The News of the World is history

Here’s something that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with PS Publishing nor even with books (What?! Has he lost his mind?!) but, in many ways, it has to do with words . . . and, let’s face it, that’s what we’re about, you and me.

Like many folks out there—and I’m thinking of mainly British readers, although it relates to us all, irrespective of nationality—I’ve gotten somewhat peeved at the continually emerging underhand activities committed by what I believe (and fervently hope) to be a small minority of journalists and reporters on the News of the World Sunday newspaper who have resorted to hacking the phones of some extremely vulnerable and distressed people. While it was bad enough when the victims of such nefarious activity were celebrities and politicians, the latest revelations simply beggar belief. But the so-called solution put out by Rupert Murdoch’s News International organization to close down the paper after 168 years is absolutely unacceptable.

Desperate to find an analogy, I came up with this: imagine some guy ploughing into a line of people at a bus-stop and killing or maiming most of them; now imagine the solution to this heinous act being to ‘punish’ the car involved by sending it to the scrapyard. Total nonsense, of course—it’s the driver who’s to blame. And, to my mind, it’s the same with the ‘drivers’ of the News of the World.

In the immortal words of the great late Paddy Chayefsky from his Network, I’m “mad as hell and not going to take it any more”. You should feel the same.

Don’t get me wrong: the News of the World was never my personal choice for a Sunday newspaper but I feel desperate for the majority of essentially fine and honourable people who work on it and who have now lost their livelihoods as a result of the craven behaviour of the Machiavellian Murdoch and his helpers. Boy, I sure do hope I never need money as badly as those guys!