The BBC has this fantastic interactive timeline infographic (as I believe the kids are calling them) showing the connections between the major players in the News Corp phone hacking shenanigans. (No mention of Jeremy Clarkson though…)
Click through for extra clickage.
via LudditeWebDev
Background: Internationally acclaimed cartoonist Robert Crumb was due to appear at a festival in Sydney. One of the (many) Murdoch-owned papers in Australia ran a quite evil attack piece calling him a pervert and warped human being. Like most people, Crumb tries to avoid confrontation and his wife was worried for his safety, so he cancelled. Nice one, journalists of Murdoch.
I know, I know, it’s galling to give the Sunday Telegraph sleazeballs the satisfaction. “Ha ha, we scared him off.” But they have already got what they wanted out of me anyway, which was to use me to make the City of Sydney look bad.
The worst part is the apparent irresponsibility of these cynical media hacks. What if I’d gone there, and what if some Mark Chapman-type person who’d read that article decided the world needed to be cleansed of scum like R. Crumb? (Mark Chapman shot John Lennon.) This possibility worried Aline deeply.
Did it occur to the people at the Sunday Telegraph that they might be stirring up such dangerous passions? Do they care? Their article showed a profound lack of integrity and social responsibility. And unfortunately, I was made the object of their hateful Machiavellian tactics.
Given he’s a Birmingham-ish based MP who’s relatively savvy on issues related to the Internet (you may remember his staunch defying of the party line during the Digital Economy Bill last year) I’ve come to know Tom Watson a bit over the last couple of years. Not in a particularly chummy way but to a point where I’m surprised by those who might attack him. He seems okay to me. A politician, for sure, who does what needs to be done to get elected, but not one of the baddies.
So this interview, off the back of his epic work in the Murdoch / hacking affair, is a welcome look at his 10 year career putting a lot of things into context. Yes, he was a bastard back in the day, one of Gordon Brown’s bruisers, but he’s changed.
“This has been a profoundly life-changing event for me, in many ways. It’s certainly changed my politics. When I was first elected, I was a completely naive and gauche politician. You look at the pillars of the state: politics, the media, police, lawyers – they’ve all got their formal role, and then nestling above that is that power elite who are networked in through soft, social links, that are actually running the show. Why didn’t I know that 10 years ago, and why didn’t I rail against it? Why did I become part of it? I was 34. I’m 44 now. I was naive. But I’ll never let that happen again.”
I’m glad I know him now rather than then.
Nice chart from the Guardian showing when our glorious leaders met Murdoch and his people.
A report in the Wall Street Journal, sorry, the Onion. via Laura
Most of the good writing on the News of the Word / Hacking / News Corp saga has been of the moment as events moved so quickly, but this one from Gordon Lynch is pretty timeless, presumably because it’s dealing with timeless issues.
The trangression of the News of the World and News Corp is not simply that they acted “unethically” (in a narrow professional sense), or even illegally. In itself, this would be enough to create the mild sense of scandal that had surrounded the phone-hacking story until this week.
The tipping point came when the actions of people associated with the News of the World became profanations, an evil polluting the cherished sacred significance embodied in the stories of Milly Dowler, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and the 7/7 bombings. It was after this that public figures felt compelled to speak in terms of their “horror” at the “sickening” allegations, that advertisers fled, and the paper was sacrificed.
The moral narrative which the paper had done so much to create turned back on its creator.
This is mildly astonishing. Moore, previously editor of the Spectator and the Telegraph, goes through the recent excesses of deregulated free-market capitalism, specifically the Murdoch affairs, and realises those museli-eaters at the Guardian might have a point.
I particularly like the imagery in this bit:
And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out – as the Left always claims – that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few. The global banking system is an adventure playground for the participants, complete with spongy, health-and-safety approved flooring so that they bounce when they fall off. The role of the rest of us is simply to pay.
via Steve
There’s a lot of “what the hell does it all mean???” going around but John Harris nails a few things for me here.
Yesterday, in the wake of yet more arrests and resignations, I listened to another media appearance by Steve Hewlett, the Guardian columnist and presenter of Radio 4′s Media show – who, in the midst of droves of talking heads coming close to losing theirs, has sounded a dependable note of calm and real insight. As far as I know, he has not talked about the “British Spring”. But when he popped up towards the end of the Today programme, he seemed to agree that something absolutely remarkable was afoot.
“It’s almost as if the whole establishment – the political-media elite – is in a state of wobble,” he said. “Any association with Murdoch and his papers, which quite naturally everybody has had in some form . . . is now so toxic that any mention of it is . . .”
A pause.
“I mean, look: it’s carnage. It’s almost as if the light has suddenly come on, and everybody has said: ‘Good lord – were we doing that?’”
