The estimable John F. Burns updates the unfolding Murdoch meltdown in today’s Times.
Question: will we ever see Murdoch in handcuffs, or slinking into a courthouse with a trenchcoat over his head?
Here’s the takeaway:
What is becoming clear, media analysts say, is that the push-the-legal-limits newsroom culture that has gone untrammeled for years at the British tabloids and has even found its way into some of the country’s upmarket broadsheets, including Mr. Murdoch’s Times and Sunday Times, could be a casualty of a new culture of caution.
Already, some who work at British newspapers say, the scandal has had a chilling effect on newsrooms, with editors, reporters and their proprietors less eager to trumpet splashy exposes that might involve, or be perceived to involve, less than ethical standards of news gathering.
One tabloid journalist, who insisted on anonymity because of concern for his job, lamented what he called the end of the “anything goes” era. “Before, it was a case of ‘Don’t tell me how you get it, just get it,’ ” he said. “Now things are looked at differently.”
l-r: Coulson, Murdoch, Brooks, shown in a church service in 2005. Photo by Graeme Robertson/Getty
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