For Australians wondering just what the News of the World phone hacking scandal means one must first understand what Murdoch's mot popular newspapers News of the World and The Sun are like.

Having lived in London for 5 years I came to see these papers everyday. Let it be understood these are not like modern day Australian type broadsheets or tabloids that we know.

But to my generation in Australia we once did have a newspaper that was very similar.
'
 It was the infamous Australian tabloid The Truth newspaper which was published in Australia for around 100 years . It was also in it's later years owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd until it folded in 1995. The Truth featured stories about sex scandals, sport and page 3 naked big breasted women with a readership almost exclusively a male readership. By 1995  and as colourful as The Truth was it simply didn't sell as well in Australia as it once had and folded. The Truth had also become something too smutty that wasn't fit to be read in public. Perhaps just a small step from reading Playboy in public.

So when I moved to London in the year 2000 I immediately identified both The Sun and News of the World as publications similar to the once published News Ltd The Truth newspaper in Australia But what shocked me was instead of having an almost exclusively male readership interested in sex and scandal its was readership was the majority of all working to middle class people. Men , women and children.  Making these the most popular publications in the UK by a huge margin.

This is how the

average Brit reads about his national and international news. My late English grandmother had some years earlier referred to Rupert Murdoch as 'that grubby Australian Murdoch', clearly not impressed with his massive business success in the UK or worldwide. At the time I didn't quite understand what she meant.

To call The Sun and News of the World politically biased would be a huge understatement. To call the educational would be ridiculous. To call these publications hugely successful and influential on the average Brit would be correct.

Politicians lined up to suck up to the editors of The Sun and News of the World. And police at the highest level at Scotland Yard seem to have been nobbled. Sensational stories about celebrities and politicians were never far away. This phone hacking scandal is not new. Infact it has been around since 2007.

The Sun and News of the World newspapers have helped shape a generation and culture in the UK on a diet of junk food journalism that will take some time to undo, if ever. Newspapers using illegal methods were no doubt known at the high levels in these publications. Senior management could conveniently 'look the other way' , 'nudge nudge wink wink'. This behaviour is a cancer not only on the News Ltd newspaper but a cancer for a wider community in the  UK. The roots of this cancer will prove over time far deeper to extract than first appears.

PS: News Ltd myspace bit the dust recently selling for $500 million less than what it was purchased for. webtron predicted the demise of myspace in a webtron 2009 blog.

PSS: Murdoch is a fighter and survivor who can lose a battle and win a war but at 80 years old who wants to keep fighting?