Rebekah “Babbling” Brooks announces that two News International titles under her control will start charging for online access come next May.
I understand that serious, quality newsgathering has to be paid for, and I deplore the fact that when the time comes (as it will) in which all commercially published newspapers have to charge for their online content in order to supplement the dwindling hard copy sales that currently pay for quality journalism, the BBC will still be offering it for free, subsidised by the licence payers.
This will be profoundly unfair, and massively damaging to non-state owned independent newspapers. The BBC will owe it to the British public who fund it to abandon this anomaly.
It became clear during the London ‘Freeshite’ bonanza that hard copy papers given away for nothing are worth, in news terms, a lot less than the paper on which they are printed [and not even a healthy arse-wiping option].
Similarly, Mrs Brooks evidently doesn’t feel she can charge for online content of her two prominent best-selling ShagRags – the Sun and the Screws – no quality journalism to pay for there. (Unfortunately she does have a number of lawyers’ bills and penalties to pay for a pile of upcoming damages for illegal phone-hacking, and they still have to fork out for unproductive journo-nasties like Mazher Mahmood, because he knows all the dirt on sensitive former execs, like Les Hinton and Andy Coulson – not to mention Stuart Kuttner).

Still, one must – albeit grudgingly – hail Ol’ Rumplechops for having the bollocks to lead where others will have to follow.

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The Commons Culture, Media, Sport Select Committee would like to talk to Rebekah Brooks, the titian-tressed scrapper who has been suprema of News International since last September. If she complies with their request to see them – and she will try very hard to wriggle out of it – it is to be hoped that she’ll shed more light on criminal activities at the News of the World than did Senior executives Tom Crone (Head of Legals), Stuart Kuttner (ex-Managing Editor), and former editor Andy Coulson, when they were called to give evidence over their phone-hacking to the Committee last summer. She may also remember more than Les Hinton, who was in her current chair when the raiding of the Royal voicemails came to light in August 2006. In September he spoke to the Committee by video link from New York, where he is now boss of the Murdochs’ Wall Street Journal. He had no recollection about key decisions, such as were the hackers paid off after being sacked for their criminal activity.

To the intense frustration of the committee and of those who care about the quality of British journalism, all the witnesses turned out to be suffering from an acute attack of contagious amnesia and truth frugalness. [See my blog] For these are people who have made their careers at Rupert’s Red Tops, delivering ‘journalism’ of such obfuscation and dishonesty, for so long, that it’s far too late to kick the habit.
   In a pitiful attempt to mislead the committee, they all ‘forgot’, or just ‘didn’t know’ any details relating to the events that culminated in the jailing of their Royal Editor, Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire, a Private Investigator contracted to the paper.
   In October, the Committee, determined not to be fobbed off with the persistent ducking and diving of the Screws bosses, formally posed a number of questions for them.
Among several anomalies that had arisen, they wished to know “the grounds on which advice was given to settle the claims [allegedly] made by Goodman and Mulcaire and the level of payments made”.
   Rebekah Brooks has now submitted her response. (This was viewable on the Committee’s page at www.parliament.uk up to 13th Jan.) Written in characteristic News of the World house style and buried in a miasma of obscured truth and elusive fact, it fails to answer either of these questions.
   With unexpected eagerness, she puts her hand up in conceding Goodman’s alleged claim for unfair dismissal. As they had “failed to meet minimum requirements” in relation to a dismissal, any affected employee would be entitled to bring a claim, “with a potential compensatory award of up to £60,600 (in addition to any contractual notice pay entitlement).”
But she also tells the Committee that the paper settled before a case was heard by any tribunal. The hypothetical sums and conditions she cites have no bearing on what they actually paid Goodman for signing “a standard-form News International compromise agreement,” – a euphemism for gagging agreement – and this despite the breach of his employment contract through his proven criminal activity. 
   The decoys and the irrelevant waffle in her answers were composed in order to put Rebekah Brooks’ pursuers off the scent; but, like much of the content of the News of the World, the result is ham-fisted, half-baked and easily seen through. There is an almost engaging naivety to her signing off. “… We trust that the answers given in this letter can now bring matters to a close.”
   Keep trusting, TestaRossa! Most observers will understand the subtext to her answer…..

You might think we gave them lots of money to shut them up and stop them telling the rest of the media who within the Screws hierarchy knew they’d deliberately broken the law by hacking into voicemails to get cheapo front page splashes, but you can’t prove it – so there!

The simple fact is that Goodman and Mulcaire were jailed for what they did. It follows therefore, that any other members of the Screws staff who were party to it are also liable to criminal prosecution and a jail sentence, including Andy Coulson and Stuart Kuttner.
The committee have shown commendable resolve in their pursuit of the truth over these activities.

They have a clear right and a public duty to insist on clear, frank and truthful answers from Rebekah Brooks.

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It’s heartening to see the Commons Committee for Culture, Media & Sport displaying a set of strong, tenacious gnashers. They have delayed publishing a report on their long-running Inquiry into Press Standards, Privacy and Libel. It was due out this month, and after all the excitement of Nick Davies’ revelations in the Guardian last July about the News of the World being sued for phone-hacking, it has been awaited with much eagerness, not least by the ShagRags at the dodgier end of our national press, who could well do without too much further inquiry into their practices.
          But the Committee were so incensed at the dissembling, some say utter bullshit offered as evidence by the senior Screws staff, and former editor Andy Coulson, that they’ve decided to call in the Boss, Rupert Rumplechops’ favourite larrikin and former Sun editor, Rebekah “TestaRossa” Brooks, from whom, I imagine, they hope to extract some real answers, even the truth. It’s quite a hope.
          It will be fun to see if she’s as adept at not telling the truth as her employees, Tom Crone (legal) Stuart Kuttner (Managing Editor for 22 years – now sacked) and Tory spinster, Andy Coulson, when they were in front of the Committee last July.
          Titfers off to the committee chairman, Conservative John Whittingdale, who must be under some pressure from Central Office not to harass Coulson and young Dave C’s other new Wapping chums.
          James Robinson in MediaGuardian says Mrs Brooks has already submitted written evidence – but it’s not on the HoC website yet. Whatever it says, it will be a work of Spinners’ Art, and well worth a read.
          And, talking of the Sun, its feeble little editor, gossip-wallah Dominic Mohan must take credit for a classic, bad taste Sun front-page headline this morning:
          Darling just screwed more people than Tiger Woods.

          I wonder whose side they’re on?
          Will Darling sue? Will Tiger?
          Evan Davies’ coy delivery of it on Radio 4’s Today was pleasingly bizarre, too.     

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