Murdoch scum

[Bill Poster]

Murdoch scum

Count me as another ex O2 customer. It's a shame as it was a great broadband service, much better than beardy twat's. BT fibre it is for me too.

E10, I have to confess I'm struggling to comprehend the detail about the press regulation stuff, partly due to not reading the detail and (as a corolary) because I have 'other shit to do' which I will hopefully be paid for at some point. Is the proposal on offer a Good Thing or not?

[E10 Rifle]

Murdoch scum

BP, hard to tell. I don't have a problem with the statutory underpinning thing - it can give an independent regulator the necessary teeth - but Royal Charter status seems archaic and weird (and, potentially, more scope for government interference, though that's been tempered by the deal struck on Monday which required 2/3 of parliament rather than just the government of the day).

The 'exemplary damages' issue surrounding publications that don't sign up to the regulator could be more problematic. How it will and won't apply to blogs, for example, does not seem failsafe. And there are hazards in effectively creating two-tier libel systems around different types of published material - ie that done 'professionally' or 'commercially', and that which isn't.

It's been a fucking awful debate though - reminiscent of the AV referendum in some ways - with the more entrenched and vocal elements on both sides spending much more of their time constructing strawmen and then setting fire to them, rather than listening to the 1,000 shades of grey that constitute other opinions on this.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Murdoch scum

I think the anti side have been much, much worse- by strange coincidence, they have a lot of the same people from the AV anti campaign too. At least "remember the Dowlers" is based on things that did happen.

There's still lots of detail to go, as you say. I think having parallel processes for people inside and outside is the only way you can deal with the Desmond problem of newspapers not joining the regulator. If you're in there, and making it work better than the last joke of a system, I think the law should take that as a sign of basic good faith. If you're a newspaper and aren't, you're a wildcatter and deserve what you get.

That still leaves all the blogs etc, and we'll have to see.

[Bill Poster]

Murdoch scum

Thanks E10. I totally agree about the quality of the debate. It's been quite, quite depressing and the sheer amount of hyperbole on each side has turned me off.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Murdoch scum

The Sun lead story 2 days ago.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4856892/Suspected-EastEnders-paedophiles-investigated.html

PAEDOPHILES working on EastEnders preyed on under-age fans who hung around the set hoping for autographs, police believe.
A team of officers are investigating a group of “mature adults” thought to have been employed by the BBC soap in the 1980s and ’90s.

According to the not very pro-BBC Mail today

Police dismissed reports of a suspected paedophile ring at BBC soap EastEnders. The Sun newspaper yesterday claimed a unit was set up over allegations adults groomed children on set in the 1980s and 90s.

Police said no such unit exists and no abuse was reported.

[ursus arctos]

Murdoch scum

Rupert has just filed for divorce from Wendy Deng, which is rather unexpected.

[Gangster Octopus]

Murdoch scum

Unless you read Sylvie Krin in Private Eye...

[Tubby Isaacs]

Murdoch scum

ursus arctos wrote: Rupert has just filed for divorce from Wendy Deng, which is rather unexpected.

Really? I saw her coming from here.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Murdoch scum

[Gerontophile]

Murdoch scum

She LURVES the smell of his farts. (Not even HE does)

She even looks kittenish in that final picture, and is thinking, 'right, I divorce this horse guy, I marry the Boss, I kill Him, and then aim for Cameron. (But little do they know, I fancy Samantha...)'

*"Oh, wait: is he into 'jailbirds'?"

[NHH]

Murdoch scum

Blair's spokesman has denied he and Deng are having an affair. Which isn't quite the same as denying they were.

[Satchmo Distel]

Murdoch scum

Dirty Digger v Dirty Den(g)

[Sean of the Shed]

Murdoch scum

NHH wrote: Blair's spokesman has denied he and Deng are having an affair. Which isn't quite the same as denying they were.

She was having an affair with Blair's spokesman, then?

[Satchmo Distel]

Murdoch scum

Stupid football idea from the cunt:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/jun/14/rupert-murdoch-summer-contest-football?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position4

[Gangster Octopus]

Murdoch scum

Chelsea, for example, headed to the US to play Manchester City as soon as their marathon season finished and will head to Thailand, Malaysia, India and back to America before the start of the 2013-14 season.

Remember this when The Happy One complains about having too many games to play next season...

[Guy Profumo]

Murdoch scum

Wot? No comment?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23175564

[Gangster Octopus]

Murdoch scum

Toothless or Stalinist?

[Janik]

Murdoch scum

I suppose the test is whether it would have prevented exposure of an illicit sexual relationship between two high profile people that was possibly facilitating criminal activity, isn't it?

This particular nugget is definitely in the public interest. I wonder how the newspapers never got around to reporting it?

[Gangster Octopus]

Murdoch scum

Ah, good, that's finally out.

[Sean of the Shed]

Murdoch scum

As Coulson said as he withdrew.

[Gangster Octopus]

Murdoch scum

[Sean of the Shed]

Murdoch scum

It's times like this that you wish Ross Kemp really was Grant Mitchell. Coulson's own mother wouldn't recognise him once he had got hold of him.

[Edie St Pierre]

Murdoch scum

David Yelland writing in The Guardian

It is almost exactly 11 years ago since I left the Sun's office for the last time and began a long period of re-entry into the human race. I dreamed of being a journalist, got my first break at 21, and 13 years later was editor of the Sun – but I have now been happily out of the industry almost as long as I was in it.

British journalism and journalists are the best in the world. But you wouldn't think it. Total reputational disaster has befallen journalism in this country. Personally, I like journalists; some of my best friends are tabloid journalists. In the great debate about the media, I can see the journalists' side of the story. I can see it, but I don't go along with it.

One year on from Leveson, the country finds itself in a crazy place where facts don't seem to matter and generalisations are repeated so often that untruths almost seem truths.

What has actually happened is this: Sir Brian Leveson did a very good job. He listened, he went away, and he set out his recommendations, which all hung together. They made sense.

Leveson said that a huge proportion of the press does a great job, but parts "wreaked havoc in the lives of ordinary people". He concluded that the law isn't adequate for protecting ordinary people, and that the public want – and deserve – a decent system of regulation that gives them access to fair redress.

At the same time, he said that politicians should not be allowed to interfere with the freedom of the press.

Let us also remember why the prime minister set up the Leveson inquiry in the first place: the press had abused its power. Did Abigail Witchalls, stabbed and left disabled while out with her 21-month-old child, deserve to have her private medical details published? Should Kate and Gerry McCann have had to prove that they had not sold their three-year-old daughter into slavery to pay off their mortgage? Did Christopher Jefferies deserve to be falsely accused of murder because he was "weird".

I have learned that it pays to have a little humility. I too made errors of judgment when I edited papers. But humility is not a characteristic we see much in the mass-market press. We see bullying, though. Too often if you shout the loudest you win the argument. And too often anyone who challenges the status quo is ejected from the group or sidelined. Indeed, many papers remain dictatorships: anyone who challenges the editor does not last long. This applies even more to proprietors.

This dictatorial structure has its advantages. It means newspapers can be dynamic and decisive. But it also puts immense power in one person's hands – at least until the next day.

I say that based on experience. In my early years I ran a terrible front page – "Sophie Topless" – in which we printed a near-topless picture of the Countess of Wessex: I left the office that night with the staff almost cheering. By midnight, people were calling for my head. I felt like a child who had been given an air rifle and shot dead a songbird. I was ashamed of what I had become.

So when I criticise editors, I am doing so from experience. I know what it is like to make mistakes, and I know what it is like to do the right thing.

Which brings me to another front page: the Mail's 12-page attack on Sir David Bell, one of six assessors on the Leveson advisory panel. It was totally disproportionate and amounted to an act of intimidation – an exercise in fear.

Much of it was innuendo piled upon inaccuracy, and accused some very benign organisations of being in a conspiracy against a free press. The entire concept was ridiculous. And Bell is not even an enemy of the Mail. He is a lifelong journalist, a staunch defender of a free press who used his role as a Leveson assessor to defend the press.

The Mail's purpose was clear: the story was pitched at anyone else who might dare to question its position. And it worked. I know at least one senior editor who has declined to break ranks because of what happened to Bell.

At times the British press is so hypocritical it takes my breath away. I ran a Sun front page with the headline "BBC is on drugs" when I was rarely sober for 24 hours in a row. Whether they are mad or just lack self-awareness, the fact is editors and proprietors in this country see themselves as the small guy, the powerless man struggling against the establishment. What they fail to grasp is that they have become the establishment themselves. They are the powerful, and others are the weak. Ask the McCanns, the Dowlers, or Christopher Jefferies.

One of the most potent weapons a newspaper has is to totally ignore an issue or a story. People attack papers for what they print. But what they don't print is often the bigger story.

The press has done itself no favours in the biased way this entire matter has been reported, when it has been reported at all. Few papers have dared differ from the fundamental response to the great mess that caused the Leveson inquiry in the first place. There is a party line. And nearly everybody follows it.

The party line is that Leveson and the royal charter that followed represent state regulation of the media. It is not true. Neither is it true that the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), the industry's own response, delivers the key elements Leveson called for. Ipso does not come close to giving the public what they need: low-cost legal redress when they have been illegally abused or misrepresented; an effective complaints process; confidence that, if a publication is habitually abusing its power, or has done so in a particularly egregious way, it will be properly investigated and – if found guilty – fined; reassurance that the process is fair and independent.

What we witnessed, post-Leveson, was pure hysteria. The press simply does not understand that it became the very thing it is there to attack: a vested interest. It did not listen but instead censored the public debate about itself. And it tried to bully anyone who had the temerity to challenge the party line.

We are now a year on from Leveson. It would be intolerable if, this time next year, the public was still worse off than it was before this entire mess started. But that is where we are heading. What a shambles we have made, and how badly we have failed the British people.

[NHH]

Murdoch scum

My, that's brilliant stuff. British journalism in 2013 neatly captured there.

[Gangster Octopus]

Murdoch scum

Cunt questioned.