Murdoch... Beyond Parody

This misreading of the political mood has been the thread through News International’s bungled response to the phone-hacking affair. Odd really when one recalls that Rupert Murdoch was once the most politically-attuned and ruthless media proprietor in living memory. Phillip Stephens - Financial Times

The newspapers today are obsessed by the threat to the Murdoch empire. But I wonder whether the gloating over the sight of the media mogul laid low is slightly diverting attention from a potentially more dramatic angle to the phone-hacking story - the threat to the entire Cameron government. Gideon Rachman - Financial Times

David Seaton's News Links

Reading through all the articles about News International’s phone-hacking debacle, I find that I am not much shocked by the amorality and the immorality of Murdoch and his crew... been there, done that... I would have been surprised to learn something nice about him and his organization. No, what has me a little dazed, is how clumsily it is being handled, how fumblingly incompetent and tone-deaf they and the British government both are as they bumble through the whole disaster.. It is all part of this "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", "tale told by and idiot", feeling I get from most of the political news I read nowadays.

Now, as the Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator, Gideon Rachman points out, this business may even end up bringing down David Cameron's coalition government:

The arrest of Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s former press secretary, obviously takes the scandal right into Downing Street. I thought the statements of both Coulson and Cameron, in the aftermath of the Coulson arrest were fascinating – both for what they said and what they didn’t say.(...) As Coulson left the police station on Friday, he said – “There is an awful lot I would like to say, but I can’t at this time”. Was that just a brush-off to the waiting media. Or was it also a message to his old boss?

Spanish voters, for example, are telling pollsters that they rank the "political class" right behind unemployment as the major problem their country faces right now.... I think they are on to something universal. DS