Good Riddance
The British ‘newspaper’, ‘The News of the World’ is dead - after some 160 years of life. It was aptly named – it did indeed deal with news ‘of the world’, reflecting none of the good sides in society and humanity, only their sins and evils.
‘The News of the World’ belonged to the so-called ‘tabloid’ press, a polite way of saying the gutter press. This claims to reflect society, but in fact it reflects the lowest impulses and dirtiest ‘secrets’ of society, held up for public titillation. Indeed, the gutter press has always muckraked, moulded and led society, making the unacceptable ever more acceptable and commonplace. Few will regret the passing of such filth and many will hope that other parts of the gutter press, some belonging to the same owner, will also die out. However, problems are involved.
The first problem is that the gutter press is only part of empires which may rightly be called the gutter media. Some of those parts are today gloating at their rival’s demise, but they are little better and they are still alive. The second problem is whether the British government will take this demise as a chance to censor even further the British media. All British political parties, run by three over-privileged public schoolboys (the result of the anti-egalitarian abolition of decent State education forty or so years ago, which has led to great social immobility) are very frightened of the media. In particular, they tremble in front of Mr Murdoch, the owner of much of it and a leading ideologist of Anglosphere capitalism. Here perhaps they have a chance to protect themselves in ways which are not in the public interest.
We well remember how Mr Blair, considered by many to be a war criminal, ran scared of Mr Murdoch in his time. However, Mr Blair did a political deal and Mr Murdoch ensured the Blair regime free propaganda in his media for its meddling and murderous invasions of several sovereign countries, on condition that Mr Blair ensure Mr Murdoch growing power. This then led Mr Blair free to censor the BBC, sacking its boss, over the Iraq scandal and a mysterious ‘death’, further developing his Orwellian surveillance State. It was after all under Mr Blair that the secret services and the police were lefty to tap the phones and spy on tens of thousands of private citizens, that is, to do no more and no less than the late News of the World.
As for Mr Cameron, a PR executive, he appears to be a clone of Mr Blair, he also makes use of Goebbels-style spin doctors (i.e. Ministers of Propaganda) – one from the News of the World – in just as ruthless a manner as Mr Blair. Media manipulation and above all, manipulation of the public, is British politics today. The revelations of the long-suspected corruption of the British media have opened up the scale of the long-suspected corruption of both British politics and the British police. Many more scandals are still to come. Most of us are not at all surprised. May all corrupt British institutions die – provided, of course, that they are replaced with others more worthy.
Meanwhile, a new country has been born. After the murderous wars leaving millions of dead and maimed, ultimately caused by British colonial mapmakers in Africa (they did the same in Iraq), is born the Republic of South Sudan. Surely this story is far more important for the world media than the corrupt manoeuvrings of individuals in now provincial London.
26 June / 9 July 2011
