The News of the World (NOTW) prides itself on making the headlines and this week it has – but not in the way we are used to. Rather than salacious celebrity gossip the paper itself has been thrust into the limelight as the subject of phone hacking hits the headlines.

Of course this isn’t the first time that the NOTW and its phone hacking antics have been the subject of scrutiny. The story first appeared in 2005 when the Palace called the police alleging that the phones of Prince William and Royal staff members had been hacked.

While it now seems that the evidence confiscated pointed to a far wider problem, the investigation, which at the time identified just eight victims, focused on the Royals. In 2007, Private Investigator, Glenn Mulcaire and NOTW Royal Editor, Clive Goodman were arrested and subsequently jailed. The NOTW acted quickly and said the individuals concerned were acting alone and the upper echelons of its management had no knowledge of the crime.

Some of the eight were subsequently paid off. Then there was a minor blip when former journalists and executives claimed that former editor Andy Coulson must have authorised or been aware of phone hacking despite claiming to a Commons Committee that he had no knowledge of it.

Denials of senior involvement and a systemic use of phone hacking continued.  After all, they judged – correctly it seemed – that your average man or woman on the street cared little for the privacy of Sienna Miller and Max Clifford’s clients, and were more interested in the indiscretions that the results of the hacking revealed.

As a strategy it has worked reasonably well – until now.  Ask any crisis management strategist and they’ll say that telling anything but the truth will come back to bite you. Something that the NOTW really should have known as its journalists spend most of their time unearthing the sleeze of lying celebrities, MPs, businessmen, etc, etc.

But the tide has turned and turned quickly.  Hacking an A or even Z list celebrity’s phone is one thing – one might even say fair game – but allegations of hacking into murder-victim Milly Dowler’s mobile answerphone then listening, publishing and even deleting the messages, giving hope to her frantic parents, is quite another.

Suddenly the story has become real; it isn’t just about the suspect acquisition of gossip fodder. The sad reality is that any one of us could be the victim of crime and the public has realised that, as potential victims, any one of us could be targeted – at a time when we are at our most vulnerable.  With the list of those whose phones have allegedley been hacked growing hourly to include relatives of the 7/7 Bombings, the Soham Murders and even war heroes, public reaction has turned from bewilderment to fury at the lengths the paper will go to in order to stay ahead of its competitors.

The NOTW is probably aware of the saying ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ and will be gritting its teeth to try and weather the storm.  There may even be a rise not a fall in sales as the public clamour to read their response.

But it’s not just the public who are angry.  The NOTW has a bigger problem. Advertisers spend an estimated £38 million annually and these brands are all too aware of how they could be caught up in the wake of this bad publicity.

Many including Ford, Halifax, Co-op, Vauxhall and Virgin Holidays are voting with their feet and have cancelled advertisements.  Mitsubishi Motors has raised the bar still further by not only pulling its advertising but donating its NOTW ad spend to charity Childline.

Others including Coca-Cola GB, Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Asda, Orange and Vodafone have expressed their concerns and are reportedly reviewing their spend with the paper.

But if there’s one advertiser that the beleaguered NOTW can surely rely on to stand by them, then it’s their biggest revenue generator BSkyB – unless of course the European Commission overturns their decision not to investigate the sale of BSkyB to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which as you probably know, also owns The NOTW.

Helen