Media turmoil

Melanie Phillips on the News of the World scandal:

Britain’s media earthquake

Melanie Phillips

Already there are loud calls for a new regulatory system; today the Prime Minister said the Press Complaints Commission had failed. So it has; but what is at stake now is not just the fate of Murdoch’s empire but the freedom of the press. Yet the anti-Murdoch media are incapable of seeing this. They are simply hysterical with the delirium at having so badly wounded the man they have long elevated into a cartoon hate-figure.

Moreover, the ecstatic BBC and Guardian are hardly dispassionate observers of these events. They are direct competitors of NI and have an overwhelming commercial interest in bringing it down.

But that isn’t the worst of it. In a western world whose intelligentsia is consumed by irrational and malevolent hatred of America and Israel and is hell-bent on undermining the west and assisting its mortal enemies, Murdoch has provided the one media voice putting forward a pro-America, pro-Israel, pro-defence of the west position — including support for the Iraq war.

That’s why the left hate him so much. They display the same kind of frenzied, irrational obsession over Murdoch as they do over America, Israel and Iraq. When you consider the BBC’s ‘group-think’ bent journalism, or the disgusting support the Guardian provides, week in, week out, to anti-Jewish, anti-gay, women-beating hate-mongers, to see the BBC and Guardian scarcely able to contain themselves over Murdoch’s disaster is a nauseating spectacle.

Read “Britain’s media earthquake” here…