So, with the announcement that the News of the World will cease publication on Sunday 10th July, do you think we've achieved something? We've tweeted and blogged, reblogged and “liked”, we've MADE OURSELVES HEARD!
Haven't we?
This is what's going to happen. The final edition of the newspaper will be published on Sunday. A handful of journalists will be arrested, a smaller handful will be prosecuted. Sometime next week, or maybe the week after that, The Sun will announce it is to publish a Sunday edition. That paper will employ 80-90% of the current NotW staff.
In effect, all that's been achieved is a minor inconvenience for News International: changing the name of a suddenly toxic product.
Let's be honest, you weren't surprised by the revelations that journalists were hacking phones, were you? But you weren't really bothered when you thought it was limited to b-list celebrities and politicians. The tipping point came with the news that the family of a murdered child had been hacked. And the families of other dead children. And the families of dead servicemen. And just about anybody else who might be connected to a news story.
Now let's be really honest, you don't believe for a second that these practices are limited to the News of the World, do you? If it was such a common practice in pursuit of a story, I think it's safe to assume that all the tabloids are doing it, we just don't have the evidence yet. But the fact that Channel 4 news can explain how easy it is, in a way that I understand, tells me that it's common practice.
By closing the News of the World, News International hopes to draw a line under the story, stop people looking any closer and save the BSkyB acquisition. As a media organisation, they understand newsprint is a dead medium. It hasn't stopped twitching yet, but that's only a matter of time. The sales of newspapers has been in steady decline since around 2004, with a massive reduction (around 25%) since 2007. An organisation like News International will continue to sell newspapers as long as people will buy them, but that's not the primary focus of their business.
Time for a look at the bigger picture. News International wants to buy the bits of BSkyB it doesn't own. The problem, on the face of it, is that the merger would give NI too much influence over the news agenda in Britain. So the deal on the table allows NI to purchase BSkyB as long as Sky News is sold to a third party, removing NI's editorial control. Everybody's happy!
Well no, actually, because that completely misses the point. Newspapers are dead, but TV as we know it is dying. Think about how you access television now. How much do you watch? Do you watch live? Or do you use on-line catch-up services like the i-player or 4od, or similar services from Virgin or Sky? Do you get your TV programmes via bit-torrent or usenet? Think about how much your TV habits have changed in the past 5 years. Think about how they might change in the next ten years.
The problem with the BSkyB deal is not about television. The problem with the BSkyB deal is about cross promotion of services. If the merger is allowed to go ahead, News International will have a much broader platform to promote their services.
DING DONG THE WICKED SWITCH IS DEAD!
You've seen that, right? Or something similar. One phone call and you can get your telephone and broadband from Sky. In the long run, the merger is about market share in the Internet business.
Up until recently, the internet was just another means of delivering information. But the advent of social networking has changed that. The internet has become a conversation, and anyone can take part. If you doubt that statement, think about your on-line activity. How much time do you spend on Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or whatever? Over the past couple of days, Britain has been having a conversation with itself about the ethics of a newspaper and subsequently forced that newspaper to close. Earlier in the year, a number of Arab countries decided they weren't happy with their governments and took action, to varying degrees of success. That wouldn't have happened at all without the internet.
The internet has been part of our cultural landscape for about a decade. It continues to change and grow and influence our lives in ways we could never have imagined. And it will continue to change and grow in ways we cannot imagine. I have no idea what those changes will be, only that they'll happen.
Which leaves us with a bigger question. Given what we know about the activities of News International and its disregard for the law, how much influence do we want to give that organisation over how we access and use the internet? How much influence do we allow it on the development of the internet? Yes, we've brought down one of the seedier publications in Britain. Woop woop! But see the bigger picture. Do everything you can to ensure the BSkyB merger is never allowed to happen.
