Voicemail Hack Scandal Leads To Closure of UK Tabloid 268
Some Bitch writes "Britain's biggest selling Sunday tabloid will close after this Sunday's issue. The tabloid has been embroiled in a voicemail hacking controversy for some time now and the news that they compromised the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl and paid bribes to Metropolitan police officers for stories kicked off a renewed assault on the paper. The News Corp daily counterpart to Sunday's News of the World is the Sun; the domain sunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago."
Fuck Rupert Murdoch (Score:5, Insightful)
Send that fuck a bill for Iraq while you're at it.
Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the intolerable hyping and biasing of the Casey Anthony trial in complete disregard of the defendant's right to due process isn't enough, there's that whole ordering people to tell lies about science to bias legislation [mediamatters.org] thing.
shell game...? (Score:4, Insightful)
so they close down one tabloid and move all the employees to another?
Re:And Nothing Of Value Was Lost (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And Nothing Of Value Was Lost (Score:5, Insightful)
As a brand new organization, the new tabloid won't be tainted with the bad name of the old one. Nor, presumably, will it be subject to their lawsuits.
The fact that it'll be the exact same people doing the exact same thing is mostly meaningless from a business standpoint.
Re:Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're singling out Fox News for that, you're nuts. Every single news outlet was doing exactly the same thing. It was disgusting.
Re:Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. Isn't Nancy Grace on MSNBC?
By all that's holy, I cannot stand that woman!
Re:Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is without bias.
Yes, but honest news outfits do everything in their power to minimize their bias, rather than reveling in it like Fox and the other NewsCorp properties do.
Re:shell game...? (Score:5, Insightful)
so they close down one tabloid and move all the employees to another?
No, it's cleverer than that. The close a Sunday tabloid and move a small number of staff to the daily stablemate, just enough additional hands for it to operate effectively over seven days rather than six. The rest are fired, giving massive savings. The News Corp accountants are now punching the air, and the senior management making wry jokes about silver linings.
Hell, that may have been a long-term plan for a while. The scandal had just given them an excuse to bring the plans forward.
Re:Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bias is human and as long as humans are involved in some way, news will have bias.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:2, Insightful)
False equivalency bullshit, as usually from Fox apologists. There's a difference of scale. Fox, and right-wing pundits in generally, are far more likely to demagogue than their left-wing counterparts. These are the people who actively pushed the idea that the Democrats were trying to set up "death panels" to kill off the elderly. Find me something on Rachel Maddow that is even remotely on par with that.
Re:Can we close Fox News yet? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Voicemail Hack Scandal Leads To Closure of UK T (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. That does sound rather funny:
call to Hugh: We will threaten you with exposing your private life if you reveal anything on us.
-some muttering can be heard in background-
Call to Hugh: sorry, seems like we already did that. Is there anything else you would like us to threaten you with?
Hugh: not really
-more muttering in background-
Call to Hugh: turns out you are retired and we kinda draw the line at death threats at the moment (new company policy and all), and we're pretty much fucked anyhow. Continue as you were.
Re:The way it should be (Score:5, Insightful)
The company isn't gone. This is the equivalent of The Coca Cola Company selling cans of Fanta Orange intentionally laced with arsenic, being caught out, and then agreeing to discontinue the brand "Fanta Orange" (but immediately announcing the launch of new "Sprite Orange"). Oh, and firing some factory workers who weren't even on the pay roll at the time of the arsenic-lacing for good measure.