The "News of the World", now defunct after its owner summarily closed it down in the wake of a tsunami of disapproval of the news and fiction gathering methods of its reporters a few years ago, embodied two radically different aspects of British journalism.

It had its sheer front in "shock horroring" every little pecadillo and every not so little infraction of proper behavioural standards of its targets, these ranging from politicians, of whom not very much good should really be said (keeps them on their toes) to A-Z-list celebrities, of whom not very much good should be said, full stop. As long as it sold papers, generally by pandering to the prurience and innate hypocrisy of its audience, no story was too sordid and no method too base.

It also had its crusading spirit, trying to reach parts other papers couldn't, or wouldn't, reach.

Is the fact that it has been removed from the landscape a positive one or not? I've never knowingly read the former premier red-top, so I shouldn't judge, but my first reaction was akin to someone who has noticed that a rather sickly smell was no longer pervading the atmosphere.

On reflection, though, is it such a good thing that an investigative newspaper has been axed, simply because its owner is scrambling to make sure that his hegenomistic ambitions are not thwarted? The ill-disguised glee with which the cross-party disapproval was poured on Murdoch and his minions' heads was also quite nauseating to watch, coming from a House whose inhabitants have been caught on so many occasions with their snouts in the trough and other bits of their anatomy elsewhere.

Rags that pound their owner or editor's agenda, inventing facts where none exist or giving interpretations to facts and non-facts that are dazzling in their inventiveness, if not in their fairness, are reprehensible, and when they mix in a good dose of hypocrisy and smugness, they make themselves much worse, but on balance, is any sort of diminuition of press freedom and its power really such a good thing?

I really don't know, since in Malta today we don't have any such paper, so I can't comment at first hand. My knee-jerk gut reaction was "good riddance" but the more I think about it, the more the axing of NOTW was nothing more than an attempt by its plutocratic owner to keep getting his own way, which is not a good thing at all.