'ALL HUMAN life is there." The slogan of the News of the Worldhas a hollow ring now. "Was" there ... including some outstanding journalism and some of the most obnoxious. Sometimes a brand becomes so toxic that revival is not an option. The News of the World's 168-year-old brand as top-selling paper in the Anglophone world evaporated in barely 72 hours.
It was an extraordinary self-inflicted wound that recalled the 1991 crash of jewel retailer Gerald Ratner – he joked that one of their products was “total crap” and wiped some £500 million off his company’s shares, Ratner left the firm, and his name was expunged from the company.
That Rupert Murdoch should choose a version of the Ratner option by closing the paper down, rather than the Fianna Fáil strategy of a slow, patient rebuilding of a battered brand, is typical of a man who, though wrongfooted by the hacking scandal, has never eschewed bold, at times brutal gestures. In truth, however, the advertising collapse fuelled by a new, powerful social media targeting of the big ad spenders, an inevitable reader boycott, the inexplicable determination to protect chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and, crucially, the danger of contaminating the News International £8 billion bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB, all made a powerful case for the radical, cynical option of closure.
And so, like Irish taxpayers paying for the misdeeds of bankers, more than 200 workers at the paper now pay for the venality of a small group of executives and colleagues – deeply unfairly, though perhaps, as we keep being told of our own plight, inevitably. But while its 2.6 million readers and its advertisers may yet be won back by a Sunday Sun, yesterday it looked as if the far bigger prize of BSkyB may have been blown out of the water. The regulator's promise to consider if Murdoch's empire is a "fit and proper" owner of the broadcaster is being interpreted by markets as a sign the go-ahead is unlikely. And Ms Brooks clings on, but for how long?
Beyond News International the ripple effect has been remarkable. The wider world of the media and its regulation, politics at the highest level, and the police, have all been dragged into the maelstrom, and the closing of the paper will certainly not bring closure to the issue.
Labour leader Ed Miliband yesterday rightly condemned the UK's self-regulatory Press Complaints Commission as a "toothless poodle", and legislation for new, tighter press regulation is now inevitable. That will be popular with an angry public, but in curbing red-top excess there is also the danger of inhibiting important journalism, a baneful News of the Worldlegacy to press freedom.
Politically Murdoch, long feared and courted by the party leaders, is now exposed as a paper tiger, the spell, broken. Prime minister David Cameron, deeply embarrassed and weakened by his close contacts with Brooks and former communications director Andy Coulson, now under arrest, has been forced to set up public inquiries into media standards and police practices. Their scope and thoroughness will be a real test of the government’s resolve.