Today I didn’t settle down with my usual cup of tea and copy of The Observer. Although never one to read something as turgid as the News Of The World (a hugely misleading title for the newspaper itself unless the world happens to exist up Cheryl Cole’s minge) today was different… It was their last edition following the inevitable closure amidst the phone hacking scandal, the worst of which has yet to be revealed according to all parties involved, even those claiming to know nothing about it. They know enough to know that fouler things will be revealed over the course of the investigation as the facts rise to the surface like stinking turds in a septic tank.
Which is a fitting image ultimately because that is how the editorial team and writing staff have treated the profession of journalism, reducing the art of reportage to little more than a tedious muck raking exercise that equates the word “news” to “secrets”. While greasy hacks like Paul McMullen – trotted out all week as some sort of odious tabloid press caricature for the baying public to boo at from their armchairs – might never truly understand that revealing someone’s private affairs does not always equate to being newsworthy, what even a residual part of his reptilian brain has to recall is that the print media should always be aiming for that higher standard, that moment when facts and words come together in such a way to make history as well as chronicle it.
Given the numerous lapses, the disregard for both ethics and the law alike, you would have – as I did – probably expected the final edition to be laden with apology. I obviously had underestimated just how out of touch with public sentiment the NOTW actually are because I certainly didn’t expect the self aggrandising, congratulatory and ultimately nauseating attempt to write their own legacy. It was horrifying, like the scene from The Shining when you realise Jack Nicholson has simple been typing “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” constantly.
The merest whiff of an apology was on page three when they admitted to having “lost their way” as if behaving like the Stasi for the best part of a decade in the pursuit of frivolous celebrity gossip was a one off error of judgement akin to a regrettable one night stand or pocketing some loose change found on a table. Everything else was a presentation of lop-sided nostalgia, a run of pieces that began with “Do you remember when…” as if the NOTW had actually done mostly good in its time as the rag that constantly lowered the bar in its bid to profit from the base interests of the lowest common denominator.
Yeah, the good old days, like when they named and shamed all those sex offenders, breaking the law in the process. Yeah, the good old days when they actively encouraged mob justice even though the moronic masses that took action, burning torches in hand, all too often got the wrong person… Not that it was ever excusable when they got the right one of course. But hey, the News of The World loves children and has always felt a responsibility towards the vulnerable.
Curious then there was no mention of the time when they hounded television actor David Scarboro during his spell in a mental home, something that ultimately led to his suicide. Or when they also drove the daughter of British actor Denholm Elliot to suicide as well after humiliating her with a story that showed her having fallen on hard times, begging for money and allegedly financing herself through prostitution. Surely these were seen as victories too, the consequences of what happens when a newspaper treats human life as little more than a commodity, no more real than fiction and far more compelling?
No, moments such as these weren’t mentioned anywhere in their tacky commemorative pull-out, nor in the reams of backslapping copy that made this edition more sickening than any of the ones that preceded it. Given that Rebekah Brooks – the person Murdoch deems so important he is willing to axe 200 people’s jobs just so she can keep hers – hired two of her most loyal and dedicated staff to do nothing except go over this final edition to ensure there were no hidden messages, no final sign of dissent in the ranks… Well, you’d have thought they might have mentioned it to her that she’d only gone and forgot the bloody apology.
You know, the one to the family of Milly Dowler whose phone was hacked into after she had been killed, with the old messages being deleted potentially giving them false hope and diverting attention from other avenues of enquiry in a police investigation. Or one for the parents of the young girls murdered in Soham, who have had their trauma dredged up once again because of the investigation. No, attempting to atone for these grievous sins clearly hadn’t even occurred to them as they cobbled together one more pile of black and red shit for the general public to suffer through.
Incredibly the only person that seemed even remotely ashamed by the whole affair was Carole Malone, a woman so poisonous she can only be handled with gloves, who actually described the whole episode as indefensible. Which of course it is, despite all the public attempts to do so. Mercifully there was none of that here, even if the clamour for martyrdom was too much for my stomach.
Steeped in sentiment, readers had been encouraged to send in their tributes, the most saccharine of which were hand picked and scattered across the pages. They had the same hysterical tone of the outpouring of grief that followed the Death of Princess Diana, which should come as no surprise given that those waling morons are likely the same people that read this shit anyway. Nonsense such as “I’m 80. I lived my life with the News of The World. It was a weekend tonic – the only paper in my family home on Sunday. Britain will never be the same again” doesn’t represent the many, many people that are glad to see it gone once and for all and a higher standard of tabloid journalism soon to be ushered in thanks to its absence.
The only thing that came vaguely close to the appropriate tone was the crossword, the one place those two watchdogs didn’t think to check. In the answers there were words that we could all use to form our own sentences regarding the matter. Word such as “Brook” “stink” and “catastrophe”. Yes, some of the departing staff might have had the last laugh, yet it is hard for me to see anyone as victims, much in the same way the people protesting their innocence Nuremberg didn’t rouse me either. Everyone knew what the News Of The World was and everyone knew what it did. Contribute to it on any level and ultimately there has to be some sort of karmic backlash.
For now we can rejoice. Even with The Sun on Sunday lurking round the corner like a bad sequel to a film that should never have been made, for now this is a victory for all those that hold the press dear and see it as more than an aid to titillation. Still, it’s clear the editorial staff at the News of The World don’t care. Robbing the public of an expected apology, they die much as they lived – lacking any conception of right and wrong, drunk on its self-importance and proudly corrupt to the core. Fortunately the truth about what they did, the grim facts of their debauched madness, will outlive any of the cheap propaganda in this self-penned epitaph.