News of the World
Newsstand price
Sunday £1.00
Murdoch’s clearly taking a stand on this one:
So, my guess is that he’s trying to show he’s too big to be forced into a course of action, and that he reckons the British public will lose interest and move back to footballers sex lives/talent show mode in a couple of weeks.
I’d like to think I’m wrong. I’d like to think this issue has now become so blatant an abuse of the role of the fourth estate that people will actually push this, and lead a market based offensive that hits NI hard enough that Murdoch has to back down. I hope people have a long enough memory to remember this the next time Murdoch tries to steer an election, or increase his share in UK media.
But I’m afraid that he’s probably on the money, and that in a couple of months he’ll be laughing about this, and preparing to take revenge against people who led the issue.
Top 50 advertisers in the News of the World.
Advertisers who have pulled their ads, at least temporarily: “Co-operative, Halifax, Co-op, Vauxhall, Virgin Holidays and Ford.” None of the big supermarkets have pulled anything yet. Others have NotW under review.
Morrison’s have stated that they will not change their advertising policy.
I’m having trouble figuring out their angle, i.e. why they (allegedly) would do such a thing.
I’m guessing anything at all that could make or assist a story. Dates and times of funerals. Extramarital affairs of the deceased or their widows. Heartfelt outpourings of grief. They respect neither privacy nor human dignity.
Great headline in The Daily Mash: Murdoch forces normal people to agree with the Guardian
Meh. Just meh. Those who have pulled are talking about a single issue of the NotW. The likelihood is they’ll switch to the Sun, or get a preferential rate on Sky…i.e. the money will just move to a different part of NI for a couple of weeks, then go back.
And the fact that the supermarkets aren’t even bothering with that shows just how much they reckon the public really cares. Fuck it, it’s almost funny. A brief outburst of righteous indignation, but the odds are people will pick up the next issue that’s got a celebrity shag story on the cover. If this does blow over, I reckon it just proves that Britain has the press that it deserves.
My protest starts today, I am definately not going to start buying any NewsInternational publications
I think there is a fair amount of public outcry over this, and people are getting pissed off with NI in general. If we just organise a boycott of companies who advertise in their papers, they would be out of business in 6 months
The Guardian right now:
Not just this weekend’s issue, but until the investigation has ended. Shit is getting real.
Apologies if you’ve all seen this already, but this is just incredible:
This aspect probably isn’t the crux of this thread, but why the heck would NotW agree to “sort out” a police officer for a suspect? Is the suggestion that NotW just decided to become a criminal assistance organisation for some reason? Or did they dislike Cook for some specific reason? Was Fillery a friend of someone at NotW or was there a story in it somehow or what?
My guess is that it became an entrenched culture, and they did it on many, many stories. More reason for avoiding News International products.
On another point, how does one go about telling a company you disagree with their choice of advertising venue?
Easiest method these days is twitter:
Well I don’t use Twitter, but I’ve send a message to Tesco via their feedback website, as that’s the supermarket I use most. Don’t know if it’ll have any effect, but if enough people do it may change things.
If not, I didn’t have many plans for the minute and a half it took anyway…
I work for one of the retailers that have pulled advertising. On our employee facebook page most post are asking why we don’t withdraw the paper from sale. The response is basically “it’s up to the customer to decide if they should buy it or not.” Funny that, when alcopops first hit the news for teenage drinking we were the first chain to remove them from sale.
So yeah, announce your removal of advertising (and get free advertising on the national news for doing so. But they know that removing the product will hit footfall too much (they aren’t worried about the loss of sales from the paper, but that customers will pick one up somewhere else and do the rest of the shopping at the same time).
I seriously doubt any of these withdrawls are due to genuine anger on the advertisers part (except maybe Virgin Money, you never can tell with Branson), it’s just a chance for free publicity for jumping on the outrage bandwagon.
News International seems to be an institutionally corrupt if not outright criminal organisation.
Other reports note that Brooks was told directly in meetings with the police, on two separate occasions, about this particular incident.
And did nothing.
I can’t believe there is no Hitler Downfall parody of this yet, although
Al Qaeda Issues News of The World Condemnation
An organisation should be able to die of shame.
Instead they brazenly put one of the chief suspects in charge of their ‘investigation.’
‘I am determined to get to the bottom of heinous Hen House slaughter.’ announces Fox.
The withdrawal of the Royal British Legion from being a campaign partner is likely to be the most widely significant move so far, certainly far more so than commercial advertisers pulling out.
http://www. News Of The World: Der Untergang (slightly NSFW) - YouTube
Boobies at the beginning, for those that are worried about such things regarding work (hence broken link). I thought you couldn’t do that on YouTube?
Edit:
And of course this is Hitler/Downfall but not the “usual” scene, due to the subject matter.
Withdrawing a newspaper from sale, even in these circumstances, is a level of censorship I’m not particularly comfortable with, whatever the ulterior motives may be. It should be up to the customer, and a boycott by consumers leaving piles of unsold papers would send a far stronger message that a large company refusing to stock it.
Not that I have a great deal of faith that a long-term boycott will happen.