R.I.P News Of The World

It was full of breasts, bad grace and bull. So why am I sad at NoW’s demise? Because the timing is terrible.

A healthy democracy needs a thriving, solvent, independent, diverse and good media industry. Yes, blogs and online media outlets are springing up all over the place, and I applaud this wholeheartedly. But where are our guarantees that the facts given in these places are true, and how do we know which bias filter we need to use, as readers/viewers/listeners, to make up our own minds about what each story is really about?

Yes, our professional media sometimes gets their facts wrong. I would like to think that deliberately falsifying information is rare and limited largely to the gutter press. And as for getting things wrong by mistake, UK journalists are highly educated, highly trained and have to be careful for their own careers to stick to a strict code of conduct which includes ensuring information is correct and using balance in their stories. This same level of integrity cannot be said for every country.

Yes the media outlets follow their own agendas, courtesy of their string masters, but we as their audience know, for example, that The Guardian will have a different take on a story to The Sun. And consider ourselves lucky. We know that Murdoch et al have their own bias, but compare how much more open his UK products are to wider views than, say, the rigidly right wing Fox Network in the US. And if/when the British Murdoch empire goes, if that space is filled at all, what’s to say that it won’t be filled by a similarly slanted owner?

Is this same rectitude and code of conduct employed by people writing their own views online? No. Citizen journalism is utterly legitimate and serves to improve democracy, but I believe that it must be balanced by information from professional and hopefully more independent news organisations.

So, did I like NoW? No, I hated it. And I detest the worst methods used for news tapping that are coming out now into the open, which no doubt were employed far wider than by people in just the Murdoch empire. And it is absolutely right that this information must come into the public sphere so that the industry can be cleansed.

I only wish that this scandal had occurred more than 15 years ago, when the financial backing for traditional media was more secure. Sadly, now this scandal must hasten the demise of the traditional media as we know it.

Surely advertisers will flee even faster from our tainted media. And our media organisations which are bravely and no doubt desperately trying out different business models by diversifying abroad, such as The Guardian and The Daily Mail will take a reputational nose dive by association, from which, who knows, they may not recover.

So rest in peace NoW. I mourn for the era of media which you may well have ripped apart.

@tbgnikki