News of the World makes public apology over phone scandal

PRESSURE: The News of the World is set for a challenging time

THE NEWS OF THE WORLD has officially apologised to those celebrities caught up in the phone-hacking scandal that has dogged the newspaper for the last year.  News International, who owns the News of the World look, set to payout millions of pounds in damages to celebrities including the actress Sienna Miller, disgraced football commentator Andy Gray and the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell.

     Despite the apology made in copies of today’s newspaper, many are still questioning why it has taken so long for the word ‘sorry’ to be used.  The compensation payout still doesn’t let the phone hacking story disappear, as the police continue to investigate why this happened.  On Friday, the owners released a statement confirming their guilt;

     “News International has decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria.  It is now apparent that our previous enquiries failed to uncover important evidence and we acknowledge our actions then were not sufficiently robust.”

     

     The world’s largest Sunday newspaper has insisted that it will deal with compensation for cases that were involved during the years 2004 and 2006.  Currently, lawyers for News International are believed to be thrashing out these deals behind the scenes.  However, the News of the World has insisted that it will fight any cases that lack any merit or creditability.  Only last week, the chief reporter and former editor of the newspaper were arrested over the allegations of phone tampering.  Both have since been released on police bail. 

     

     Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has called for the takeover bid by News International on BSkyB to be halted during the investigation process.  An angry Prescott appeared on the topical programme 10 O’clock Live on Channel 4 on Thursday night, clearly riled by the behaviour of journalists for the newspaper;

     “It doesn’t just involve the celebrity, or the successful individual.  I’m not against investigative journalism, but what the paper seems to be saying is that if a successful individual appears in the celebrity world, they are open to phone hacking!  You connect to the family, repeat their personal messages and then sell them to the damn press!  That’s what you do for a bloody living!”

        

However, if the News of the World thinks that the overdue apology will end the matter, they can think again.  Sienna Miller is already believed to have rejected the compensation package and her lawyers are seriously considering taking the paper to court.  Alongside News International omission, and more damming evidence being revealed by the Sunday Telegraph today, the police investigation by the Metropolitan Police, which has been criticised before is likely to be placed under scrutiny again.  Shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain told The Andrew Marr Show this morning that the investigation must be dealt with thoroughly;

    “It is a vital that a proper investigation of this takes place.  The police must pursue this till the end.  Until recent times, they have frankly, been very tardy and have not been bringing criminal proceedings when necessary.”

     

REPAIR: Is the newspaper industry going to recover?

     There is no doubt that this is a developing story that will continue to rumble on.  With a police investigation on the march, more celebrities coming forward with possible evidence and calls for all newspaper editors to reveal if they have been sending reporters into these dodgy situations, the future of the newspaper industry could be severely damaged beyond repair. 

Twitter vs Facebook - The Facts & Milestones

The debate is bound to rage on: Which social networking giant is really the best?  Some will prefer to Tweet, others prefer Farmville; tastes will depend on whoever you associated yourself with.  However, with Twitter having recently celebrated its 20^th billionth tweet – just days after Facebook notched up its 500^th millionth member, here are some interesting facts about the two dominant leaders in social networking.

Facebook

Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg – whilst he was studying a Psychology course at Harvard University.  In 2006, Zuckerburg rejected a $1billion takeover offer from Yahoo.  One year later, he sold a 1.6% stake to Microsoft for £117million.  This year, figures suggest that Facebook is estimated to make $1billion.  Users post videos, pictures, status updates and pictures on their own personal profiles.  They connect with their friends via Facebook Chat and can have total control on who has access to personal information.  Facebook makes most of its money by targeting advertising to certain individual’s likes and dislikes.  Statistics suggest that Facebook users will spend around eight billion minutes on the site every day, and they send about a billion messages via Facebook chat.  It is almost impossible to tell whether famous people are using the site – fan pages are more likely to pop up.  Recently, a tribute page to the UK’s most wanted man, Raoul Moat was set-up.  ‘RIP Raoul Moat You Legend!’ attracted 30,000 fans and received serious condemnation from David Cameron.  It has since been removed.  A campaign to get the 1992 song ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage against the Machine was successful in December 2009 for the coveted prize of Christmas No.1.  It beat ‘The Climb,’ by UK X-Factor winner Joe McElderry, in a bid to put an end to Simon Cowell’s domination of the Xmas No.1.

MY VIEW OF FACEBOOK: I joined Facebook back in July 2007, after being sent a friend recommendation.  Honestly, I didn’t think it would catch on, I hadn’t even heard of it before then.  However, I spend a load of time on Facebook and despite receiving some criticism of late – some of it deserved, it will remain king of the social networking world in my view.

Twitter

Twitter was created in 2006 by work buddies Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey.  It started initially as a side project to a blogging website.  There is no source of revenue so far for Twitter, with many waiting to see how it will generate profit.  People write short updates called ‘Tweets,’ of 140 characters or less.  These are posted to your profile/blog and sent to all of your followers.  In 2007, about 5,000 tweets were sent a day, with that increasing to 300,000 messages per day in 2008.  Famous celebrities who regularly tweet for their millions of fans include Jamie Olivier, Alan Carr, Dannii Minogue, Amanda Holden, Tony Blair, Kaya Scodelario, Stephen Fry, Lily Allen and Barack Obama.

MY VIEW OF TWITTER: I joined Twitter last October, as it was an expected requirement of my first year Journalism course at The University of Northampton.  To be honest, I rarely use it, although I will pop on from time-to-time to see what my friends and celebrities I’m following, and post the occasional updates, normally about this website.  Twitter is not my favourite site, but is a nice back-up to have, should I require it and it is one hundred times better than my MySpace account, which I closed down this summer due to lack of activity.   

Facebook Reaches The 500 Million Mark

On Wednesday, the king of the social networking battle, Facebook announced that it had reached the milestone of having 500million members on its site, just six years after it was set-up in a University room.  This means that nearly 10% of the worldwide population have Facebook available to them.  Last January, it still had only 150million members, so it has had a massive increase in the last eighteen months.  This is despite the rise to the fore of Twitter, though the almost complete dismantlement of Bebo and MySpace must have helped Facebook’s healthy figures.

The inventor of Facebook back in February 2004, Mark Zuckerburg believes that Facebook will have one billion users worldwide within the next five years.  Despite increasing concerns about the publication of personal information and complaints from some over the lack of privacy settings, Facebook’s popularity continues to soar.  The advanced competition continues to give Facebook many more challenges to overcome in the future.  Its delay in placing a child panic button on the site has received a lot of criticism, but that still seems not to be putting people off signing up for the fun features Facebook provides, such as Farmville, SuperPoke, Social Interview and Facebook Chat. 

Recent figures also have come out; suggest that Facebook is now getting more web visits on a daily basis, than the No.1 search provider, Google.  This could provide a major headache for advertisers looking to sell their products, now that Google is being outdone at its own game.  There is continued talk that Google are planning to break onto the social networking craze, though they refuse to comment on such frenzied speculation.    

Despite some who have their fears, Facebook continues to rule the networking area in the world and it is going to have to take something really special to knock it off its perch as top of the class.