They are leaving Wapping now

end of an era

Editor: Colin Myler 'and in the best tradition of Fleet Street-we're going down the pub'

It's a pity neither the NOTW journalists nor any of the other British newspapers ever stuck to the other Fleet St traditions, especially the old assertion of 'Publish and be damned'. I simply can't imagine the editors and journalists of the past being so afraid of a two-bit couple like the McCanns that they'll even remove a photo of them laughing as it doesn't happen to suit the happy couple's present agenda (according to what David Bret was told by someone at the Express). Nor could I imagine the old denizens of Fleet St ignoring official police files about a case as high profile and mysterious as that of Madeleine's disappearance; they'd have been on to it like a flash, doing a bit of real investigative journalism rather than waiting to be fed mindless twaddle about anguished parents and bungling foreign cops by those who think this is all the public should be allowed to hear.

I feel sorry that a newspaper as long-established as the NOTW, a piece of British history and culture, lost its way and went from mindless but generally harmless scandal and gossip to thinking itself above the law, that its journalists could do as they pleased no matter who got hurt. If they wanted to move from the silly sort of gossip they used to do (wife swapping in Wapping, etc.) on to something different, why didn't they turn the spotlight on the side of the Madeleine case that never gets a mention? If they'd had the good sense to concentrate on such things as the facts as detailed in the police files instead of hacking into innocent people's phones, they might have found themselves with a legitimate story that would have kept their readers' interest, at no risk to the paper itself. But no, not exciting enough or maybe wouldn't find favour with their dear Kate and Gerry (you bet it wouldn't!). Oh well, too late now; they've gone ... and good riddance.

Dimsie

I agree it's quite sad that the NOTW went down the wrong alley - smut sleaze and the usual selacious stuff. On Sky news review they put up a pull out of the first edition - I expect will be in the last edition. So different from the one they were printing.

The reason they didn't print anything anti-Mac is pretty obvious.

Yes, it's on the other thread about Mick Hucknall Brooks' cosy relationship with Freud. The Communications company, that is, although on reflection, it should maybe have been the Doctor.

It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose and open the News of the World

George Orwell 1946

RIP NOTW

often brash and crude
but
often exposing rapists/paedophiles and bent politicians

Brooks' unlimited ambition and Murdoch's unlimited greed killed off a British institution

Max Mosley on Sky News:

'they (NOTW) were prepared to ruin people's lives with things that had nothing to do with the public interest'

They'd do anything for a headline. Remember the George Harrison lookalike photofit on the front page with the headline 'MADDIE'S KIDNAPPER. THE BEAST WHO TOOK THE MCCANNS LITTLE GIRL'. Absolutely no such things as 'Could this be Maddie's kidnapper?', just a bold assertion as though they knew it for certain.

When I complained to the PCC about that front page I got nowhere; their view seemed to be that the NOTW could put what they liked on the front page, true or not, because it didn't really matter, everyone would know it was just guesswork anyway. I've got their letter here, showing their convoluted thinking:

'Readers generally were therefore aware of the details of the case and indeed knew that - notwithstanding the front page headline and accompanying image - no one was sure of how Madeleine disappeared.'

So, no one including the NOTW actually knew how Madeleine disappeared, but it was all right and not misleading for the NOTW to announce on its front page that she was indeed kidnapped and this was a photofit of the man who took her.

Talk about the blind leading the blind. The PCC and the NOTW were well matched.

and a few others for not giving up on the story and for keeping on pegging away at it...