ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the power of news corporations to defy the public interest whenever it suits them and the role of mainstream news journalists as part of an elite power complex. It argues that media scandal, wherever it is found, is all about power and commercial priorities. The chapter considers what happens when the transgression is found within the media industry itself; when disapproval by the public elides with plummeting levels of public trust in sections of the mainstream media leading to potentially devastating damage to the link between news media and democracy. The phone hacking scandal didn’t reveal a media holding power to account rather it exposed a media in bed with power. The Brooks–David Cameron relationship was seen as indicative of a culture of press–politician mutual interest in which media executives and party leaders work together to ‘push the same agenda’, in Cameron’s words.
