Liz Hodgkinson

The non-Murdoch media has predictably been crowing over the phone hacking scandal presently engulfing the Murdoch empire - New International and Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and others have appeared before a House of Commons select committee. But what does it all mean, in reality? Yes it is totally unacceptable that the phones of murder victims werek hacked -- and yet one can see how it happened. The Milly Dowler case was high-profile and although her family may not have sought publicity, they were sucked into by the murder of their daughter. And really, that is what tabloid newspapers like the News of the World have always been about - getting deeper into the story than weekly papers and giving the public something salacious to read on Sundays. Celebrities cannot really complain as they seek publicity at every turn and assiduously put themselves in the public eye at every opportunity. Their publicists are always contacting newspapers with stories and pictures to keep them in the public eye and if a newspaper gets hold of a story they don't want published, well, too bad. They can't suddenly cry for privacy. Wasn't it Lord Northcliffe who said that news is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want publishing and that everything else was advertising?

We have to ask ourselves what journalism is and remember that newspapers, unlike the BBC, are commercial enterprises which can only keep going if people buy them and advertisers advertise in them. The BBC, which has been ferocious in its condemnation of Murdoch, sits comfortably cushioned by the licence fee which it is a criminal offence not to pay. OK, that doesn't necessarily give other forms of media not so protected a free hand to use any dirty tricks they can, but unless the commercial media makes money, it goes down the pan. Do we really want only state-subsidised media informing us?

We need more newspapers not fewer and with the demise of the News of the World -- not that anybody will miss if if they're honest - that leaves one less mass outlet in the country. And there is probably not going to be a replacement unless News International comes up with a Sun on Sunday -- which they might of course, when all this has died down, if ever it dies down. It is the biggest scandal to hit print media since Murdoch removed all his newspapers to Wapping and changed the face of the British press, in 1986. Then, Murdoch called the tune; now he is being called to account instead. What a change