Phone-hacking scandal: Not even the News of the World is all bad | Michael White | Politics | guardian.co.uk.

Michael White agrees with me on something, it seems. As his paper is, with the BBC, conducting the trial by media prosecution of News International, this is a particular surprise. He writes, loftily;

...the tabloids serve a useful purpose in exposing wrongdoing, sometimes in ways that hapless and high-minded broadsheets, let alone lofty broadcasters, wouldn't know how to start.

I realise it's annoying, but it's true. Would the Financial Times, an admirable newspaper in so many ways, have been able to expose bookmaker-inspired corruption inside the Pakistani cricket team, as the Screws did? No, I don't think so.

Do they behave disgracefully? Yes, although it's hardly a secret and it is hypocritical for all sorts of people to pretend that the treatment of Milly Dowler's family has knocked the scales from their eyes. "We had no idea that sort of thing went on." Oh yes you did. And you carried on buying their newspapers and chuckling over the contents...

Quite. Of course, being Michael White, he then reverts to talking trash.

The tragedy is that marketisation of the media since the 80s – part of a wider marketisation of the economy – combined with the new, highly invasive technologies proved too intoxicating a mix for some.

It's clear that the News International culture – certainly at the Sun and the NoW – allowed some to ignore the law or assume they could break it with no public interest defence to justify their excesses.

Firstly, you insulting little man, most business people manage to compete and survive without "ignoring the law". So can newspapermen. Secondly, being private businesses of - in many cases - great age, our news media are in no need of 'marketisation.' Apart, of course, from the BBC and The Guardian itself. The latter lacks the readership and revenues to survive unaided in a free market. Were it not for the fact that the state consistently (and revealingly) advertises for employees in Britain's most left-wing national newspaper, The Guardian would be deader than the deadest of dead ducks. If not deader.

When David Cameron finally gets around to disintermediating government recruitment by setting up a simple website, not only will he cut government spending. He will also put Michael White and his leftist rag truly back in the market. It can't be too soon for me. God knows no-one needs an education in the life-giving effects of competition more than White and his cadre of posh leftie buffoons.