HOW TO BRING DOWN A MEDIA EMPIRE
(with warped ethics and sleaze-ball criminalities)

Mr. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire has been dealt a tectonic shock which may not actually bring it down, but, it has been given a sufficiently  strong jolt to rattle it down to its foundations.

The worse part, of course, is the negative impact all of that has had on its credibility as a news organization. All because one of its tabloid type units in the UK apparently opted for  warped ethics and sleaze-ball criminalities in the pursuit of sensationalist headlines about scandalous behavior, malicious gossip, and other salaciously sordid events. A classic example of what was once called – Yellow Journalism.

Anyone who professes even a modicum of qualification as a journalist (including this modest effort of mine) understands that there are limits, and certain lines, which cannot be crossed if – credibility- is to be maintained. And without –credibility- it ‘s no longer journalism.

The real culprits in this sorry affair are not just those members of the Murdoch mob who  went astray from those standards,  but that insatiable public appetite for anything that will generate lurid headlines of one kind or another, exposing the sins, foibles, medical and other conditions, of celebrities of one kind or another. All of that now enhanced by the new technologies which make it even much easier and more rapidly far-reaching than ever before.

So it should not have been surprising that such a demand for sensation and scandal develops extreme pressures to deliver….or risk losing market share and a strong “platform” following….to ultimately impact bottom line profits. Thus, an indifferent culture of cutting corners and anything-goes-to-that-end was an inevitable result.

Well, this Murdoch saga isn’t finished yet. More revelations are bound to come, no doubt, we’re already seeing how its scandal is spreading to other organizations, such as the elite Scotland Yard, whose escutcheon now seems to have been tarnished by the splatter from that scandal’s muck. Even so such spots of tarnish can be burnished clean again, and credibility can be restored….eventually. It’s just a question of time….effort…and ultimately redemption.

CENTURION