“Rupert Murdoch, an animatronic al-Qaida recruitment poster, in his private letter to Sun staff, after the News of the World was briefly closed for a makeover (not through remorse, or shame, no, because they couldn’t sell advertising space and because he wanted to launch the Sun on Sunday anyway because it’s cheaper to run one title than two – some guys get all the luck) referred consistently to his pride in the Sun as ‘a trusted news source.’ Trusted is the word he used, not trustworthy. We know the Sun is not trustworthy and so does he. He uses the word ‘trusted’ deliberately. Hitler was trusted, it transpired he was not trustworthy. He also said of the arrested journalists, ‘everyone is innocent until proven guilty.’ Well, yes, that is the law of our country, not however a nicety often afforded to the victims of his titles, and here I refer not only to hacking but the vituperative portrayal of weak and vulnerable members of our society, relentlessly attacked by Murdoch’s ink jackals. Immigrants, folk with non-straight sexual identities, anyone in fact living in the margins of the Sun’s cleansed utopia.”

–Russell Brand, in the Guardian, on Murdoch, the Sun, and the miserable state of the news industry. Read more on the media.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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