[Samanfur]

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Murdoch Admits His British Tabloid, ‘The Sun,’ Has Become Totally Worthless

[Cyclist]

Has become? It always was.

[Youngian]

When you can get tits and football on your phone at tea break, the Sun’s appeal was bound to wane compared to the Mail’s older demographic.

Its latest accounts show that The Sun and its Sunday sister paper now have “zero carrying value” after an £84 million writedown, the FT reported. It said that turnover had dropped by a fifth during the pandemic and £80 million of legal costs from a long-running phone-hacking scandal helped the papers to a pre-tax loss of £201 million ($284 million.)

[Nigredo]

IIRC, they always ran at a loss (with advertising space attempting to minimise that) because it was considered "the cost of doing business" i.e. exerting enormous power and influence over public opinion.

[kreuzberger]

IIRC, they always ran at a loss (with advertising space attempting to minimise that) because it was considered "the cost of doing business" i.e. exerting enormous power and influence over public opinion.

And keeping politicians on a tight leash, assured and in the knowledge that they could be splashed to 11m readers by breakfast-time tomorrow.

[Bones McCoy]

Murdoch press in further trouble (possible exceppt form old ongoing story).

Prince William secretly settled phone-hacking claim, court told

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65387663

Prince William was paid a "very large sum" by the owners of The Sun to settle historical phone-hacking claims, court papers from Prince Harry's lawyers say.

The papers were shown at a High Court hearing in which Prince Harry is suing News Group Newspapers (NGN) over alleged unlawful information gathering.

They say Buckingham Palace and NGN had a "secret agreement" to put off legal claims from Royal Family members.

Secret Agreement - WTF?

So Morlock gets to spy on the royals, provided he bungs them the occasional sweetener?

[Andy McDandy]

Bit of a pain in the arse for the royals if they don't play ball. Gag the press? Not likely, they'd not shut up. The arsehole press and royals both know this.

[The Weeping Angel]

I maybe wrong here but did Prince Harry have a right to reveal this?

[satnav]

If it was revealed in court and it is relevant to his own case then I can't see it being a problem. I think he also revealed that the queen was also planning to sue 'The Sun' but Charles persuaded her no to. He was probably worried about how much dirt Murdoch had gathered on the royals and didn't want the Sun to air the families dirty washing in public.

[Bones McCoy]

I maybe wrong here but did Prince Harry have a right to reveal this?

I'm sure it will all be Meghan's fault (more on pages 5-9, 17 and 22).

[kreuzberger]

Slowly but surely, Leveson 2 is falling tidily into place. Come a decent 2024 election outcome, this needs to be on the radar.

Not before time, either.

[Andy McDandy]

The press wouldn't forgive, and they drive the news discussion cycle, which is nowadays taking up much more airtime than the actual news, because it's cheap and more likely to generate secondary views, and is the sole property of the studio whereas you can get news reports all over the place. And the discussion cycle affects polling.

Unless you break the cycle (and we had a chance under Covid but blew it), it would be very risky. Besides, there are plenty of ways for the opposition to kibosh it.

[satnav]

I do wonder how much longer Murdoch is going keep pouring money into the Sun. Since the phone hacking story broke the paper has been making pretty heavy loss as a result of all the pay outs the paper has been forced to make. The Murdoch empire will have shelled out over a £1bn as a result of the Fox News case and I can't see why they would keep putting more an more money into the Sun especially if they think that the Tories will get kicked out at the next election.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yep. What's the point of the Sun, if it doesn't make money and probably can't swing elections any more? Is it just to push Sunak about for a laugh?

This nonsense was actually the front page story. Are these carefully chosen topics going to be on the ballot paper?

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2023/0 ... flops.html

There, alongside more Royalist propaganda, readers are told “Exclusive Sun Poll … BRITS SAY NO TO WOKE … Sir Softie blast”, and under the by-line of the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, still pretending to be a real journalist, we learn “BRITS are opposed to explicit sex education in class, have strong views on what a woman is and are proud of our nation’s past”.

All of which has sweet Fanny Adams to do with the term WOKE, which means either “Well-informed, up-to-date”, or “Alert to injustices in society, especially racism”. So we already know that Master Cole does not know what he is talking about, so no change there, then. But, sadly, there is more.

“We asked 3,000 Brits last week what they thought about the state of British politics and what will happen at the next General Election … That’s about three times the size of most opinion polls, for a more accurate take of the national temperature … Just 18 per cent of Brits say we should be ashamed of our past, compared to the 45 per cent who want to cheer for it”.

[Rosvanian]

The Sun taking its readers for mugs yet again.

[Tubby Isaacs]

What's explicit sex education anyway? I think I can remember having to watch a baby being born on Living and Growing when I was 11. That was pretty explicit.

[Youngian]

The Sun is treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad punditry.

[Yug]

Note to Harry Cole

[Youngian]

Think of historians as accountants dispassionately toting up the columns on the ledger. Tories used to get that analogy whereas now they have pencils up their nose and tinfoil hats.

[satnav]

The Sun seems to be losing its shit at the moment over Prince Harry's claims that this country doesn't do enough to help army vets. The owners of The Sun have registered the paper in a tax haven to avoid paying taxes in this country but the paper likes to make a big thing out of the fact that its readers often cough up when the paper launches appeals to help army vets.