It's not often I take an interest in the news as it's a distraction from what's really going on but, for once, the media itself is under the spotlight and that might be no bad thing.
I don't want to comment on the actual story coming out as many people will no doubt be doing that, but there has been a trend over the past twenty years or so within politics and the media. This is that celebrity gossip columns have come to dominate newspapers and the other media over news journalism. A few months ago, I watched a documentary called "Starsuckers" which demonstrated that the people who had started out running the gossip columns of newspapers and other media had gradually replaced news journalists as editors and executives. Some have, like Andy Coulson, become advisers to politicians, knowing next to nothing about politics, but a lot about celebrity. Remember, this is the person who has the ear of the Prime Minister.
That this phone hacking scandal has come about is no real surprise. What has been a surprise is the extent of it and that it was covered up for more than five years by the politicians, specifically Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and the police. Also worth thinking about is if this is what News International have been up to, what else have they been doing and what have the other media organisations been doing?
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