Like many around the world, I was glued to the telly yesterday watching the questioning of the Sun King and the Dauphin aka Rupert and James Murdoch. They’ve been facing an official inquiry into the phone hacking scandal that’s brought down the News of the World and now seems to be lapping at feet of the mighty News International Empire itself.
God Bless the BBC for giving us wall to wall coverage on the story.
Though it was mainly men in suits politely questioning other men in suits, it was still such compelling viewing that I almost let my kids go without dinner because I couldn’t tear myself away from the screen. Their (my kids’) hungry mewings did eventually get to me however, and I managed to miss the real time pie throwing attempt (though I sat through countless re-runs during the rest of the evening’s news coverage).
Most of the time, the camera fixed on Murdoch senior caught his fetching wife, Wendi Deng sitting directly behind him. She was the one to move the fastest in her husband’s defence when a man was about to slam a foam pie into his face, and the slap heard off camera made you realize that you don’t ever want to get on the wrong side of the formidable Mrs M. But at one point, the camera angles on the elder Mr Murdoch changed, and his head was positioned directly below the white collar of an anonymous suited man directly behind him, and blow me if Rupert Murdoch didn’t have a pair of perfect little white horns coming from his head. A cartoonist couldn’t have done it better.
So as the cameras of the paparazzi crowd along the Murdoch limos, as the questions from the press are shouted at them in the moments between doorways and cars, I wonder if the Murdochs and their press minions reflect on the ironic justice of it all. After years of hounding others, and years of impunity, they’re now the ones being hounded and officially questioned in front of a world wide audience panting for more revelations. Celebrity homes in London, LA, and Palm Beach, must be resonding with the sound of popping champagne corks.
More than one media commentator has called it “the gift that just goes on giving”.
Am I the only one rubbing my hands in glee at the sheer circus entertainment value of it all? Should I feel sorrier for the men who’ve done more to ‘yellowfy’ journalism more than anyone else this last century? Perhaps.
But I don’t.
on Aug 5th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Dear Dheera, You have answered the question you posed in reporting on conflicts. The Murdoch “Circus” can draw higher ratings than conflicts which have raged on for decades, and fought on the hideous levels of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Murdoch and his son should not be in front of a parliamentary committee making a farce of the British justice system, they should instead be on trial facing a judge and/or jury for numerous charges drawn from acts they have perpretrated against many vunerable and helpless victims. The BBC can of course choose to cover both types of stories to round out their total news reporting, and this is fine. However, remember that the so-called “yellow press” does indeed signify serious and substantial commercial and ethical competition to a world-class level news organization as the BBC, struggling to maintain a more educated and sophisticated audience. This effort is, nonetheless, negated by the multi-hour circus environment it presents in the case of the Murdochs, over the more life and death issues buried in the reality of the day.