The death of print media

I am not a journalist. I have never hacked a phone, written a meticulously-researched piece about an obscure detail concerning Princess Diana that would only be published because she was she, or lain doggo in one of Boris Johnson’s rhododendron bushes with pencil and paper at the ready to record indiscretions with his woman-who-does in assiduous detail. If I were a journalist, I would want these skills, but not just these ones. I would also want to be able to act.

By that token I should look upon the recent performances by Rebekah Brooks, and Rupert and James Murdoch, with damp-eyed admiration. In truth it is more like damp-trousered disappointment. The sliminess, the falsity, and the show of contrition were, in the words of Arnold Rimmer, as plain as a Bulgarian pin-up. James Murdoch tried to sound like the informed and honest junior manager chap who cannot really bear to upset anyone. Rupert Murdoch tried to sound like a quiet old man who has been doing this for a while and is more than mildly diverted by the problem. Rebekah Brooks tried to sound slightly stupid and more than slightly vulnerable, and like the other two, as non-threatening as possible. It was the humble nature of it that stuck out for me. I am simply not willing to believe that people that ‘humble’ rise to the top of the second largest media corporation in the world. Despite that, the act seems to have been believed. Although what else were we expecting? From asking a few questions about a particular issue, the answers to which were easily revised for, no revelations were going to be forthcoming.

Does that mean there was not more to find? It is almost inconceivable that there is not more to find. Rebekah Brooks justified the closure of the News of the World at the select committee in the terms that it had “lost the trust of its readership” and that this had been going on for “some time”. If this is the case, the effort made towards the situation is not consistent with the problem. If a paper had lost the trust of its readership some time ago, why would the owners not re-invent it swiftly (and co-incidentally)? Why would they wait until something else had happened which forced them to close it? Even if we ignore this flaw, the argument has limited appeal; quite how Rebekah Brooks measures trust amongst NOTW readers I do not know. In truth, what seems far more likely is that that paper had become a liability and there was no way they could assess how disastrous it might turn out to be. In other words, the phone hacking scandal was pretty tame or ordinary and the last thing they want is for the really bad stuff to come out. So they ditch the title. The phone hacking scandal only became a proper scandal because it was linked to something that no one wants to be negative about – the murder of a school girl. Of course it is not really any worse than anyone else being hacked, and the argument that messages being deleted was some sort of an indicator as to whether or not she was alive is, objectively, breathtakingly weak.

But it still happened, and it is still disliked. Naturally the Murdochs and Ms Brooks used the most cutting language when describing their feelings about the fact of phone hacking – they could not afford to be anything less than the most scathing. I suspect that tactic probably will be seen as effective in pushing the issue away from the front pages. It is of course not over, there are still countless inquiries to be gone through whose findings will drift in at regular and toothlessly late intervals over the next three years until we are all thoroughly sick of it. I am still wondering what will happen next. Will all of the News International titles fold? Will print media be forever tarnished and be regulated to the point of pointlessness? Certainly it seems unrealistic for the defence ‘self regulation is best’ will be allowed any further credence. And so we can look forward to a castrated print media? My suspicion is that print media is a wily old bird and I think it will survive this cold winter. It has survived the introduction of radio, and television, and satellite news. And even the internet. It even manages to survive being monstrously loss-making: something that makes no sense given the basic principles of the free market in which it apparently operates. Compared to that list of setbacks, a bit of phone hacking by the vulgar press will very quickly become as pale and forgotten as any of yesterday’s headlines.