Something very worrying has been going on at Scotland Yard. We now know that in dealing with the phone-hacking affair at the 'News of the World,' they cut short their original inquiry; suppressed evidence; misled the public and the press; concealed information and broke the law. Why?

The friends of tabloid newspapers often point out that their journalism exists only because millions of people pay money to read it.

It's the tabloids, with their intense commercial need to get scoops to bring in readers, that run a regime of fear, where reporters are bullied, shouted at. That's where things go wrong.

Notoriously, in 1975, Murdoch abused his position as a newspaper owner to support a plot that ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam, who had dared to wander away from the mogul's path.