tygerland.net

Is it wrong to feel some Schadenfreude at the predicament of journalist Clive Goodman? Goodman works for The News of the World, which isn’t a good start, but things get worse; today Mr. Goodman has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to intercept private telephone messages (stored by mobile phone operators on behalf on their customers).

Mr. Goodman, with fellow conspirator Glenn Mulcaire (a former footballer with Wimbledon AFC), accessed the private messages of various public persons, including aids to Prince William, model Elle Macpherson, and the politician Simon Hughes. Mr. Goodman then reported these stories in his loathsome rag.

What really gets my goat is the utter hypocrisy of tabloid journalism. Yeah, yeah, I know – join the human race – everyone hates tabloids; but please, I pay for this bandwidth, so hear me out. Tabloids fill their pages with little more than idle un-newsworthy gossip and moral grandstanding, and yet they themselves are guilty of the most heinous immorality.

They bitch about celebrity addictions, yet cocaine and excessive alcohol flows freely in the media world. They bitch about the government prying into our lives, and yet the entrapment and surveillance of celebrities is common-practice among the Red Tops. They have created a whole industry built on building up and knocking down public figures. It’s a self-nourishing circle of broken lives and ruined careers. What’s the point? How do these ‘newspapers’ contribute positively to our country?

So I hope you’ll forgive me for delighting in watching one of Murdoch’s winged monkeys standing in the dock. Its petty and vindictive I know, but I hope they throw the book at him - preferably a large, heavy one.