Rupert Murdoch will face a sea of unhappy staff at The Sun on his arrival at the newspaper's Thomas More Square office this week.
Several senior journalists were recently arrested after the company's Management and Standards Committee passed information to police, leading to accusations against both the Metropolitan Police and News International themselves that Murdoch and the organisation are sacrificing others to save their own skins. The waves of blame and counter-blame have been reverberating on an axis between those three bodies ever since with the unenviable Sun staff at the centre.
The Sun's associate editor Trevor Kavanagh spoke out against the apparent pursuing of the paper's closure in an interview with BBC Radio Five Live:
"There is certainly a mood of unhappiness that the company proudly, certain parts of the company – not News International I hasten to add, not the newspaper side of the operation – are actually boasting that they are sending information to the police which will put (the arrested journalists) into police cells.
"You have to wonder what is behind it all. It is self-evident that there are people who will stop at nothing to destroy News International and they will not be satisfied until the Sun is closed. I have to tell you, that is not going to happen.”
Although Murdoch has said he plans to keep The Sun open, the shock closure of the News of the World last summer can't be far from the staff's minds along with the potential losses to the NI corporation if it does fold. And like their cousins in public condemnation, bankers, the impact of closing the paper won't just result in a few bad apples losing their jobs but will likely be felt throughout the industry.
