PR Company, Internet Marketing

Goodbye (cruel) News of The World

Whoever said that all publicity is good publicity clearly never anticipated a scandal on the level of the News of The World phone hacking story. Not since the Daily Telegraph published everything about the MPs expenses scandal has another story grown legs quite like this one.

It seems day after day, new information comes out to the public and it still continues to now. It was one thing invading the privacy of celebrities and politicians, but when it extended to hacking the phones of families tormented by grief, the British public were understandably outraged. Once it emerged that the police were involved in the corruption too, public opinion was never going to be restored in the 168 year old news paper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

It was expected that the woman at the centre of this scandal would resign in the light of such damning allegations but Murdoch refused to take former News of The World editor, Rebekah Brooks’ resignation and stood by her to the extent of closing down the News of The World.

As many of the newspaper’s advertisers had pulled out after the public put pressure on companies like Ford, W H Smiths, Tesco and Vodafone, it became obvious that the News of The World could no longer continue operating. The News of The World got around this by offering free advertising space to charities for the final edition.

Murdoch had no option but to close the paper, he is a shrewd and decisive business man and with the newspaper continuing to have very serious allegations against it increasing by the day, action had to be taken in order to distance News International and start the public relations machine up in earnest.

So what does this mean for journalism? Does this mean that tabloid editors can no longer utter the words “Get the exclusive no matter what the cost, I don’t need to know.”?

We think that ultimately the press will have to make a bolder move into the online sphere in order to counteract dwindling newspaper sales as the internet grows bigger and impacts on the general public’s day to day life. Is it possible that the desperation to maintain newspaper sales caused this scandal in the first place? PR agencies across the country will need to stop seeing PR as either online and offline, but develop practices that making it easier to get wider audiences for hard-won coverage.

The Murdoch empire is facing tough legal times ahead that will give Murdoch’s PR team a real headache. Whatever happens, the hope is that British journalism improves its standards when chasing those newspaper-shifting exclusives.

Coming up to the first Sunday with the News of The World absent from the newsagent’s, from this Nottingham PR Agency, we bid the News of The World farewell.

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