News Of The World To Close

The fact that British tabloid newspaper (and we use that word loosely) the News of the World is to close down is a victory for quality journalism over, if you'll pardon the pun, hacks. The Sunday paper, along with its daily sister paper the Sun, has been an institution in Great Britain for 168 years, but it has never been too far from accusations of immoral reporting and bad writing. It has always been incredibly popular for the same reason that British soap operas like Eastenders get huge viewing figures and bands like Boyzone and Take That have sat at the top of the charts — there's no challenge. All of those things require zero attention span. Finally, the News of the World has crossed a line that the world at large considers vile and grossly inappropriate. In 2002, reporters at the paper, led by then-editor Rebecca Brooks, hacked into the voicemail account of Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old who had been reported missing and was later discovered dead. Those same reporters had been hacking into celebrity voicemail accounts for years, but the public turned a blind eye to that terrible and terrifying invasion of privacy. This time though, they had actually interfered with the police investigation by deleting old voicemails. Police officers and family members thought that Milly was alive because they had the impression that she was using her phone. So, after years of balancing precariously on the line, the News of the World has tumbled spectacularly off it. The only real surprise is that it hadn't happened sooner. It won't really be missed. If the UK has an abundance of anything, it's choices of newspaper. Rumors this morning were suggesting that News Corp. will simply rebrand the paper as the Sun On Sunday, but we have to hope that the Great British public will see through that and look somewhere else for their Sunday morning news. This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that shares in News Corp had risen 1.5 percent following the news of the closure, though it had dropped dramatically over the holiday weekend when the story of the hacked phone broke. In a press release, News Corp's deputy CUU James Murdoch, son of Rupert, said that the paper had been “sullied by behavior that was wrong.” Sunday's edition will be the last, it will contain no ads, and revenue will be donated to charity.