I was following the Culture Committee hearing on the Guardian website and realised how strange, in terms of nomenclature that we have a thing that is a Culture Committee hearing. Such a curious term, that if used in the light of some dystopian totalitarian future a la 1984, would probably be read as sinister and threatening but under the whole torrent of impotence and cluelessness that our leaders insist on showing reads as pathetic. Graham Lineham wrote on Twitter a while back that Twitter was the Press Complaints Commission Complaints Commission - the alleged injustice committed by the committees whose role it is to meter out justice to the unjust can only be battled out through hyperbole and near-anonymous name-slinging on blogs and social networks.
It would truly be a dystopian society if justice was metered by the inflamed mass of seething reactivity that the anonymous webiverse represents. It's the same herd, driving people to victimise and bully that fuelled the tabloids on the first place, and it's the same mentality that keeps Melanie Phillips in a job.
I like the fact that we can apply rules to culture, such an esoteric and undefinable thing, and that hearings are required for those that break them. Of course a code of conduct is important, and that is essentially what the hearing is about - whether the Murdoch press is guilty of breaking the journalists code of conduct and whether he is 'fit and proper' to own as much media as he would like to.