Bankers show there’s no class in cash, Kielty

The benighted bankers of HBOS, carpeted in the News Of The World for living high on the champagne hog while homeowners sweat, are proof that money can’t buy class. Not only did they have the bewilderingly popular Patrick Kielty as ‘entertainment’, the wretched masses were seen ‘kicking off their £300 Christian Louboutin high heels to dance around expensive handbags’, all while sloshing free booze across the dance floor. Oh dear, oh dear – it’s like a night at the local Ritzy, but without the aspiration or charm.

To top it all off, the drunken hordes were ‘ferried back to their hotels by coach’. Where are the sleek limousines, the platinum-lined omnibus? These people are a poor example to those really wishing to live the high life.

If this is the best they can do off the taxpayer’s dime, then they ain’t worth worrying about…

Wild horse chase: Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch and the bold new frontier

Barely a month after agreeing the purchase of Dow Jones – a deal supposedly enshrining the editorial independence of the prestigious Wall Street Journal – Rupert Murdoch gave a statement to the House Of Lords Communication Committee, in which he admitted to influencing the editorial line of The Sun and News Of The World in elections and over issues such as Europe. News Hour wonders whether the Bancroft family, the clan the relinquished control of Dow Jones, are wishing they could turn back time to that meeting in June.

The WSJ is a different beast to the two British tabloids, but Murdoch’s claims that he has little influence over his more upmarket papers, The Times and Sunday Times, will provide scant comfort. Still, does this matter? People forget that newspapers are free to be partisan, as long as a clear line is drawn between fact and opinion, and one may argue that a strong editorial line does little harm, as long as there is a counterpoint elsewhere (between The Guardian and the Daily Mail, for instance).

Such is the balance that Mr Murdoch desires to strike in television news, morphing Sky News into a ballistic, Fox News-style service and giving viewers more of a distinct choice from the BBC which, while theoretically held to a strict impartiality, is often accused of being institutionally left wing. We at News Hour confess a certain excitement at the introduction of the Fox ‘news alerts’ to Britain, but others may not agree. Since its founding Sky News has acted as a loss leader for the integrity of BSkyB, providing a journalistic weight that was seen to be lacking elsewhere in its organisation. Now that its content is more mature, perhaps this weight can be found elsewhere.

In any case, controls on TV and print pale by comparison when you consider the power of the internet to perpetuate untruths. During the race for the Presidential nomination, two email slurs have emerged against Barack Obama, one styling him as an Islamic Trojan Horse (oh, the irony), ready to thrown open the borders to the bomb-wielding hordes of Al Qaeda. The other focuses on his apparent lack of hand on heart while singing the Star Spangled Banner. This was not the pledge of allegiance, he says – no hand was required. And the story of his radical Islamic schooling has been thoroughly debunked. But yet still these myths persist. The intensity and focus suggests political organisation, but does it come from the Republicans or from a rival Democratic candidate?

Either way, manipulation of a medium is an intriguing phenomenon – much like Facebook advertisements and guerrilla marketeering on YouTube, it is an insidious practice that, for the casual user, is often difficult to detect.