The Clubby Stink of British Journalism
Another day, another revelation about the news gathering methods of a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper in the UK–methods that some are referring to as “institutional criminality.”
No doubt the curtain on Murchoch’s News International operations will be pulled back further in the coming days and weeks, revealing much more ugliness. The questions is, will it spur a larger reassessment of British journalistic culture, the kind that prompted this recent sheepish admission by one columnist:
The truth is that for all its adversarial and investigatory strengths ““ which are considerable ““ British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong. There is a degree of cosy camaraderie between the press and the governing class in this country which my American journalist friends find startling.
That cozy camaraderie was deconstructed by former BBC Sarah Mukherjee in this 2010 talk. In the UK, she said,
you have the political class and the media class, which are essentially the same thing. They all went to the same schools, they all went to the same places. They all know each other, have known each other since university days, or earlier”¦[they’re] locked into some mutually destructive embrace.
That’s now quite obvious for all to see.
Keith, really, this isn’t a “British” thing. Western media is pretty much all the same. So too is Russian and Chinese media pretty much a different thing in their own rite. As are a glump of Third Worlders in theirs. Ever heard the old saying that if you saw sausage or fruit cocktail being made you would never ever eat either again? This is more British Humor at it’s Naughty Best and, for some strange reason, Americans are a dense as ever thinking that we are sooooooo much better. Fat chance!
Hey. He’s your newspaper mogul, not ours. The biggest mistake was letting him get hold of 40% of UK media. No wonder his journalists started thinking they were above the law.
New York Post
Wall Street Journal
Fox this and that.
It ain;t what you don’t know, it’s what you think you know that is nonsense.
[[This jibberish has been removed. But I see you left the same exact nonsense at another site.//KK]]
[[This jibberish has been removed./KK]]
Sorry, should have clarified my earlier comment was from UK perspective. I’m aware of Murdoch’s other holdings in US, Australia, SE Asia etc. My point is that while there may be a systematic, cultural problem with the way British journalism is practised (thought at best, calling it a ‘clubby stink’ is gross generalisation) I think Keith has misread the main problem here, which has more to do with the corrupting influence of media monopolies/oligopolies.