Scandals like Hackgate exposed a criminal media-state nexus but prosecution structures protected its operators.

Evidence

The significance of Hackgate was that it started to bring these systemic complicities — this “dark network comprising private investigators, the criminal underworld, tabloid newspapers, multinational media conglomerates, the police, politicians, the banks, and the bodies supposed to regulate them (who are at best impotent, at worst part of the problem)” — into the open. The reality management system was strained then, but whether it will suffer any serious damage will be partly determined by the results of the ongoing trial of two of Murdoch’s reality managers. It’s might be that, as with Vito and Michael Corleone, there are too many layers of subordinates between Coulson and Brooks and those who committed the actual crimes for a jury to find them guilty this time. But the cracks in the old reality management system are real. It’s an open question as to how long they can keep being smoothed over. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1758

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘reality management system’ concept ties to Fisher’s broader writing on ideology, and the Godfather reference recurs in his analysis of distributed complicity — connects to BMF potential with the mafia structure in A Very Minor Prophet or Naqvi. — connects to: Corruption scandals form a network of complicities, not isolated incidents — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1568; Formal oversight structures can coexist with continued suppression of evidence. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 526; Bribery rather than repression was the chief tool for controlling media and legislators — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 63
• QUESTION: Fisher’s reality management framing invokes the mafia metaphor of layered subordinates shielding principals — worth exploring whether the Coulson/Brooks trial outcome supported or undercut his forecast.

Broader Connections

• Formal oversight structures can coexist with continued suppression of evidence. #expands (0.90) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 526
• Corruption scandals form a network of complicities, not isolated incidents #exemplifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1568