Honestly, it is still hard to wrap your head around how fast it all fell apart. One minute, the News of the World newspaper was the absolute undisputed king of the British Sunday morning. It was an institution. You’d see it in every chip shop, every pub, and on millions of kitchen tables. Then, in just a few days in July 2011, it was gone. Just like that. 168 years of history wiped out because of a scandal so toxic that even Rupert Murdoch couldn't save it.
Most people remember the "phone hacking" part, but the scale of the thing was actually much crazier than just listening to celebrity voicemails. We are talking about a paper that, at its peak in 1950, sold over 8.4 million copies every single week. That is a staggering number. No English-language paper has ever come close since. It was powerful, it was feared, and it was eventually destroyed by its own obsession with getting the "scoop" at any cost.
The Rise of the "Screws of the World"
The paper started way back in 1843. John Browne Bell founded it with a pretty simple mission: make it cheap and make it scandalous. He wanted the working class to read it. And they did. It was actually the cheapest paper of its time, costing just three pence. From day one, it focused on crime, "vice," and the kind of human-interest stories that make you do a double-take.
People nicknamed it "The Screws of the World." Why? Because it spent so much time reporting on what was happening behind closed doors—usually the kind involving court cases and "naughty" behavior.
By the time Rupert Murdoch bought it in 1969, the template was set. He just turned the volume up. Under his ownership, the paper became a "red top" tabloid in every sense. It was loud. It was conservative. It was obsessed with celebrities. It basically invented the modern "sting" operation, using reporters in disguises—like the famous "Fake Sheikh," Mazher Mahmood—to lure people into saying or doing things they shouldn’t.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Hacking
If you ask someone why the News of the World newspaper shut down, they’ll say "phone hacking." But that’s only half the story. The hacking had actually been known about for years.
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Back in 2006, the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator named Glenn Mulcaire were arrested. They’d been hacking the phones of the Royal Family’s staff. At the time, News International (the parent company) insisted this was just one "rogue reporter." They paid out some settlements, issued some apologies, and everyone tried to move on.
But it wasn't one guy. Not even close.
The real "bomb" dropped in July 2011. The Guardian—specifically reporter Nick Davies—revealed that the paper hadn't just hacked famous people. They had hacked the voicemail of Milly Dowler.
Milly was a 13-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and murdered in 2002. While her parents were desperately hoping she was still alive, journalists were accessing her messages. They even deleted some to make room for more, which gave her parents a false sense of hope that she was still using her phone.
That was the turning point.
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Hacking a celebrity’s phone for a "cheating" story is one thing. Hacking a murdered child’s phone is something else entirely. The public went from being mildly annoyed by tabloid tactics to being absolutely furious. Advertisers like Ford, Mitsubishi, and Lloyds TSB started pulling their ads within hours. The brand was radioactive.
The Week the Music Died
The end was brutal and incredibly fast.
- Tuesday: The Milly Dowler story breaks.
- Wednesday: More reports emerge about hacking the families of 7/7 bombing victims and fallen soldiers.
- Thursday: James Murdoch announces the paper will close after the upcoming Sunday issue.
- Sunday: The final edition hits the stands.
The last headline was a simple "Thank You & Goodbye." They printed 3.8 million copies of that final issue—about a million more than their usual run. People wanted a piece of history, even if it was a dark one.
I remember the shock in the industry. 200 people lost their jobs overnight. Not all of them were hacking phones; most were just regular sub-editors, sports writers, and photographers who had nothing to do with the "dark arts" department. But the Murdochs decided the whole ship had to be scuttled to save the rest of the empire, specifically their bid to buy BSkyB (which they eventually had to drop anyway because of the heat).
The Legacy: Did Anything Actually Change?
After the closure, we had the Leveson Inquiry. It was this massive, televised look into the ethics of the British press. Lord Justice Leveson spent months listening to victims like Hugh Grant, J.K. Rowling, and the McCanns.
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Honestly? A lot of people feel like the results were a bit of a mixed bag. We got a new regulator, IPSO, but many argue it’s just the old system with a new coat of paint. The "wild west" of the 90s and 2000s tabloids has mostly moved online. Instead of hacking phones, the battle for attention is fought through clickbait and social media algorithms.
But the News of the World newspaper is still the ultimate cautionary tale. It shows that even the most powerful media outlet in the world can be brought down if it loses its "moral compass"—or at least, if it gets caught losing it in such a public way.
What You Can Learn From the Fallout
If you're interested in the history of media or just want to understand how the British press works today, here is the "so what" of the whole saga:
- Public Sentiment is the Ultimate Judge: The paper survived dozens of libel lawsuits and scandals for a century. It only died when the general public—the people buying the paper—decided they’d had enough.
- The "Rogue Reporter" Defense Rarely Works: If there is systemic rot in an organization, it eventually comes out. Transparency (even if it's painful) is usually better than a cover-up.
- Brands are Fragile: You can spend 168 years building a brand and destroy it in 72 hours.
If you want to dig deeper, I’d highly recommend reading Hack Attack by Nick Davies. It’s the definitive account of how he broke the story. It reads like a thriller, but every word of it is unfortunately true. You can also look up the archived transcripts of the Leveson Inquiry if you really want to see the "gritty" details of how the newsroom used to operate.
The era of the "Sunday blockbuster" tabloid might be over, but the lessons from the News of the World's collapse are more relevant than ever in the age of digital privacy.