark of the noble pursuit of truth, there are others who’ll abandon any means of integrity just to sell a story; and the latter has led to one of Britain’s highest-selling newspapers being closed after 168 years in publication.
Rupert Murdoch, in an attempt to limit the political and commercial fallout that’s surrounded Sunday paper, News of the World, has announced it will close, printing its last edition this weekend.
This week, the phone-hacking saga sunk to an all time low, with revelations the paper hacked into the phones of murder victim Milly Dowler, a parent of one of the Soham murder victims and relatives of military killed in Afghanistan; after which News Corp.’s stock began to plummet and advertisers for NOTW abandoned ship.
Around 200 staff members will be out of a job following this swift yet undoubtedly necessary decision made by Murdoch. However, speculation hints that the paper will be replaced by a Sunday edition of The Sun, produced by staff at the daily. The domain names TheSunOnSunday.co.uk, TheSunOnSunday.com and SunOnSunday.co.uk were all registered two days ago. Note: when Murdoch closed the Sunday Sun and the Sunday Herald back in 1991, the Sunday Herald Sun was born.
Andy Coulson has also been informed by police that he’ll be arrested on Friday morning over allegations that he knew about or had direct involvement in the hacking of mobile phones during his editorship of the paper. Coulson was up until January of this year, British PM David Cameron’s director of communications. Further investigations and inquiries will be made into the conduct of the initial police investigation of phone hacking affair, as well as media regulation. It is believed there are up to as many 4000 phone-hacking victims.
Thanks NOTW, for perpetuating widespread public opinion that the media are the insatiable bad guys with no soul.
The one thing we’ll always be grateful to NOTW is this video however:
Via: The Guardian
