[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

A scandal encompassing the media, politics and the police is gripping Britain. It concerns a Sunday newspaper, the misnamed "News of the World". This newspaper printed neither news nor world affairs. A typical issue would headline with an exclusive expose on the sexual antics of a football player caught cheating on his wife with a prostitute. Fascination with the sexual life of celebrities, politicians and royalty, was combined with the systematic cultivation of ignorance and xenophobia. It appears that many of these stories were generated by criminal acts and conspiracies, such as blackmail, robbery and fraud.

Nevertheless when the national flag needed to be waved to support wars like Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, the News of the World was always on hand to help the war effort! Some people even shed tears when the paper closed down last Sunday. The paper appealed to base instincts, ignorance and idiocy, in order to make money for its owner, and to help him to win friends and influence people. It was part of a global armoury of mass stupification owned and controlled by the CEO of News International the multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch esquire.

The immediate spark for the News of the World crisis was that phone hacking was systematically used at the behest of the news editors as a "by any means necessary" technique to get exclusive stories. Gaining information by illegal means enabled journalists to release scoops about the secret sex lives of politicians and celebrities, and simultaneously to run self-righteous campaigns to seek out and lynch paedophiles. Human interest in sex and crime runs deep, so British tabloid editors claim that they push the limits to quench the public thirst for titillation. But the macabre mechanics of information gathering at the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch came to resemble a cheap private detective show, in which journalists worked with the underworld to carry out illegal espionage on thousands of people, including a murdered child, victims of terrorist bombs, and the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.