The Last Days of British Journalism

As journalists know, stories can run in unpredictable directions. The adbuction and subsequent murder of Milly Dowler, a 13 year old girl kidnapped on her way home from school in Surrey, England on March 12, 2002, began a trail that led not just to the conviction of her murderer but to the closing of one of Britian’s most venerable newspapers, the embarrassment of a mighty press baron and, perhaps, the gravest threat to British press freedom in peacetime memory.