So was the closure of the News of the World, ‘because of the hacking’, or really a long term plan to close it anyway?
I don’t understand why it was closed so quickly. It would have been easy to sack a few members of staff and keep the paper going, maybe a bit subdued, for a year or so.
So using the scandal has the following benefits to Murdoch:
- he could get rid of staff and journalists very cheaply
- he looks like he’s responding to the criticism
- he keeps his investors happy
- it makes the American legal authorities look like he’s doing something
- and he can set up the Sun on Sunday on the cheap – using existing Sun journalists, rather then setting up a new team.
Murdoch does seem to be losing his grip
- He has lost hundreds of millions of dollars on his purchase of MySpace.
- His online charges for access to the online Times etc are not a great success
- He doesn’t seem to have an awareness of what’s going on his London based empire.
- his poor use of Twitter
- The lack of co-operation with investigations into hacking and now the over co-operation shows News International are losing their grip
- Because of the above no journalist trusts the company
- His arrogance in launching the Sun on Sunday now is to make it less likely he can expand his empire in the UK
- and that poor control is going to force his American shareholders to make him sell off all his UK newspapers to protect their much more lucrative investments in the US of A.
Keep Sunday Pollution Free
Don’t buy the Sun of Sunday