Two other examples of Newscorp plant life
In an entirely unwitting (and pretty hysterical) piece of dark Wapping propaganda today, the Mail on Sunday has published a column by a Newscorp ‘anon’ about what a talentless vixen Rebekah Brooks is. About how she was nothing more than a cypher for PR agents like Matthew Freud (married to Liz Murdoch). And how ‘Cabinet Ministers would swoon’ if she so much as flicked her copper hair at them.
It’s a nice try, but equally unwitting is the way the writer’s amorality comes out in almost every paragraph of the column. Some especially peachy extracts follow.
‘The integrity of The Sun and the News of the World started crumbling the moment Rebekah Brooks got her hands on them’.
Aye aye, here we go again: it wasn’t a Wapping culture, it was one lone flame-haired temptress. And ‘integrity’….my my, what an odd word to use about two tabloid dung-heaps infamous for the dalliances of vicars, and the ‘Gotcha!’ headline.
‘No editor behaved like she did. When Prime Ministers spoke to Kelvin MacKenzie, one of Rebekah’s predecessors as editor of The Sun, they were scared stiff of him. When Prime Ministers spoke to Rebekah, they were love-bombed. That was a betrayal of the papers and a betrayal of their readers.’
Ah yes, the gutless tub of lard Kelvin MacKenzie – now that’s what we want: our Prime Ministers scared of lowlife like him. Dear oh dear oh dear.
‘Before she took charge [The Sun] was fundamentally a serious paper, which was taken seriously by serious people. It showed that a tabloid newspaper could be produced with the highest degree of professionalism’.
And why should we expect less from the source of earth-shaking stories taking the lid off Freddie Starr’s Hamster habit, and ‘it was the Sun wot won’ the 1979 Election? What could be more professional than completely inventing a story about Elton John’s addiction to rent boys?
What utter and complete bollocks. What a total rewrite of the history of the most vicious, cruel, letter-box yelling infantile obscenity ever to crawl secretly into the United Kingdom press pack. And what a glowing, pulsating demonstration of the mad naivety of Paul Dacre.
There is but one thing correct in the story: that as a journalist, Rebekah Brooks is a talentless motormouth who – without Andy Coulson as a minder – would’ve been found out years ago. After all, how could she have attained any journalistic standards and skills with Piers Moron as her first mentor – the man fired for being hoodwinked into running a completely false story about squaddie behaviour in Iraq?
And yet, towards the end of the piece comes the coup de grace: that although she has no journalistic ability whatsoever, she has wormed her way into the affections of a poor, crumpled old Australian – a man otherwise of good heart and fine principles. Feast your eyes on this drivel:
‘….no one was better at handling Rupert Murdoch than Rebekah. When she was with him, she would do everything for him. She would make sure his glass was topped up, grab the right people at receptions for him, keep those who he didn’t want to see out of reach, open doors for him. Everything. That is why he has gone to such inordinate lengths to protect her. Some would say him prioritising saving her as opposed to the News of the World is insanity. She is like a daughter to him. And as he has grown older and more frail, he has become closer to and more dependent on her.’
Right then, that’s Rupe off the hook: under the hypnotic gaze of the siren, he was helpless. Yeh, right. Murdoch has flunkies doing this sort of licking for him day in and day out. However old the Newscorp patriarch may be, he is still moving far more quickly than the background. There are, I’m sure, many reasons why until now Rupert Murdoch has been protecting her: but trust me, sexual senility isn’t one of them.
The Slog’s view is that we should look at things this way. Murdoch is now inside Wapping with the other liars. The line tomorrow should be that, with great regret, his aides have been forced to tell poor Rupert that his Wonderwoman was not the paragon he thought her to be. Shocked and appalled, the ailing old man of tabloid journalism has thus been forced to dispense with her services. That concludes the slaughter, and Newscorp is now once more clean – just like it used to be – and entirely fit and proper to take over the BSkyB till.
It won’t wash, of course. But if it isn’t at least attempted, then we can be absolutely clear that the person in possession of all the major political and financial dirt here is Rebekah Brooks.
And then what?
Two other examples of Newscorp plant life
The Slog 