The “industrial scale” of phone hacking at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the People made the News of the World look like a “small cottage industry” in comparison, the high court in London has heard.
Because, you know, they did insist that NoW should be shut down for phone hacking, didn’t they? And celebrated when it was?
Or do people one the same side of the ideological divide get held to a different standard?
I think we both know the answer to that.
one of those irregular left-wing verbs from Yes Minister
MY actions are justified for the cause and if anything should be lauded
YOUR actions are those of a neo-liberal troll
HE deserves to have his likelihood taken away for disagreeing with me
They may have celebrated it being closed down (one less competitor if nothing else), but a quick Google doesn’t turn up any editorial, etc where they actually demanded that happen?
Calling for senior executive heads to roll sure, hopeful speculation about it spreading to the US parent company, yes.
Realisatically why would they want it to close? It was a containment strategy, better for them for NOTW to remain open and a continual sore can be proded
I personally recall watching the Guardian’s editor on the BBC describing the decision to close NOYW as the “only thing” thay Murdoch could do. I think that’ll count as Guardian opinion.
P.S. When do the prosecution start; Andy Coulson must be wondering.
“Or do people one the same side of the ideological divide get held to a different standard?”
It’s not wrong if a Lefty does it.
Didn’t the Guardian start this off back in 1993 with the Jonathan Aitken “cod fax”?
“Or do people one the same side of the ideological divide get held to a different standard?”
that cuts both ways, you know. The Torygraph isn’t exactly full of articles lampooning the failings of right wingers. Neither is this blog.
I expect something along the lines of the Guardian tax avoidance explanation. So…
“The Mirror does invaluable work in countering the right wing Murdoch-dominated media and the iniquities of operating in an environment where foreign non-dom oligarchs own the press and free speech mean that it has to compete for readers against papers which use despicable means to dredge up “stories” perpetuating that right wing hegemonic narrative. To punish the only people providing news for workers which is not tainted by right wing distortion for the benefit of the 1% for merely having the temerity to exist and attempt to survive in that environment would be regressive and disproportionate. The fact that another limb of the establishment, namely fat cat lawyers who went to public schools and Oxbridge, which the Mirror is one of the few to challenge is cruelly running this criticism against decent journalist truth tellers just goes to show how desperately the country needs papers like the Mirror.”
On the day the NOTW closed I posted all over that progs would regret defining mandatory closure as the punishment for hacking. Even then it was obvious that The Mirror was an equal or greater offender.
Nothing will happen though.
There is one law for the left.
@Stuck-record – I seem to remember Guido Fawkes putting up a graph a year or two back based on the police findings of incidents of phone hacking; the Mirror was number 1, think the Sun was #2 and the Mail, Express and Graun were all on there too.
Luis
This isn’t about writing articles castigating people of your own side; all sides apply the same standards there – “cuts both ways”.
This is getting a newspaper shut down for something others are doing to the same or even greater degree. It’s the double standards, not the low standards per se.
“@Stuck-record – I seem to remember Guido Fawkes putting up a graph a year or two back based on the police findings of incidents of phone hacking; the Mirror was number 1, think the Sun was #2 and the Mail, Express and Graun were all on there too.”
Well of course – anyone with half a brain could see that the “phone hacking scandal” was an agenda specifically from he BBC and the Guardian to get Murdoch.
Nothing has changed…
It’s not like the Beeb and the Graun have never done it either. When I was a trainee hack myself, it was seen as nothing more than due diligence when working on a story.
http://youtu.be/m_Gjf0DgFtw
Shutting down the newspaper was R. Murdoch’s move to protect J. Murdoch, and to some extent Rebekah Brooks. It’s ridiculous to characterise it as driven by external forces: as ITBoy notes, there was absolutely no public or legislative pressure that shaped R. Murdoch’s decision.