I own a Sky TV package and I read the Times and Sunday Times and I am happy to continue doing so. I just wanted to get your thoughts on the scandal that has engulfed the Murdoch media empire and whether or not you would consider a boycott? My thoughts for what they're worth. Typical knee jerk reactionary response from some people in our country! Lets kick a successful company that employs thousands of people and pays millions in corporation tax each year into the exchequer! We as a nation buy their papers in the millions, the Sun and NOW are the two biggest circulation newspapers in the country. We also pay the subscriptions for their TV boxes and yet we're soon quick to stick the boot in! Yes if the ALLEGED activities of systemic phone hacking are proven true then it's despicable and the people responsible will quite rightly get whats coming to them. But before we all reach for the moral high ground lets stop to consider that the only reason this is happening is to to feed our own insatiable appetite for scandal. Its a bit rich for our politicians to be jumping on the bandwagon of protest when they have spent their political lives cosying up to the press of all kinds. Cameron even employed the former NOW editor who has been caught up in this scandal and had to resign. Are you really telling me that Cameron had no idea what his own press spin doctor was up to! I've heard of people starting to hang around newsagents hounding customers into not buying the Times or the Sun! Last time I looked it was a free country and these papers haven't as yet been banned. The Murdoch press has ploughed Millions into domestic football since the advent of the Premier League. The football clubs are entirely to blame for the current climate of greed passed onto footballers who earn more in a week then most people do in 3 or 4 years! We are so quick to instantly point the finger at others when we should be taking a cold hard look at how we contribute to this selfish, avarice filled and sometimes ugly society that we live in!
You better get down from your soapbox now JWM before you fall off in what I suspect is a drunken stupor. I don't know about the story you are relating to but one thing I don't miss about England is all the over-sensationalised news stories covering the tabloids. I'm sure it will all blow over in a week when someone finds out Sven Goran Erikkson's been at with Kate Middleton.
San Diego I 've worked in the print industry since the mid 1980s not for Murdoch but it is something I feel strongly about.
I can see that mate, i'm only havin' a laff. I can't really make an educated response to your OP because I don't what's going on back home. At least it looks like you've had some replies now.
San Diego - the NOTW hacked a missing girl (Millie Dowler)'s voicemail and deleted voicemails after shed gone missing when the mailbox got full so people would leave more messages for them to spy on. The family wrongly deduced she must still be alive because her mailbox had been cleared. It then emerged this was going on in other cases including the murders of Holly and Jessica.
I have come up with a theory that some will laugh at, however this could be rather true given time.... I'm sure we can remember napster, kazaa and other websites where music download was happening illegally. The music industry moaned moaned moaned, wanting vengeance on the individuals who were downloading the tracks. The trouble was, it was basically everyone. In the end, music download became legal at the cost of approximately 90p a track. The days of singles in shops being sold for £3 were finally over. Which brings me onto football, and other sports. At the moment, sky + other tv companies pay massive bucks for the privilege of showing games for fans to watch. However, livestream across the internet is becoming common place. The quality of this at the moment isn't perfect, and can at times be blotchy and poor. However, this is 2011 with internet speeds and technology how it is. Wind back to 2001, this would not have been possible. Sky + the other companies face a massive headache with livestream, as more and more people over time sign up to this, less and less people will see the need to purchase sky sports... The knock on of this will be, again, sky and rival firms will pay LESS for the television rights. At the moment, this deal alone gives clubs a good %%% of their seasonal budget. Which brings me onto wages, and the fans. For football clubs to be able to continue paying the obscene wages they pay, potentially ticket prices may shoot up rapidly. This is all well at a team like Manchester United, or Real Madrid. People would pay £100 a ticket if they had to. HOWEVER, for many clubs fans WOULD NOT pay massive figures. My conclusion to this, is I think football wages across the board are reaching their absolute peak. They are on about bringing wage caps into football for starters. Also, highlighted above clubs budgets may well get slashed. This from my point of view is long overdue. Could be totally wrong and often am, however that's my viewpoint
Considered reaction. News International by the facts of their admitted actions of hacking into the phones of missing children, giving false hope to the parents and paying police for info are not fit to run media out lets and sit in judgement on the rest of us. thet are corute and morally bankrupt. That is not kicking a big firm employiong lots of people. If OfCOM concluded that they were no longer fit and proper to run a broacast out let I would be very happy.
It seems I should make my apologies to JWM. I have just read the news about the allegations and would like to say sorry that I made such flippant remarks on a serious thread. As I said above though, this is definitely one of the things I don't miss about England. Sad thing is it really doesn't surprise me.
It's not a knee jerk reaction. Watching football on Sky has always been a very guilty pleasure. If it wasn't for a bit of corruption in the bidding process when Sir Alan tipped off Sky as to ITV's bid then things would be very different. We'd still have the same players but they'd be paid less, our tickets wouldn't cost as much and the national team would probably be doing a damn sight better - and we'd have been able to watch live league football on terrestrial telly. I'm referring to the cancellation of Sky Sports - I had Sky TV for a couple of months but the service and choice of TV and films is so far behind Virgin Media that I switched straight back. I think the age of having all these channels and information at our finger tips is a fad anyway. The novelty is wearing off and I think people are starting to realise that they were a lot happier and healthier with three or four channels, a radio and not watching your phone waiting for it to bleep. So it's not a knee-jerk reaction, but this happening put the nail in the coffin. I will say one thing for David Cameron - today was the first time I thought he meant something he said. It's one thing to hack the phone of a royal or a celebrity for some gossip - it's quite another to interfere in the affairs of missing and murdered teenagers, children or anyone else for that matter. Hiring Coulson with the knowledge that he hacked phones for gossip is no worse really than us choosing to put money in Murdoch's pocket when we know it's wrong. What's coming out now is demonic and I think Cameron is as outraged as the rest of us.
These particular people are basically the scum of the earth...no one can condone what they've done and anyone with an ounce of common decency knows that morally they are the bottom of the food chain. Invasion of privacy is invasion of privacy wether its for gossip on who's shagging who or on other matters, and while we are appalled by their interference into the personal affairs of murdered / missing children and their families, these scum know no different. That is what they do. If it was illegal we could lock the s*its up but its not so we must hope that those responsible for allowing it to happen realise that they have made a massive f**k up and morally try to make amends. We all knew about tapping up but we've done nothing about it so you cannot complain that someone with no morales has taken it to the lowest level, it was bound to happen. Now that it has happened we are all disgusted and hopefuly those with the power to do stuff will put steps in place to ensure that this never never happens again. I also believe in freedom of speech and if people want to show their outrage by not supporting Murdoch I fully support them and if that means reminding people when they buy their newspapers of the kind of people that produced that paper then I support them to. Thats freedom of speech. I personally haven't bought a newspaper of any kind for over 10 years beause I hate the way things are reported, biased, made up, opinionated and glamourised. I don't really watch the news for the same reasons. I do agree with Mr Tache on the knee jerk reaction and I hate these as much because its generally all talk, people in power condemning and telling us what they are going to do ( often for their own importance ) and then doing nothing. Which is exactly how this happened in the first place. My thoughts go to all the families of those children who have had to endure all this being dragged up again and especially in these circumstances . Anyone who has lost someone close knows that all those feelings of loss return in an instance when memories are revoked and the pain is as fresh as the day it happened. Murdochs men are despicable excuses of human beings and will hopefully get what they deserve in life.......
Nope, Where the hell would i be able to ogle at Charlotte Hawkins and Sarah-Jane Mee apart from sky news, they are just so fit!
Great! Lets rejoice at the news that the most successful English language newspaper that has been around for 168 years will finally close on Sunday! Lets rejoice at the fact that due to a rogue reporter who is currently banged up, hundreds of innocent people will be losing their jobs. Lets rejoice at the fact that the former editor who allowed this terrible practice to happen on their watch gets to keep her highly paid job! A sad sad day! I work for a rival media group but I take no pleasure in what has happened today!
Aye sems a bit of an odd call if I'm honest. The suspicious git in me ponders the idea of dumping as much evidence as possible, on the defence of clearing out a closed office. That and saving that red haired womans job, either way seems a sad end to a paper with that much age behind it. Especially as its reccent corrupt gits that have caused this. I suspect there will be more to this as the weeks pass. However I agree, not a great week for the British media.
I'm sure most of these people will soon be working for the NOTW replacement paper propably in the same office's from the same desks just with a different name on the T-Shirt, its all just an exercise to make people believe something has actually been done and that the powers that be are disgusted by whats gone on. The only thing that said powers are disgusted at is that they got caught and now they have to go through a re-branding exercise. NEWS OF THE GLOBE??? But then what do i know.
