Arriving at a press conference, American reporters and British reporters often glance at one another with something approaching sneers.

Those Yanks (think the British) are so bloody earnest with their dull gray journalism. Those Brits (think the Americans) are a bunch of unscrupulous hacks, probably making it up half the time.

In fact, both sides of the Atlantic produce proud journalism as well as the disgraceful kind. But the current media mess is a distinctly British one, dragging in the royal family, Hugh Grant and the ruling class.

At the debut of the scandal was Britain’s bestselling weekly, News of the World, with a circulation of about 2.7 million every Sunday (twice the sales of the Sunday New York Times). Despite its success and its 168-year history, the owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., closed the publication last week amid a storm of accusations.

That the red tops — as the most scabrous tabloids are known here — should cut corners was hardly a shock. Britons are accustomed to the jingoistic headlines, the naked girls on Page 3, the cruel comments about anyone in the public eye. Public outrage was limited when a News of the World reporter and a private investigator were sentenced in 2007 to prison for having illegally hacked into royal voicemails.

When celebrities such as Grant complained that they too had been targeted, the public outcry remained muted. The newspaper paid a few settlements, parliamentary committees held hearings and Prime Minister David Cameron’s communications director, Andy Coulson, a former editor of News of the World, resigned.

It was a single revelation this month that changed everything. The family of a girl who went missing in 2002 and was later found murdered accused the newspaper of having hacked into her voicemail, even deleting messages to free up space, which had offered false hope that she was still alive.

This proved too much and prompted an outpouring of revulsion and anger toward News of the World; toward Murdoch, who is also owner of the leading daily, The Sun, and a perceived kingmaker in British politics; and toward a style of journalism that had lost any attachment to decency.

One explanation is geography.

Britain is small enough to easily distribute newspapers nationally, and currently has about 20 of them, according to Dominic Ponsford, editor of a trade publication, the Press Gazette. With such competition, newspapers have grown increasingly aggressive and the pushiest have thrived.

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