I have been fairly silent about the News Corp business over the last week. This is not because I don't care. This is because I am simply exhausted by it all. Floodgates have opened. Compass of truth spinning wildly (were it not for Guardian and BBC, ethical guidelines books vindicated). I have recently joined Twitter and my head is spinning with how often some people tweet. I actually feel cooler than alot of famous people as a result.
I have been tempted to make several updates at each juncture but it's spinning so fast that it will always outpace me. And I would just be adding to the newsglastonbury tsunami.
I did always think that the Murdoch camp was systemically unprincipled, and that's all coming to the fore better than I would have thought (i.e. Brooks isn't the head of 'the monster' - she's just the conveniently medusa-like decoy):
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/07/the-most-incredible-thing-fox-news-has-ever-done/242037/
My penchant for the ethics-driven channels and papers feels utterly vindicated. But that sense of vindication is not worthy of their high ethical standards. It's shocking, even to a person who always distrusted News Corp, how insidious it's claws were. I we're finally getting some honesty. But there's a watershed moment for political transparency - what new ceilings could fall in?!
Cameron's proximity to the Murdoch clan is far closer than Blair's was, IMO. Flying to Aus for publicity before an election, and attending annual soirees (as Blair did) seems legitimate liaison, but private dinners and holidays together (as enjoyed by the Camerons) is over-fucking-fraternising. And all that commercial favouritism in Cam's media policies? Looks either seriously uninsightful or even more sinister now, no?! [It has since come to my attention that Tony Blair was a godfather to one of the Murdochs. I don't know quite how to assimilate this, except that Tony is a really nice guy who people just happen to really like. And yes, maybe I'm being a hoodwinked idiot, but I love his dumb-North-East lawyer-father-gave-him-dreams-of-social-justice backstory and so will cut him an awful lot of slack].
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/02/rupert-murdoch-tory-media-policy
But who do we trust? Only the BBC and the Guardian seem not to be commercially-compromised. But I worry for those too. The BBC has massive commitment to ethical guidelines, but how independent can it stay given BBC Trust influence? The Guardian is sustained by a trust, instructed to uphold truth, but isn't the continuation of that trust also dependent on commercial input?
Maybe there's only been truth so far because we've had polar opposites playing tug-of-war.
I'm also distressed, despite being pleased that more people are tapping into The Truth, that its increased popularity means I find it hard to buy an edition (just cos I get up at 12 on a Saturday?! What?!).
