News Internecine

So Farewell then, News of the World

No more News of the Screws

As you were better known.

So a great brand has fallen on its sword – or been thrust upon it by its disgusted parent, Rupert. It reminds one of the ‘honour killings’ of poor girls from third world countries who have been violated and then accused and sacrificed for bringing their families into disrepute.

The Business Editor of the News of the World on breakfast television this morning said that this was because it was felt that “the brand has been so badly damaged that it can’t be saved”. Implying that the closure after 168 years of the largest circulation English-language newspapers in the world was fundamentally not for commercial reasons, nor for moral reasons, but for brand reasons.

This had been the cash-cow of the New International empire. But when the transgressions of the previous management of News of the World became more prominent in the public eye, and the cries of “Shame” that ran along Fleet Street were echoed on television and in the Houses of Parliament, the pressure became to great. And rather than own up and say ‘the buck stops here’, the News Corporation and News International management have endeavoured to limit the damage to their own brand reputations by implicitly blaming the institution and brand of News of the World.

It is an interesting contrast to the response of BP to their tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, where ultimately the top people did take responsibility and try to make amends.

Here, although top management have clearly either been guilty or negligent in their duty of upholding legal and moral standards throughout their organisations, rather than setting in motion a purge of any immoral or illegal news gathering activity across all of their titles and media assets, and making sure that their management systems would prevent future payments for illegal line tapping or bribing police, they are so far blaming those beneath them and sacrificing what was hard-working, campaigning and yet popular newspaper. The brand is too damaged they say.