I was approached by a camera and an interviewer on the topic of NOTW last week:
Interviewer with a big fluffy microphone: So, have you heard about the NOTW?
Me: Yes...
Interviewer: What do you think of it?
Me: I think anyone who says the newspaper is not as good as the Sun is wrong!
Interviewer: Um . . . What about the allegations that they deleted phone messages from Milly Dowler’s voicemail?
Me: Who are you?
Interviewer: We are doing a piece for CNN Business show...
Me: Oh...Start again. I’ll do this properly.
CNN: What do you think of the allegations surrounding the Milly Dowler situation?
Me: Well, in terms of being unethical, NOTW have no real problem breaking ethical boundaries. We have seen this in the recent reports of them hacking celebrity and football players’ voicemail. Yet in all honesty, whilst this is wrong, I can’t say as an average person I have really cared. I think its wrong but don’t particularly care. I mean it’s harsh on the footballers or whoever and their privacy is invaded...but boohoo! Yet this story I feel differently about... After hearing this story I felt a little sick in my stomach - and believe me, living in this crazy world and hearing the stories we do in modern society, this is no common occurrence.
Approving the decision or knowing of the decision to delete voicemails to give grieving parents false hope is at best thoughtless and at worst real ‘C-word’ (I don’t think I actually said this on video) behaviour. Yet, go back to when this happened. No one knew whether she was alive or not, and at the time this may or may not have hindered finding Milly alive and the police rescue effort. So, in essence I hope that the law comes down hard, real hard on anyone who approved, whether implicitly or explicitly.
CNN: Do you think this will affect the actual newspaper since a lot of advertisers a pulling out?
Me: (And oh how wrong I was in hindsight) No, there may be a short term back lash but no one really expects much better from tabloids - look what happened when The Sun misreported the events of Hillsborough. Did people buy that paper again? Did advertisers forgive that little lie? Yes, of course they did. We live in a ‘Now-World’ where people are given a constant stream of information in new fresh ways. We are the MTV generation, fast-spliced second-long attention spans. Give the NOTW a month and Rupert Murdoch will be kicking ass, making deals and dictating Government policy.
CNN: (Shocked) Umm.. Well thanks for that.
Was I wrong?? Yes! And I have never been more exquisitely, happily ego stricken . Was there a bigger backlash than I thought?? Yes, there has been but I imagine, rather than a month, give it a year or 2 and our ol’ friend Rupert Murdoch will be back, whether it be The Sunday Sun or The Times or BSkyB. He will be dictating common opinion and implicitly if not explicitly Government policy. It would pay dividends to remember we live in a an information age. Information rules the world, where consumerist, easy-to-digest news becomes easier by the day to digest, and Rupert Murdoch has this and MONEY, and we all know what that does to the world. This was merely a hiccup before it sets back to its axis and around the merry go round we go.
Interviewer with a big fluffy microphone: So, have you heard about the NOTW?
Me: Yes...
Interviewer: What do you think of it?
Me: I think anyone who says the newspaper is not as good as the Sun is wrong!
Interviewer: Um . . . What about the allegations that they deleted phone messages from Milly Dowler’s voicemail?
Me: Who are you?
Interviewer: We are doing a piece for CNN Business show...
Me: Oh...Start again. I’ll do this properly.
CNN: What do you think of the allegations surrounding the Milly Dowler situation?
Me: Well, in terms of being unethical, NOTW have no real problem breaking ethical boundaries. We have seen this in the recent reports of them hacking celebrity and football players’ voicemail. Yet in all honesty, whilst this is wrong, I can’t say as an average person I have really cared. I think its wrong but don’t particularly care. I mean it’s harsh on the footballers or whoever and their privacy is invaded...but boohoo! Yet this story I feel differently about... After hearing this story I felt a little sick in my stomach - and believe me, living in this crazy world and hearing the stories we do in modern society, this is no common occurrence.
Approving the decision or knowing of the decision to delete voicemails to give grieving parents false hope is at best thoughtless and at worst real ‘C-word’ (I don’t think I actually said this on video) behaviour. Yet, go back to when this happened. No one knew whether she was alive or not, and at the time this may or may not have hindered finding Milly alive and the police rescue effort. So, in essence I hope that the law comes down hard, real hard on anyone who approved, whether implicitly or explicitly.
CNN: Do you think this will affect the actual newspaper since a lot of advertisers a pulling out?
Me: (And oh how wrong I was in hindsight) No, there may be a short term back lash but no one really expects much better from tabloids - look what happened when The Sun misreported the events of Hillsborough. Did people buy that paper again? Did advertisers forgive that little lie? Yes, of course they did. We live in a ‘Now-World’ where people are given a constant stream of information in new fresh ways. We are the MTV generation, fast-spliced second-long attention spans. Give the NOTW a month and Rupert Murdoch will be kicking ass, making deals and dictating Government policy.
CNN: (Shocked) Umm.. Well thanks for that.
Was I wrong?? Yes! And I have never been more exquisitely, happily ego stricken . Was there a bigger backlash than I thought?? Yes, there has been but I imagine, rather than a month, give it a year or 2 and our ol’ friend Rupert Murdoch will be back, whether it be The Sunday Sun or The Times or BSkyB. He will be dictating common opinion and implicitly if not explicitly Government policy. It would pay dividends to remember we live in a an information age. Information rules the world, where consumerist, easy-to-digest news becomes easier by the day to digest, and Rupert Murdoch has this and MONEY, and we all know what that does to the world. This was merely a hiccup before it sets back to its axis and around the merry go round we go.
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