It's been hard to start writing up a post on this. Every time I have settled down to type it up more news comes through on my search feed. The main movement is a Twitter (though it's spread to other areas of the internet) campaign to have advertisers with the News of the Screws drop their investments in the paper. At 1200BST as I write this 10 11 advertisers (the Co-Op just came to their senses) will not be featured in the NotW, a further 10 are 'considering their position', 4 are “awaiting outcome of police investigation”, 1 is refusing comment and two are one is continuing advertisement. Political Scrapbook are keeping their list up-to-date.
It will be interesting to see the fallout from this. Prime Minister's Questions has just started and there are sure to be some questions relating to an inquiry into the phone hacking and to the BSkyB takeover bid.
It is amazing to see the backlash though, particularly on Twitter, coming from all sides. It's not just the left wing and progressives that are up in arms (though there are differing views over whether this should affect Murdoch's attempt to buy up BSkyB) but people from all over the political spectrum. I doubt whether many of the regular readers of NotW will boycott their paper but the advertisers pulling out will hopefully hit them hard enough in the wallet.
Kudos to the Guardian for pursuing the story. They're keeping a live blog on everything unfolding here.
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