Wrong red-top goes

Meeting the demand for action on the News of the World scandal by closing it means that many who had nothing to do with the evils it perpetuated will suddenly be out of work. They will have to seek jobs in a rapidly contracting industry. They will carry the can for its decade of shame.
They do not include – yet – the woman who edited the paper when it had the phones of murdered schoolgirls hacked in 2002, nor when it paid off police, nor when it did God knows what else illegal, unethical, and outrageously inhumane such as giving the parents of a missing girl false hope that she was deleting her voicemail messages, rather than a shameless and heartless newspaper.
Rebekah Brooks was the flame-haired editor then and she is now the chief executive of News International – the British arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. In that role, she has been in charge of responding to the allegations made against her own company and, this week, made about a period of her own editorship. In that role, she has failed.

In some kind of sick joke, she was put in charge of overseeing News International's latest investigation into itself. She holds her job with the support of Murdoch, and little is the surprise that the most retweeted reaction this morning is fiery columnist Jon Gaunt's crack that Murdoch got rid of the wrong red-top.

News Corp has acted hard, but no one should think it has acted fast. Few were calling for the paper's closure - just the removal of those involved and a clean-up of its practices after years of shifting denials and half-apologies. The scandal has been in the making for a decade, with inquiries by a parliamentary committee, the police and the Press Complaints Commission unable to do what The Guardian eventually did through its own tenacious reporting.

There are few heroes in this story. The Guardian is one. It uncovered the sordid mess over years of real journalism, helped from time to time by The New York Times and The Independent - and only joined finally this week by the rest of the British media, even News's own title, The Times, once the game was up. You can hack the phones of all the celebrities you like, but once you take on murdered schoolgirls, dead soldiers and terrorist victims, you're stuffed.

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News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks leaves the London offices of The News of The World last night. Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

There were a few noble politicians prepared to go where others would not and criticise the News of the World despite the likelihood of offending Britain's most powerful media companies.

But there are plenty of villains. Andy Coulson, who replaced Brooks as editor and was there when the paper appears to have been at its most hack-happy; after resigning twice over the affair, once from the Prime Minister's office, he is reportedly close to being arrested. Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who did much of the hacking and served time in jail for it. The many others who surely knew what was going on, sanctioned it and so far have gone unpunished.
And there is still Brooks. As then editor and now chief executive, the buck stops with her. As long as she keeps her job, her immediate boss, James Murdoch, is a villain too. Without her departure, he will be the man who sacked scores who had no responsibility, and saved the neck of one who did.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/blogs/media-matters/wrong-redtop-goes-20110708-1h5gt.html#ixzz1RU4j40bV