Mirror Hacking - Murdoch Hypocrisy

So, at long last, and after a period of denial, Trinity Mirror has admitted that phone hacking was rife at its papers. The admission, which was published last Friday, does not exempt any of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and Sunday People. But, rather than taking the admission as merely a statement of fact, many commentators are using it as a stick to beat the Guardian, Hacked Off, and also Nick Davies, just to be on the safe side.

While the BBC told “Trinity Mirror has already settled a number of phone-hacking claims. The company told its shareholders it would set aside more money to pay the cost of settling further phone hacking claims that may emerge. It has now set aside an extra £8m, taking the total to £12m, to cover compensation payments to victims and associated legal costs”, an operation has been mounted to get anyone interested to “look over there”.

First came the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, pretending that campaigning group Hacked Off were silent over the Mirror’s admission, which they were not, but then, The Great Guido has taken the Murdoch shilling and, being out there on the right, understands how to conform to Olbermann’s Dictum (“the right exists in a perpetual state of victimhood”).

Then - also representing Creepy Uncle Rupe, by the most interesting of coincidences - came (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch to throw the obligatory stampy tantrum at Nick Davies, claiming that he had “totally missed” the Mirror titles’ misbehaviour, which, as he explained to her, he had not. So she just kept on ranting anyway, telling “Shagger” Prescott that he had to resign his Sunday Mirror column, because, er, she said so.

Even the Sun’s managing editor Stig Abell, who, as a scan of his CV will show, is not stupid, has gone in with both feet on Prescott, snarking on Twitter “John Prescott demands closure of Sunday Mirror for the industrial scale of phone hacking it has admitted”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start: Prescott never demanded the closure of the Screws. No notable politician of any stripe did. That was the Murdochs’ decision, and theirs alone.

What these obedient Murdoch slaves have managed to miss is that, as Roy Greenslade has pointed out, “It is also apparent that the company has worked relatively harmoniously alongside the Metropolitan police in trying to get to the bottom of the scandal”. Trinity Mirror, once it admitted the hacking, did not indulge in the foot-dragging and smearing that characterised the Murdochs’ resistance to exposing wrongdoing at the Screws.

Memories are short enough for all those obedient Murdoch servants to forget Rebekah Brooks telling that the hacking saga would end with “Alan Rusbridger on his knees, begging for mercy”. The Mirror has not been having its supporters shout “non story”, or claim that it was a party political hit. The Mirror has come clean: there has been no need for the investigation that took place into the Screws.

Trying to deflect onto Prescott or Hacked Off will not alter that fact, Murdoch poodles.