Who's really to blame?

Well, the crap has truly hit the proverbial and is splattered all over the faces of the head honchos over at the News of the World and we're loving it! The gutter press has sunk to a new low and those of us who purport to only associate ourselves with real news in quality papers feel fully vindicated in our abhorrence of such trash 'journalism'.

BUT...

I can't help but feel that whilst we point the finger at the NOTW we are allowing others who are just as guilty to escape their share of the blame. I fear the NOTW has been scapegoated.

Are we really supposed to believe that these heinous tactics have only been employed by the NOTW and are not put into practice by other publications? Are we really that naïve?

And what of the police? Allegations have been made that a former NOTW editor, Andrew Coulson, authorised payments to the police for information. Yet, I don't see headlines decrying the corruption within our police force.

But more importantly, what about the public? Publications like the News of the World would not exist if there were no market for them. Stories involving every last intimate detail surrounding murders, tragic deaths or celebrity divorces would not not be written if there weren't people willing to read them and hungry for more 'information'.

The red-top readers, those who buy the likes of the NOTW, don't want 'news': they want gossip. They don't care about the facts, they just care about how they're presented and the more entertaining, the better. They don't want balance. Where's the fun in balance? They want sensationalist, highly emotive, highly detailed stories and they don't care how the writers went about finding out the details.

If the allegations are true, then it is truly despicable and all concerned deserve to lose their jobs and, if crimes have been committed, their liberty.

But then we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and our relation to other people's lives and ask ourselves, 'Do we really need to know that?' and 'Why?' To some extent, the rise of social networking and an obsession with reality TV has caused a lot of boundaries to become blurred. There's a very thin line between what is 'in the public interest' and what is 'of interest to the public'. The NOTW has allegedly crossed it but were we there pushing it over?

*****
Since posting this, the News of the World has been shut down by its parent company, News International. Click here for my take on that.