Interesting comments on News Of The World shutdown from the BBC website.

[edbermac]

Ed Miliband - Labour leader

"What I'm interested in is not closing newspapers - I'm interested in those responsible being brought to justice," he told the BBC's Newsnight. He said it was a "big decision" but it "does not solve real issues at News International". "One of the people who is remaining in their jobs is Rebekah Brooks. She should go, she should take responsibility," he said. "The idea that she is leading the investigation, overseeing it with the police, well, it beggars belief."

John Prescott - former deputy PM

"It's a typical management stunt from Mr Murdoch," he told BBC News. "What he does is he gets rid of problems and in this case nobody in senior management ... none of those go but the poor old workers at the News of the World are going and there's no doubt it will become the Sunday Sun."

Ken Clarke - Justice secretary

On the news of the closure, Mr Clarke said: "All they're going to do is rebrand it."

Chris Bryant - Labour MP

"This is designed to try and protect Rebekah Brooks, and I believe that if she had a shred of decency after what we have heard about Milly Dowler's phone being hacked, which happened on her watch as editor, she should have resigned by now," he told the Press Association. "Everything that's been announced today just goes to show that there's been a cover-up, that Parliament has been misled, that police have been corrupted, that police investigations were undermined. "This strategy of chucking first journalists, then executives and now a whole newspaper overboard isn't going to protect the person at the helm of the ship."

Nick Robinson - political editor

Rupert Murdoch has, instead, sacrificed the News of the World - or, at least, its title. I assume he will produce another Sunday paper - perhaps, as Robert Peston has suggested on his blog, The Sunday Sun. Team Murdoch must have realised that the name News of the World would be referred to again and again over the next few months in connection with the alleged phone-hacking of a murdered girl, grieving parents and war widows.

The question now is whether this will make the government's dilemma about the takeover of BSkyB easier or harder?

My guess is that the Murdochs have sacrificed the News of the World in order to salvage their television ambitions. They want to expand in Germany, Italy, India and, of course, here in Britain too. Newspapers represent only 13% of News Corps worldwide revenue, I'm told.

So, ministers may be able to delay the final decision on whether to approve the takeover - by allowing lots of time for officials at the culture department and Ofcom to go through public submissions - but, in the end, they are still likely to have to face it.

Murdoch's enemies will want this to be the beginning of the end for him. He is sure to see it as a new beginning. The nightmare for David Cameron and his government is that he will be tainted by the past - thanks to his hiring of Andy Coulson - and be responsible for the future.

The fates of the prime minister and Britain's mightiest media mogul are now intertwined.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070856
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14064438

[CleanGreenFuture]

1. Well, that figures. So much for my earlier OP.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Interesting. Sounds like no one's been fooled. nt

[xchrom]

3. I hope that being intertwined means they're dragging each other to

The bottom of the sea.

Brooks & others belong in jail.

[mazzarro]

4. If Murdoch were George Soros and the media empire was boldface left-wing in bias

and the media is not so subtly liberal or progressive in it's programming; would the several major governments be so accommodating to that Soros' media empire buying up more media companies in their counties? How would the right-wing politicians and organizations in all of those countries have reacted to a boldface liberal or left wing media empire in the first place?