It's the luvvies wot won it!

I thought I had a handle on the basic facts about the phone hacking malarkey that’s done for the News of the Screws. It’s complex and murky, but the main points seemed clear enough.

Proximate cause: public disgust at what the Guardian journalists exposed.

Ultimate cause: Newscorp executives bringing the crisis on their own heads in one or other of two ways. Either, one, by being completely unaware that some NotW employees were not only behaving like unfeeling bastards (which, shouldn’t have surprised anybody who’s actually glanced at a Murdoch tabloid at any time in the past few decades), but were also routinely breaking the law. Or, two, by knowing perfectly well that the law was being broken, but turning a blind eye, going along with it, or even initiating it.

Carl Bernstein, (yes, that Carl Bernstein, as in Woodward and Bernstein) who presumably knows a thing or two about the newspaper business in general and investigative journalism in particular, favours explanation two:

As anyone in the business will tell you, the standards and culture of a journalistic institution are set from the top down, by its owner, publisher, and top editors. Reporters and editors do not routinely break the law, bribe policemen, wiretap, and generally conduct themselves like thugs unless it is a matter of recognized and understood policy. Private detectives and phone hackers do not become the primary sources of a newspaper’s information without the tacit knowledge and approval of the people at the top, all the more so in the case of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, according to those who know him best.

And, you know what, he nearly had me believing that it was all Newscorp’s own fault. Until I came across this brilliant piece of investigative reporting from one Nigel Green, crime reporter for the Sunderland Echo and erstwhile freelance contributor to the News of the Screws, fearlessly exposing the real puppet masters:

Murdoch has been forced to take this action by a hysterical bandwagon made up of sanctimonious luvvies who sneer at tabloid newspapers and their readers.

Thanks for setting the record straight, Nige; with insightful pieces like that, you'll go far, mate.

Ha! Take that, Bernstein! You thought it was Newscorp executives up to no good who brought down the Screws, but that was just a set-up, you has-been. In fact, it was a tiny band of hysterical luvvies who got together and bitchslapped the world’s mightiest media conglomerate until it whimpered like tiny puppy left out in the rain.

Well, who’d have thought it, eh? I, for one, will be raising a glass of some suitably louche gin-based cocktail to our gallant thespians. Endlessly mocked for their shallow, narcissistic ways, their cravats and their Brylcreem, this tiny band of entertainers went up against the brutal might of Murdoch’s pan-continental empire of evil and came back glorious. Never in the field of British journalism has so much been owed by so many to so few. Never again will I make fun of a BAFTA acceptance speech, now that I know what these plucky luvvies have done for us all. By Jove, they make you proud to be British.

Luvvies of Britain, I salute you all! Darlings, you were wonderful! Mwah! Mwah!


Hat tip to The Null Device for the Bernstein piece.