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The demise of the News of the World is, of course the #1 story this morning. You do sense a real game-change here. For most of my life, both Governments and Oppositions sucked up to the Murdoch newspapers. Their backing, or otherwise, changed Governments as in the famous headline “It’s the Sun wot won it” after the Conservative’s surprise victory in the 1992 General Election. Now, one feels, that a Murdoch endorsement would be a ‘kiss of death’ for any party. Certainly many advertisers do not want that association.
Coming closer to our sector, any Twitter user cannot have failed to notice the many anti News Corp tweets and organised campaigns this week. The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones – Social media v the News of the World – discusses how activists like @the_Z_factor, @profanityswan and @eroticpuffin galvanised Tweeters to get CEOs to pull their adverts on the NOWT. Nobody is suggesting that this was the only reason why Ford and many other large companies pulled their advertising, but you can be sure that it had a very significant effect.
Same applies to the 140,000+ objections which Jeremy Hunt has received in just a few days for (well, actually against) the News Corp bid for BSkyB. Many of these were galvanised by Twitter and Facebook campaigns. Their sheer volume has given Hunt a reason to delay the decision. As he said ‘I now have a lot of reading to do’.
