Scousers Never Buy The Sun.

There has been a major outcry recently about the antics of News International and their owners, the Murdochs. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about these odious individuals but even I was taken aback by the revelation that News Of The World investigators had hacked into the phone of missing (and subsequently murdered) schoolgirl Milly Dowler. This interference into an ongoing Police enquiry is beyond redemption. Whether this affected the capture of her murderer, Levi Bellfield, is debatable but it should be noted that he went on to murder other young women after Milly. What is even more sickening is that it appears that serving Police officers were quite happy to accept payments from News International to provide information relating to this and other cases.

I say that this shouldn't be a surprise and, for me, it isn't. Anyone with half a mind could see that the Murdochs have been interfering with British life for years. Whether it is printing lies and half truths about people in the public eye, running propaganda in support of corrupt politicians or demeaning minorities and the vulnerable, News International has been at the forefront. And what have they offered in return? Nothing. They don't even pay tax. I have refused to have anything to do with them or their poisonous publications and broadcasting. Why they have been tolerated is beyond me but it now appears that the British people are finally turning against them. It's not before time but 22 years ago an entire city decided to stick two fingers up at one of the most atrocious examples of gutter journalism.

On 15th April 1989, one of the worst disasters in British sporting history took place when a failure of crowd control for the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough Stadium lead to 96 innocent Liverpool football fans being crushed to death at the start of the match. Football fans of all persuasion and people across the country were shocked by this. However, a front page in The Sun just 4 days later claimed that fans had attacked and urinated on police, picked the pockets of the dead and sexually assaulted the body of a girl who had died in the crush. These were all outrageous lies. What was even more amazing is that the newspaper originally defended this despite the fact that the BBC filmed the entire event and there were several thousand witnesses to the contrary. Eventually, the paper sacked the editor responsible but not until the population of Liverpool had vowed never to buy the publication again. Despite remaining one of the largest circulation papers in Britain, it remains to this day a very poor selling publication in the Liverpool area. I was actually in the town at the weekend so I was interested as to what people made of the current outrage.

In fact, it is surprising that some of the younger people don't know that much about it - other than buying The Sun is frowned upon. I suppose it is similar to the fact that the Daily Mail is often viewed as being xenophobic without people knowing of their support for Hitler in the 1930s. The other thing that surprises me is that whilst some will boycott The Sun, they may still subscribe to Sky TV. In fairness, this is only 39% owned by News International but, as I said earlier, I refuse to have anything to do with the Murdochs - although even I have watched films made by 20th Century Fox so I can't claim that I have never added to their coffers at all. The one thing that everyone seemed to agree with is that the meddling in British society by a foreign owned organisation is unacceptable. I'm not opposed to foreign owned media having a presence in this country but it has to be on fair and reasonable grounds.

Television news is much more heavily controlled in the UK and it has to be seen to be politically neutral. This is how it should be. I'm happy enough for a newspaper to take a political stance but I still think that this should be on a reasoned basis. I think The Guardian (from a liberal viewpoint) and The Telegraph (from a conservative one) manage this quite well. One may not agree with the views they are expressing but those views are expressed in rational terms. I also think The Independent has improved under its Russian owner and even The Times could set the standard as an authoritative voice if it were not tainted by association. Britain does have quality journalism but its tabloids belong in the sewer. It's probably why I, and increasingly growing numbers of others, refuse to buy a daily paper. If everyone else would shun the gutter press then they would cease to exist.

However, for the moment, I think Billy Bragg puts it better than I ever could: