Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Oh No. Not more 'phone hacking' moral outrage.

Oh how our media must have been spitting when rioting, looting and other forms of criminal activity forced them to lift up their eyes from their navels, and the phone hacking infection that nestles there. Anyway, enough of this coverage of civil disorder and criminality - enough of this distraction of jobs, economy and deficits. So what if the Home Secretary made an important speech today. Its time to get back to 'Hackgate', and some serious navel inspection.

It seems that MPs on the 'culture' committee have today released a letter written by Clive Goodman, a former NoW journalist who was jailed for 4 months in 2007 for phone hacking. The supposed 'smoking gun' in this letter is Mr Goodman's assertion that he was promised his job back after serving his sentence if he didn't implicate the NoW in court. Now I think this is interesting, and there will have to be some effort to discover whether Mr Goodman was telling the truth or just trying to get his job back. And we need to know why the NoW made such an offer - if it actually did. Now I can understand why the BBC are going big on this, because its a wonderful opportunity to discredit their main rival. And the Guardian because its 'their' story. But I really do hope that tomorrow's newspapers (that I buy) are not going to give us more wall-to-wall of it. I know its an important issue, but I'm bored. And I also know that not a single Montgomeryshire constituent has raised the issue with me for weeks. I used to have lots of letters, emails and cards, almost all of which had been prepared by lobbying groups which had it in for the Murdochs - but hardly a single unprompted approach from a constituent ever. Almost every constituent has a view on the riots, even in Montgomeryshire. My worst nightmare is that we have another six hours of moral outrage in the Commons when we go back in early September.

1 comment:

Steven Lewis said...

I am a constituent of yours, and quite frankly I'm mush more bothered by the long term hand in glove relationship of the PM and leading members of the government with the media moguls than I am with a few days of rioting.

Given people are getting locked up for 4 years for posting on facebook about the riots, I think we can safely say the whole matter is in hand.

The disgusting actions of the press in using the lives of victims of some of the worst tragedies that befall anyone as an opportunity to make even more money should not be dismissed in the manner you have just done.

I am very disappointed.