it's an excellent story that really states the bleeding obvious.
I always knew the move from Fleet Street would end in tears. Needless to say, Murdoch led the charge with active assistance from the Thatcher government.
It was profit driven and nothing to do with newspapers, but it began the real decline of a publishing culture.
Editors relying on website hits who take that as evidence of real interest need their head's read. The Sun boasts the 'Alfie Affair' had it's greatest ever web hits but these tales are 5 minute wonders.
This confirms Andrew Neil's claim that publishers who cannot build a real 'family' of readers with a strong publication and website will go to the wall.
I reckon the News Corp empire will be the first to break up. Many predicted that Fox News in the USA would plummett in popularity once a democrat president was installed. That began even before Obama was elected.
Repeated right-wing diatribes only transfix a few and fascinate a lot but the lot move on. The real problem-the other excellent US cable news stations that followed Fox downhill in content.If they had stuck to their normal output they would have retained loyal listeners through hard times. Newspapers are no different.
Crime reporting has suffered so badly as the media allowed themselves to be seduced by police media outlets and relied on them for their information. Quite simply-police PRs lie and exagerate, just as all publicists do.
The results of this can be seen in small incidents-the police love a good 'pedo' tale as much s anyone else. In QLD a convicted pedophile who has just been found not guilty in a recent trial-inflamed by persistent police media releases and delayed for 5 years because of the uproar has now been given 24 hour protection by 2 armed policeman.
Whilst police pandered to the media and as a resultant mobs of moronic baying crowds gathered outside the man's home screaming their heads off(and a clever plod would note those in this mob-"protesteth too much etc")they found they had created a rod for their own backs. Their efforts at riot control and providing protection over the last 3/4 years to an always innocent man has now cost millons of dollars in wasted man hours.
You can multply that in the UK a thousand times as each localised police force acts in a similar mannner.
The result-the UK gripped with fear that a knife weilding thug is just outside their door (or a roller blading pensioner) whilst the real figures from Scotland Yard barely get a mention-that Britain now has a dozen well-organised gangs (who would make the Mafia weep)-some from the former USSR who spread their tentacles throughout Europe and into the USA whilst those countries were rejoicing at the collapse of the Soviet Union-that rake in billions of pounds a year and are virtually untouchable.
Where does the real blame lie ?..craven politicians who take their orders from the tabloids. Nu Labour is the worst offender to date as it has been the first poltical party to manipulate the elctorate via the media ,US style.
Meanwhile-whist the media crumbles in on itself and editors (I've met few I'd let wash my car) scratch their heads and pander to an uninterested public for 2 minutes of attention, but at the same time create their own destruction..not one takes notice of that small publication printed on the cheapest newsprint which has an ever increasing circulation yet is put together by a tiny team of dedicated professionals who know real news-
Private Eye.
We should welcome the total collapse of the newspaper industry as out of it only something good will arise.
Meanwhile Britons should ask why they have allowed themselves to be led by the nose for decades by an Australian born buccanear who took US citizenship, who has manipulated politics on 3 continents for nothing else but profit (despite his own extreme right-wing views) but has located his family companies in every tax haven on the planet thus avoiding billions in taxes in his homeland/s and elswhere. ie-his money is safely tucked away-shareholders will weep when the crash comes.
Forums 
