Andrew Orlowski explains how the show trial of Rupert Murdoch has sucked the oxygen out of every other story in the British media:
For the past fortnight, TV and newspaper editors in the UK have pushed aside stories of famine and the European financial crisis — which is greater now than the credit crunch three years ago — in favour of saturation coverage of the troubles of a rival media company.
This rival has real troubles, to be sure, which I will not attempt to diminish. But the volume and intensity of coverage is defined by the real size and reach of News Corporation. And this is not reality, but a myth. Just as children want a Santa, so too do editors and Prime Ministers want a “Murdoch” that resembles the omniscient movie villain/myth Keyser Soze. They’ve defined themselves by this myth.
“Never again should we let a media group get too powerful,” PM David Cameron said today, tuning in to the editors’ mood music. But like so many politicians before him, and specifically the past two Prime Ministers, he has done everything he could to bolster the Murdoch Myth himself. For most of the past two decades, politicians have tugged their forelocks at the Aussie-born tycoon, increasing his perceived influence with each pull.
Haven’t they got the memo about Old Media being dead? Why are they so worried?
