As News of The World burns, Britain’s media feel the heat

As Britain’s most powerful Sunday newspaper crashes and burns, newsrooms across London are feeling the heat.
Media watchers and former journalists say the practices that felled the News of The World were common across the industry. With 200 tabloid journalists out of work, two people convicted, and one former editor-in-chief under arrest, those behind the headlines are wondering whether they’ll soon be in them.
“It’s a warning for Fleet Street,” public relations guru Max Clifford said Friday, using the nickname for the national newspaper industry. “A lot of journalists were up to similar things for many, many years.”
Clifford should know. As well as being one of the nation’s best-connected media operators, he was also among the tabloid phone hacking scandal’s most prominent victims. It was his generous settlement with the News of The World — reported to be 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) — that helped whet other lawyers’ appetites for suing the paper over the practice. That litigation turned up revelations so damaging they proved fatal.

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