A beautiful morning and a warm 25 minute run.
Last night the wife & I discussed how we all have an appetite for discussion of what is happening in the lives of the people in the community around us – in other words, for gossip. Probably it is a genetically programmed defence mechanism to keep us alert to potential threats. So far so reasonable. But, with the current culture of “celebrity”, and with the outpourings of 24 hour news channels, that appetite can be distorted into an addiction, nurtured by pimps and pushers like any other drug.
The News of the World has been caught with its staff diving to new depths in their efforts to find salacious titbits to feed that addiction. As a result Rupert Murdoch & News International have axed the newspaper, though not the editor, in a transparent attempt at damage limitation whilst they negotiate with the UK government to extend their monopoly of satellite broadcasting in the UK.
Maybe I have a sheltered life, but for me one of the most depressing revelations to emerge from the whole sordid saga has been not the well known lack of ethics and morality in parts of the UK news media, nor the predictably cynical manipulation of the situation by News International, nor even the collusion between Rupert Murdoch and successive UK governments, but the fact that the News of the World was said to have more readers than any other English-language newspaper.
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