Murdoch and The Riots

Perhaps it's a stretch, but think about this: The News of The World spent 40 years denigrating and begriming every celebrity and public figure - especially the Royals. Now it comes out that they illegally hacked into phones, and were aided and abetted by the Metropolitan Police, quietly sanctioned by ministers and Prime Ministers, including this one. The Metropolitan police, notice.  The same people who fired the shots that sparked off the riots.

Corruption at every level, and a war that was widely seen as being merely for the benefit of the wealthy. A volatile brew.

If we are to look at the way parts of society slipped into anarchy we cannot ignore the media's role. And that includes Murdoch's best selling papers, which outsold every other half-way respectable newspaper.  For forty years.

Thus are moral codes eroded.