DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

Circulation figures are pretty heavily studied cos of the link to ad revenue so i think you can be sure that the tabs are giving their readers "what they want". At the same time I'm not sure what percentage of people buy a paper for the news as such.

i'm just kind of amazed that people are so amazed. what did people think tabloid hacks did, if this is such a shock? (disclosure: i once worked as a researcher for a tabloid hack whose claim to fame at that point had been selling weed to prince harry and having a photographer on hand for the occasion)

It's possible that both assumptions apply, given the contradictory nature of human beings. Statistical figures on paper-changing habits would be useful, though.

IIRC the main reason Sun readers usually give for buying the paper are the sports pages and I'm sure there have been surveys which bear this out.

I don't think anybody thinks hacks are paragons of virtue, but i don't remember so many convictions for epic bribery, interfering with umpteen murder cases etc etc in the past

one of the interesting things about Hello and OK is that they mainly make their money on the sale price of the magazine rather than advertising, and the swings in circulation each week are huge depending on what's in the cover, so there's this enormous pressure to come up with an exclusive. i don't know how much of that applies to NOTW, if any.

A former colleague who went tabloid found his path eased by sorting various offices where he worked for E's and whizz.

but there will be no rethink as long as dirt and exclusive information sells papers.

You act like tabloids print absolutely everything they get; which isn't true. I can think of a few big stories that they've held back out of nothing more than common decency (or fear of other people's common decency making them look like immoral scum) in the past few years. They know there's a line.

All that has to change is a stricter understand that this sort of hacking is over that line; plus a watchdog that's prepared to properly investigate and punish when victims claim it has happened to them.

what did people think tabloid hacks did, if this is such a shock?
I too have worked with them and know fine well what they get up to. I'm still shocked that they would delete Milly's messages and interfere w/the investigation. That's shocking behaviour! I'm surprised you seem to have a bit of a tabloid-boys-will-be-tabloid-boys attitude here. This isn't a celeb sting or dressing up like an Arab.

There's also the difference in targets - the old 'you put yourself in the public eye to make money, can't complain now' kind of argument doesn't apply to victims of tragedy. That is, people don't care if you do it to Jordan, but the parents of a murdered kid is different.

Yeah News Corp will be studying those figures very closely indeed and you can be very sure that any combination of an exclusive, dirt, and a highly-publicised child murder would sell very well indeed - hence going to this extent in the first place. Which is part of the reason this story isn't going away any time soon no matter how soft-pedalled it is.

I suspect there's a sizeable proportion of Sun readers who don't actually make the mental link with the News of the World at all.

I'm sure you're right on that score.

Then again - wouldn't you think that they'd think why there's almost nothing about this in the Sun when it's heavily blazered across nearly all its competitors?

Are they actually thick or do they just not care?

Perhaps things will change when people stop being robots and start thinking about the world they're living in but that's a bit much to ask in 2011.

i'm just kind of amazed that people are so amazed.

Srsly I'm kind of amazed (and a bit depressed) that you're amazed that people are amazed. We all know exactly what kind of crap they pull, but this is definitely a new level of scumbaggery.

So, taking this to its natural conclusion:

RWade will resign, but late on Saturday. And will give a full interview and pics to a leading Sunday newspaper. which happens to be called....

I suspect there's a sizeable proportion of Sun readers who don't actually make the mental link with the News of the World at all.

Meanwhile Mumsnet have cancelled a campaign on Sky because whoever uses Mumsnet (Mums, I suppose) have made a direct link to a certain Australo-American arsehole - leading to an amusing interview with a peeved Adam Boulton + Mumsnet woman, he should learn to control his emotions a bit more, that guy IMO

Sky's coverage of this whole business is highly amusing in general

I haven't been watching Sky, but the boss of Mumsnet is the wife of the Guardian's Ian Katz.

has anyone actually read the times coverage? (lol paywall)

top story on the NYT right now btw

Guardian now reporting Brooks was on holiday when the Dowler hacking happened. NICE TRY.

When the Murdoch media empire collapses, Mumsnet will run Britain, mark my words.

Meanwhile, in the Emergency Commons Debate, govt. sent out fearsome heavy-hitter Dominic Grieve to set out their case... ooh, mummy I'm scared

Rupert Murdoch: Allegations of News of the World phone hacking and payments to police 'deplorable and unacceptable'

Rupert Murdoch: "Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the News of the World are deplorable and unacceptable. I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively cooperate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks' leadership. We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again."

I first read that as that the making of the allegations themselves was "deplorable and unacceptable", which is no doubt what the Dirty Digger is really thinking.

That's how I read it too... And I'm still not sure if he didn't mean it like that

Also at the time her name was Rebeckah Wade, who technically no longer exists. Cast iron alibi right there.

lol at him having the exact same problems with syntax as R Brooks xp

What can Brooks possibly have on Murdoch? All this story needs is a sexual blackmail element and it's got everything.

Couldn't possibly have been Brooks' fault as she was out horse riding with David Cameron for an entire fortnight in March 2002.

LOLz from Chris Bryant

This feels like a tipping point similar to the one immediately after the bank bailout, where there's this golden window of opportunity to actually change the status quo and make things better, except you can just see it edging past and slowly closing shut to the point where things go the opposite way and get worse. Like the episode of Peep Show where Mark goes back to university and stalks the cute girl - "I am missing my chance, I am just this minute missing my chance".

That's not so far-fetched a comparison, really. I do rather wish that Murdoch would go away, preferably to another galaxy.

xpost

As editor of the News of the World Rebekah Brooks was confronted with evidence that her paper's resources had been used on behalf of two murder suspects to spy on the senior detective who was investigating their alleged crime.

Brooks was summoned to a meeting at Scotland Yard where she was told that one of her most senior journalists, Alex Marunchak, had apparently agreed to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to run surveillance on behalf of Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, two private investigators who were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan. The Yard saw this as a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/06/news-of-the-world-rebekah-brooks

she promoted marunchak, naturally. he now works freelance, mostly for the daily mail.

bonus detail, from a piece by davies in march:

A year later, in August 2003, Sid Fillery, who was still running the agency and working for Fleet Street, also got himself arrested and charged with 15 counts of making indecent images of children and one count of possessing indecent images. This was reported in national media. He was later convicted.

the newspaper that brought you sarah's law, employing a paedophile and suspected murder.

The paper that bought you SUPPORT OUR LADS and HELP FOR HEROES...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8621797/Phone-hacking-families-of-war-dead-targeted-by-News-of-the-World.html

SUPER SOARAWAY SUN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK - COMING SOON

holy shit joe! that is maybe the wildest thing i've read yet

And remember The Sun ran a charachter assination campaign against Gordon Brown for spelling a dead soldier's name wrong?

*character assassination. I cannot spell.

I'm surprised it took the Express this long

http://news.sky.com/sky-news/content/StaticFile/jpg/2011/Jul/Week1/16025638.jpg

Ah, quiddities:

But now even journalists at the Times, including columnist Giles Coren, are being publicly admonished because they work for Murdoch. In Coren's case, he revealed on Twitter, someone was rude to him in his local butcher's shop.

Is this the part where the Guardian finally poaches Caitlin Moran?

Post in question.

the newspaper that brought you sarah's law, employing a paedophile and suspected murder.

i actually thought this, or something like it, was the subtext of the c4 news report yesterday. i really don't think the grimmest bits of this have been unearthed yet.

bit of a bombshell by peter oborne in the daily telegraph too:

The Prime Minister cannot claim in defence that he was naively drawn in to this lethal circle. He was warned – many times. Shortly before the last election he was explicitly told about the company he was keeping. Alan Rusbridger – editor of The Guardian newspaper, which has performed such a wonderful service to public decency by bringing to light the shattering depravity of Mr Murdoch’s newspaper empire – went to meet one of Mr Cameron’s closest advisers shortly before the last election. He briefed this adviser very carefully about Mr Coulson, telling him many troubling pieces of information that could not then be put into the public domain.

so the guardian strategy is to chase the story to its grim conclusion and then pull off the world's greatest "i told you so". fucking hell.

11.02pm: Newsnight reports that the Metropolitan Police has identified three or four officers who were paid up to tens of thousands of pounds to supply information to the News of the World.
According to the report, the officers concealed the illegal trade in information by classifying certain journalists as confidential police sources.

id be rude to giles coren if he came into my shop

yep, neat trick, though i would have appreciated a bit more detail about how it "exactly" worked, as we were promised

"three or four" falls somewhat short of paul mcmullan's contention of "20%"

xpost

She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch. Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years

This is incredible!

(from joe's grauniad link)

Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Fedorcio [head of Media Relations at the Yard], who has had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World.

mother of cocking fuck

not really surprising at all.