Saucy Tabloid Tales

This extract from Paul Barry’s  book Breaking News: Sex, lies and the Murdoch succession, first appeared in Encore. Rupert Murdoch’s papers have long been known for having an appetite for scandal – particularly in the UK.

Kelvin MacKenzie, the long-serving editor of Rupert Murdoch’s best-selling Sun, was once asked what he thought about tabloid ethics. In a favourite quip he would recycle many times, he famously replied: “Ethics? As far as I’m concerned, that’s a place to the east of London where people wear white socks.” Another lesser-known Murdoch journalist, Greg Miskiw, who was once news editor of the News of the World, and now faces charges of phone hacking, summed up his paper’s culture even more eloquently. “This is what we do,” he explained to a stressed-out reporter. “We go out and destroy other people’s lives.”

Had Miskiw’s candid confession not been taped, in vintage News of the World style, no one would ever have believed it. But the recording was proof that he said it.