All My Pretty Chickens

The arrests on Saturday morning of a few more senior Sun journalists has really got the whole news room spooked.
With the sister paper (more like detested stepsister) News of the World suddenly being disbanded by the Murdochs, there is understandable fear the same fate awaits the Super Soaraway. It prompted political editor, Trevor Kavanagh (pictured), to write a

snarling attack on News Corp bosses, any other time a sacking offence. But what does Trev have to lose? He may yet regret admitting payments were "standard procedure" and his belief there was "nothing illegal" about it.

This of course is not phone-hacking but allegations of payments to police officers and other officials which threatens to draw in federal investigators in the US. It could be a lot more costly to the organisation than merely shutting the gates on a 150 year-old paper.
Defenders of the Number One are scarce. Newsnight dug up the dismal Nic Ferrari who whined like an adolescent about the manner in which his chums were arrested and how many officers were on the Elveden investigation as if the other guests were of the same intellect as the average Sun reader.
"This is just a smokescreen. The question is 'was there a crime'?" bellowed Murdoch biographer Michael Woolf.
Ferrari, previous defender of the humiliated cop Andy Hayman, moaned on about the dawn raids but it was left to Tom Watson MP to point out the bleedin obvious about the NI journalists and edtitors previous obfuscation and flat denial. " It is News International's behaviour that is to blame for police having to devote immense time and resources to establish the facts. By deliberately lying to the police and trashing evidence they have made the job far more complex and expensive than it should have been...the notion that the police might politely ring up to make an appointment to see a Sun journalist for a civilised chat is far-fetched. It takes some nerve for News International, in the form of Kavanagh, to be accusing the police of wasting time and resources."
Today's front page picture of the late Whitney Houston's bath where she died shows the Currant Bun has lost one of its ghoulish zeal. But its dependance on its pre-eminence status is not just in doubt, these could be the final editions. But in that case the hacks would expect a little more sensitivity about the recent demise.