The Guardian‘s Roy Greenslade has called for a boycott of the News of The World including its Irish edition following the latest hacking revelations.
Greensalde, a former editor of the Daily Mirror who now lives in Donegal, is also urging people to put pressure on the paper’s Irish advertisers including Cost Plus Sofa, Supervalu, Aer Lingus and Xtravision to withdraw their ads from the paper.
But if no Irish journalists were involved (with one large exception) in the scandal, and there has been no mention of any involvement by anyone in the Dublin or Belfast offices, is a commercial boycott of the Irish edition fair?
1. Boycott the paper. Treat it just as the people of Merseyside did when The Sun ran its infamous Hillsborough story in 1989 following the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters.
2. Pressure advertisers and media buyers not to buy space in the News of the World and to withdraw ads they’ve already booked.
In last Sunday’s issue, the advertisers included Tesco, Aldi, Currys, the Body Shop and Xtra-vision. If you’re reading this in Ireland, there were also ads for SuperValu, Bulmers, Aer Lingus, Steam-Packet.com, Cost Plus Sofas, Steel Tech Sheds and Joe Duffy Motors.
I called for a sales boycott and for public pressure on advertisers on Twitter last night. Now see some of the tweets here, with more names of advertisers.
3. Back the call for an independent public inquiry into the whole hacking affair. It will be officially launched tomorrow at a meeting in the Lords.
Among the organisers are media academics, lawyers, MPs and peers. More information will be found soon on the hackinginquiry.org website.
There are so many aspects to this saga that require proper investigation: the roles of the paper and two police forces; the activities of various private investigators; the response of the Press Complaints Commission; and the relationship between the paper’s publisher, News International, and senior politicians.
4. Demand to know who has been, and is, paying the legal expenses of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was jailed for intercepting voicemail messages on behalf of the News of the World.
News Of The World Hacking – What You Can do (Roy Greenslade, Guardian)
NOTW Hacking Developments – Live (Telegraph)