Good journalism

I guess that the public are already becoming bored with the whole hacking business. I have some sympathy for this trend: other matters such as the East African crisis, the fate of the euro , other parliamentary concerns, etc., are certainly being ignored. Moreover, a sense of proportion is in danger of being lost.

However, I wish to make a point which has been comprehensively ignored: Such newspapers as the  News of the World were really appalling in content apart from the news-gathering methods which were so illegal. The paper (and it was not unique) was in terms of journalism and quality of writing utterly reprehensible.

Rebekah Brooks was editor of such a newspaper. She is undoubtedly intelligent; but the fruits of her labour was sub-journalism. She, of course, continued her illustrious career at the Sun: another infantile publication.

We shall discover whether she was really ignorant of what appears to have been a culture of law-breaking for the sake of a story. But there is no doubt that to call the content of the News of the World good journalism is a betrayal of what journalism is meant to be.