And it was all going so well...
Having spent her entire journalistic career dishing the dirt and turning up the heat, it can only be a matter of time before Rebekah Wade / Brooks’ meteoric star collapses into a shame-faced black hole. Wade (as was) joined News International as a secretary on News of the Screws in 1989, and within 20 years flat had climbed Murdoch’s corporate ladder to become CEO of the company. Impressive stuff.
Along the way she edited both The News of the Screws and Murdoch’s flagship red-top The Sun. It’s long been known that under her watch (and that of her successor Andy Coulson) phones were hacked, coppers were bribed and gutter-press journalists took their trade deep into the sewer. The Guardian has spent years campaigning for the truth to out, while News International and The Met have done their damnedest to keep everything under wraps.
At last it seems that the past is catching up with Brooks and all those involved. First a line of celebs and out-of-favour politicians were found to have been hacked… Now it’s Milly Dowler, the parents of Soham murder victims Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, and friends and family of ‘Our Boys’ lost to the war in Afghanistan. The cosy (read predictably corrupt) relationship between the press, the police and select politicians is being blown further out of the water by the hour. So it’s no great surprise that the public consciousness has finally been pricked.
Advertisers are bailing by the day – first Ford, then NPower, Halifax, O2, Sainsbury’s, and Boots… and now even the British Government is pulling the plug; The Royal British Legion has walked as a campaigning partner of the paper ; Cameron, having been forced to accept the need for at least one public enquiry, must be squirming at his decision to take on Coulson, and at the thought of all those Sundays spent horse riding with bezzy-mate Brooks; Brooks in an email to staff is still insisting she’s the right woman for the job and the ‘truth’ will out; and all along Murdoch continues to back his CEO to the hilt.
It’s fascinating stuff. Hats off to The Guardian. And with any luck… Good riddance to bad rubbish.