Ready for the vultures
First of all I had a few requests to comment on the News International stuff and its relevance to the McCann case. The affair has now mutated into a battle between the BBC/Guardian network, the real establishment of the UK, sharing both outlook and personnel, on one side and the Tory government, which has cut the BBC’s income and is willing to allow the insolvent Guardian to go into liquidation, on the other. The Murdoch dynasty, that slowly dying creature, too weak to defend itself against vengeful enemies, is being bloodily dismembered in the greater struggle. In this somewhat frenzied situation the participants are also the communicators so we aren’t going to get too much objective news, are we? And until events quieten down we won’t be able to draw long-term conclusions about the future of the politics/media/public sandwich.
The fault lines in the UK media, which the McCann affair highlighted so mercilessly in 2007, remain. The newspaper industry of the last three decades with its flabby model of “serious” newspapers containing very little news but somehow running to dozens of pages of opinion slotted in between the advertising and the thoroughly crooked motor, travel and fashion sections is still in terminal decline...read more
