"Just as when Tony Blair’s New Labour swept into Downing Street in 1997, and when the sainted Barack ‘Yes we can!’ Obama ascended to the US presidency in 2009, it is crucial that the slate is once again wiped clean, and public confidence in power restored, so that the establishment can get on with doing pretty much whatever it likes. Or if we decide that this is unacceptable, as we should, then we can rip up the endlessly repeating script and rewrite it in our favour."
‘The world is changing’, declared the Guardian in a ‘revolutionary week’. ‘This is our Berlin Wall moment’, tweeted Guardian columnist George Monbiot. ‘Our democracy is stronger’, proclaimed the Independent. For BBC political editor Nick Robinson, it was an ‘avalanche’ that was ‘still moving’. ‘Gravity’, he intoned, ‘cannot be defied for ever.’ Someone at this very moment may well be writing the script for ‘Avalanche!’, the next blockbuster movie from a major Hollywood studio (but probably not 20th Century Fox.)
There’s no doubt that a body blow has been delivered to Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corporation empire. Leading politicians, who until very recently had been both obsequious and fearful, now want to put themselves at least a bargepole’s length away from the media mogul. As Media Lens reader ‘Keith-264’ noted on our message board:
‘Rupert's down and is getting a tabloid handbagging from lots of people who hitherto hid under a stone at the mere sound of his name.’ (July 14, 2011)
The power of the public is the prime reason for the shift. There had been near-universal revulsion at the phone hacking involving murdered children, victims of the 7 July 2005 bombing in London, and the families of servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. News International payments to police officers and pay-offs to phone-hacking victims, together with feeble and curtailed police investigations, make up a toxic mix with rumours of even worse to be exposed in the near future. In this atmosphere of public disgust, the main political parties had finally shown some mettle and stood up to Murdoch’s long-time bullying.
Tory leader David Cameron desperately tried to keep his head above water, seemingly unable to comprehend the extent of a rapidly escalating anger throughout an appalled country. He was engulfed by fallout from his shoddy judgement in employing Andy Coulson, a former editor of News of the World, as his director of communications.
Spreading around the blame in an attempt to dilute his own culpability, Cameron stated:
‘The truth is, we have all been in this together—the press, politicians and leaders of all parties—and yes, that includes me.’
There was no sign that he, far less the government, would resign over the matter. [...]
No comments:
Post a Comment