Murdoch Shutters "New of the World"; American Liberals Taking Notes?

It is a humongous scandal in Greap Britain, although it has made barely a ripple on this side of the pond. Rupert Murdoch, as loathed by the Left in England as he is in America, has been forced to close down one of his Fleet Street tabloids, "News of the World":

....amid an expanding police investigation of phone hacking into missing girls and grieving families as well as celebrities, and the alleged press bribery of police officers for information.

The timing of the scandal is interesting:

It comes just as media baron Rupert Murdoch is seeking U.K. government clearance for a €12 billion ($19 million) bid for full control of British Sky Broadcasting, a prize far more valuable than his British stable of newspapers.

Of course, the BBC is thrilled:

For the third consecutive day, the BBC devotes a huge amount of resource to further excoriating the Murdoch Empire. Having gained the scalp of the News of the World, the BBC agenda moves on. First, in order to sustain its deluded image of solidarity with "the workers", the BBC line is that lowly journalists have been sacrificed to save those higher up....

If you then listen to the prime time slot, at 8.10am, it consists solely of a BBC journalist interviewing two other BBC journalists...

Just the way state-run media likes it. Would NPR act any differently? Or our own "free" press?

Some more analysis of the dust up...does it sound remotely familiar?

The churnalists are up in arms. The carefully constructed media narrative has it that the News of the World, and by extension the entire Rupert Murdoch empire, has singlehandedly ruined the reputation of journalism.

We are witnessing manipulation par excellence at play, as reports that personal details of families of war dead and serious crime victims were found in the possession of Glenn Mulcaire are spun to suggest their phone messages were intercepted – despite there being no evidence (as yet) that such actions happened....

The hypocrisy and double standards at play here are incredible. The Guardian has not pursued this story for the noble aim of getting at the truth, but in a desperate effort to undermine Rupert Murdoch, with the full connivance of its broadcast arm, the BBC. The phone hacking scandal, while criminal and disgusting, is nothing more than a rider for a campaign where something far greater is at stake – maintaining the left-liberal media consensus that holds sway in this country...

There is a cosy left leaning consensus in the UK media which sees reporters easily slip from the BBC to Channel 4 to ITV because they are all members of the same exclusive club...

Are NPR, General Electric's NBC, the New York Times, and the Obama Administration not watching this and salivating like dogs? Unproven allegations, fueled with faux-outrage, closing a newspaper critical of the establishment as well as a bitter rival of the taxpayer financed media and the leftist "mainstream" press? With the side effect of making future expansion like Murdoch's almost impossible, of course...

Brilliant. Wait for the play here, it won't be long. And as for the Obama administration? Well, the headline from the topmost link is one that will make the president grin, but give right-thinking Americans chills:

UK's Cameron calls for new regulation of press

Prime Minister David Cameron, confessing that British politicians and the press had become too cozy, promised Friday to hold two full investigations into activities at the News of the World tabloid and into future media regulation.

Cameron said press self-regulation had failed and a new body, independent of the media and the government, was needed to properly enforce standardsAnd what reason may Cameron have for eliminating freedom of the press in Great Britain? Why, the same reason Muammar Gaddafi kills his own countrymen - it's about saving his own pathetic ass. Or should I say "arse"?

The prime minister refused to apologize for hiring former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his spokesman....