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The Daily PollTHE CLOSURE OF the News of the World is undoubtedly an unprecedented ending to a long-running scandal over the paper’s use of phone-hacking techniques to secure some stories.
Many see the closure of the paper as the only fitting punishment for the paper’s transgressions – acknowledging that the paper would not have been able to rescue its tarnished public reputation.
But others have warned that the closure may gloss over the paper’s transgressions – and with the Sun expected to become a seven-day operation, News Corporation will not see much of a commercial backlash.
What do you think – was closing the newspaper the right thing to do?
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Gutter press, shouldn’t have opened in the first place!
It started a a Tory paper, and after seeing the power that William Stead gained by introducing sex, sleaze, and sensationalism with the Pall Mall Gazette, then it followed down the same route.
just info: Shaw and Wilde used to contribute to Pall Mall Gazette.
As welcome as the demise this rag is, it is only a cynical, window dressing exercise by Murdoch to protect his takeover over BSkyB. The space will only be filled by The Sun, which is just as bad as NOTW. There should be a public campaign to boycott all News International gutter press titles.
I couldn’t agree more. This closure is only a stunt additionally to get the advertisers who had left the NOTW, to move in a few weeks, to the “Sun On Sunday”.
The last thing the public should do, is reward Murdoch by allowing his takeover of BSkyB and more control of British media. Talk about rewarding the devil!
As bad as he is now, he’d be much worse if he got his way – and treating 200 to 400 workers as fodder for his manovers is not the actions of someone honourable.
…And for that alone, he should be sent packing – never mind still backing and employing Rebekah Brooks who has been allegedly named by a phone hacker as being complicit with the phone hacker, present at meetings discussing the hacking and materials gained from said activities, etc.
I don’t think its all that much great news to be honest – and I’ll say why.
1. Its a ploy so that Murdoch can go a head now with his takeover in time, when this PR exercise is over.
2. 200 staff (from printers to factory floor staff) are now out of work. None of the present lot (getting sacked) are/were involved in the hacking.
3. There was going to be cuts anyway in the NOTW production lines anyway too according to the Financial Times.
4. Rebeka Brooks is STILL employed – even after being named by the hacker involved as also being in on the hacking.
5. Those that are/were going to sue the paper, will be effected now more so in their case in regard to limits of liabilities, seeing as the paper will now be closed come Monday. (There was reports that there may be 4,000 victims, with a total settlement cost of £120 million (€133.5 million ) – see: http://tinyurl.com/6zxxdcx.)
6. There WILL be a Murdoch newspaper replacement. Its already in the works – so nothing there will change. Murdoch will still eventually produce more of the same.
As for Murdoch saying the paper was doomed when advertisers pulled out – cobllers1
HE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS DOING
Those pulling out of advertising would be doing so for the long foreseeable future while LONG investigarions continue (by two inquiries alone).
The loss financially would run into hundreds of millions, if not more.
So now as its emerged to the world, in a short while there will be an alternative new Murdoch Sunday paper with a diffrent name.
Whats the betting those advertisers that pulled out of the tainted NOTW, will now instead advertise with the new Murdoch paper right away? Murdoch would know this – and thus we also get a partial PR exercise…
One large loss for a LONG time – versus – one shorter loss then back to normal with a ‘new’ alternative version with a diffrent name…
Murdoch is a businessman. He’s not a fool by any means.
For the sake of a MUCH smaller loss and he gets the PR of supposedly closing a bad imaged paper, he gets to be allowed to continue his BILLION worth takeover.
Would any of us rather lose a few million in the short term (with another paper on the way anyhow to take up the slack!) – or Billions in the long run?
As regards those that was going to sue the paper, the limits of their financial exposure might be limited now and/or seeing at officially the company will be closed, they cannot be sued directly – more so their insurers will have to pay out and not Murdoch’s company itself.
(Its a legal way of passing the buck – For example: Land of Furniture in Ireland/England did this it seems when they became liable for toxic sofas they were selling – so they closed down and all of a sudden on the same properties weeks later “Cost Plus Sofa’s” appeared – with the same staff, properties and same stock and suppliers! Anyone now suing the previous legal entity for damage done – has to take on their insurance company, not the company itself.)
How can this be done?
…Because as the saying goes “The law can be an ass.”
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Add to that one report in Reuters said the following aspect:
Here’s some News of the World news to spin the heads of American lawyers. According to British media law star Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent (whom The Times of London has dubbed “Mr Media”), Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be shuttered tabloid may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper—even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.
If News of the World is to be liquidated, Stephens told Reuters, it “is a stroke of genius—perhaps evil genius.”
Under British law, Stephens explained, all of the assets of the shuttered newspaper, including its records, will be transferred to a professional liquidator (such as a global accounting firm). The liquidator’s obligation is to maximize the estate’s assets and minimize its liabilities.
So the liquidator could be well within its discretion to decide News of the World would be best served by defaulting on pending claims rather than defending them. That way, the paper could simply destroy its documents to avoid the cost of warehousing them—and to preclude any other time bombs contained in News of the World’s records from exploding.
“Why would the liquidator want to keep [the records]?” Stephens said. “Minimizing liability is the liquidator’s job.”
That’s a very different scenario, Stephens said, from what would happen if a newspaper in the U.S. went into bankruptcy. In the U.S., a plaintiff (or, for that matter, a criminal investigator) could obtain a court order barring that kind of document destruction.
In the U.K., there’s no requirement that the estate retain its records, nor any law granting plaintiffs a right to stop the liquidator from getting rid of them.
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Murdoch is NO fool.
Anything he has done – is going to do – is with long term profit in mind and nothing less.
People and countries are just fodder for him to play around with!
THE BSKYB TAKEOVER SHOULD BE CANCELLED! – DO NOT BUY THE SUN ON SUNDAY
I LOVE it WHEN people TYPE in CAPITALS, it MAKES me IMAGINE that THEY are SHOUTING at THEIR computer SCREEN
Irish government paid out another traunch of money to Failed ANGLO, they close hospital services on easy and west of the country, they make promises and disregard them. 4000 children died yesterday and everyday from lack of clean water. And the Journal reports are dominated by #NOTW and a woman having sex with a dog. Classy journalism.
You are free to find another news source if the Journal is not up to your standards.
Alan – thanks for your comments.
We’ve covered the hospital closure elsewhere on the site (http://jrnl.ie/171743, http:/jrnl.ie/171776/, http://jrnl.ie/172616), as well as the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Africa (http://jrnl.ie/170915, http://jrnl.ie/171312, http://jrnl.ie/171582). The homepage, as a by-product of being a rolling news curation site, is always going to be dominated by the latter stories and the fact that it’s NOTW-heavy this morning is simply a result of the depth we’ve put into it in the last 24 hours or so.
Also, to defend our coverage of the latter story you mentioned, we’ve only covered that once and certainly don’t intend to revisit it without good reason.
‘People are starving in the world and the media is reporting about NOTW’. Spare us your ‘outrage’. For a start, you’re complaining about a free service. You’re not paying for the Journal’s news curation, so why don’t you stop using it and buy something that reflects your taste in news instead? Like a newspaper, for instance.
If you were genuinely interested in current affairs you’d know that this is a major human interest story on many levels. It has all the elements: good versus evil, Press Baron treating workers with contempt, parents grieving for murdered children, plus schadensfreude, nemesis and a good dollop of double-dealing. If it wasn’t of interest then 3,000 people wouldn’t have clicked on this page. YOU wouldn’t have clicked on this page.
Your heart is probably in the right place, but your sanctimonious whining doesn’t do you any favours.
it’s not really a free service though is it chap, like you do pay your internet bill don’t ya
Seems like a cynical exercise in rebranding: last Tuesday, the domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered (see http://whois.domaintools.com/thesunonsunday.co.uk for details….).
A similar request for a .ie name is pending since Tuesday too… http://www.iedr.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&whois=thesunonsunday&id=86&Itemid=105&Search.x=0&Search.y=0
8 Stories with headlines about #NOTW on the Journals front page. Why is this news source turning into a gossip column?
Has the paper really closed or will it still be around as the Sunday Sun ? I dont think it should have closed because so many people not involved have lost jobs whereas the people responsible i.e. editor at the time Rebecca Brooks…still has her job. I think both she and Murdochs son should be forced out and prosecuted in the courts. We cant have one rule of law for one while the rest of the public are called to be responsible for their actions. The whole business disgusts me. Does Murdoch care..Is that why he supposedly closed the paper..No he doesnt..His concern is now BSkyB. Its time for all politicians who like to party with this man to reconsider and for once stand up and show some decency.
“We cant have one rule of law for one while the rest of the public are called to be responsible for their actions”
Ha. That sounds exactly like the financial and economic mess we have in Ireland. It’s always the way Angela though, the rich and powerful get away with pretty much everything and the rest of us are either held accountable for our own actions (unlike the rich and powerful) or are actually held accountable for the actions of the rich and powerful. It’s the way it has always been, and probably always will.
The Corporate Death Penalty lives, and so it should.
There are a lot more firms out there that should have been executed, however they are propped up by us.
This is just a ploy to get the bskyb bid back on track. he’s banking that once that deal has gone through he can relaunch a sunday tabloid. very very cynical man
It again shows the power of big business over govts. Not right that the workers in the paper who done nothing wrong get sacked to keep the people(responsible) on top stay. I hope people and company’s don’t fall for the sun on Sunday move.Newscorp is murdock and he is the problem He cant get BskyB now?! Only good thing is bertie is down a few quid, I’m sure he wont starve the B**lox :)
I wonder how many of those that hate Murdoch are the same people that made him possible, that is to say anyone who has ever subscribed to Sky TV, bought a News international paper, watched a 20th. Century fox film or dvd, and more. I am certainly no fan of the man, but he only got where he is by people freely exchanging their value for something he gave them in exchange. He has never forced anyone to pay him, which is more than I can say for those that I truly despise, such as welfare statists, eu commissioners, tax collectors etc..
I voted no. When the NotW was around, we knew what we were dealing with. Now Murdoch is going to foist some other tabloid on us for the Sunday market. (The Sunday Sun?) Better the devil youknow than the devil you don’t.
The Sun On Sunday.
There is already a Sunday Sun – Its a paper in Newcastle.
As great as it is to see the end of thee rag, it doesn’t overly excite me in terms of the ‘right thing’ being done. Domain names for ‘sunonsunday’ were registered a few days ago, only by all Murdoch rags being boycotted can there be any hope of triumph of decency over apathy-and I don’t know that most Sun or NOTW readers will give a shit.
the only reason i voted no was because the murdoch empire is now minimising their exposure to liabilities
Those responsible are still going to brought to justice. It is Britain we are talking about after all, people don’t get away with this sort of thing there, not like here.
They employed Bertie “Tea Leaf” Ahern… so yes they should defintely have been shut down!
Yes, but they eventually sacked Bertie. So they had some sense of decency, at least…
The hacks are taking the fall, while the guilty execs remain on. How right is that?
(Even if the hacks include some guilty ones…)
So much vitriol and moral outrage…it reminds me a bit of mob rule.
People love jumping on a bandwagon. Remember that all the Irish staff in NOTW are entirely innocent.
People saying things like “they shouldn’t take Murdoch’s shilling” etc…What a sanctimonious load of rubbish.
There are a small number of corrupt gardai…so sack them all right!
TDs are sometimes corrupt…jail all of them to be sure.
The Guardian and BBC have used private investigators in the past…sack all staff too.
Let those who haven’t sinned cast the first stone.
It has been a very ugly few days. The ugliest was RTE phoning every Irish ad client of NOTW to pull advertising. They helped the loss of 30+ jobs.
The paper broke the law, they acted like children thinking they were spies lol…… So good riddance & you are the weakest link goodbye!!!!!!!
yes it should have been closed long before these latest revelations now the question should be when will there be prosecutions on the matter.
civil legislation should now be put in place to make it possible to sue all media outlets for ten times the amount of profit made by media outlets on any given lie they publish.
Corporate accountancy. Murdoch know what he is doing. Oh, except Jamie, when he teams up with Jamie Packer in a telecoms venture.
I sincerely hope that in the process of closing , they trap some deserving fingers in the door !
By now News International staff are undoubtedly sick as parrots, whereas I for one am over the moon.
It’s a despicable rag that has long been forgotten as something that I once wiped my arse with. A dog with a mallet up its hole can hack a voicemail ,the lack of tits on a sunday morning, however, will probably be forgiven if you don’t jerk off in the confession box and buy The Sunday World later!
have your say