The suicide of the News of the World — it announced it will deal with the phone hacking scandal by shutting itself down — strikes us as a tragedy. Far be it from us to lecture Rupert Murdoch on how to run his empire; he is a much greater newspaperman than we are. Yet closing the News of the World seems an over-reaction, an uncharacteristic panic. It spells a loss vastly exceeding even the substantial damage done by a few editors and reporters, if that’s who it was that hacked into telephone answering systems in pursuit of the news.

No doubt such behavior is wrong even by the standards of Fleet Street. Surely, though, it is not beyond the reach of a police investigation. What is the logic of allowing these transgressions to bring down a newspaper that is 168 years old and that was once likened by George Orwell to Britons’ Sunday tradition of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding? Its circulation may be down from the 8 million copies that it once sold every Sunday. Even today, though, it’s selling more copies than any newspaper at America.

The News of the World, for all its sensationalism, has also played an important role in Britain. With its populist take in respect of the rich and famous it no doubt functioned as a pressure valve. It reached an audience that wouldn’t plow through the broadsheets like the Telegraph, the Guardian, the FT, and The Times. Some of those sheets are not so broad these days, but what is the logic of abandoning the readers of the News of the World?

It may well be that Mr. Murdoch and his son James had commercial reasons, other than the scandal over the telephone hacking, for closing the paper. The younger Murdoch, who runs that part of the realm and made the announcement, is viewed in London as having less interest in print than his father. The senior Murdoch is a not only a lover of newsprint but acts on his passion, taking a huge write-down to acquire the Wall Street Journal from an owning family whose own ardor was fading.

What motive, in contrast, is animating the New York Times, which — along with the Guardian in London and the British state broadcasting arm, the BBC — has been flogging this story as if it were a tabloid itself? It makes no secret of the glee it gains from Mr. Murdoch’s travail. It gives aid and comfort to real enemies of a free press, such as the Labor Party in Britain, whose leader at the moment, Edward “Ed” Milliband, stands with a political faction that would regulate the press by strengthening an already discredited Press Complaints Commission.

Clearly if crimes were committed in London they need to be pursued. But how hypocritical it is that the New York Times can make a business out of, say, distributing secret American intelligence documents hacked by the suppliers of Wikileaks only to mount the high horse against the News of the World for hacking private cell phones. Mr. Murdoch refused to treat with Wikileaks. So who is the more principled custodian of the power of the press?

It would be nice to think that some day someone will write a book on what the press was like when it was ascendant. Delivery trucks were blown up in Chicago. News-stand operators were told to sell newspapers or eat them. Reporters posed as policemen. Evidence was routinely plucked from crime scenes by reporters eager to keep it away from competitors and to rush it back to their own city desks. We’re not for breaking the law. We’re against violent methods. But is the daintiness of the modern press a symptom of its decline or a cause?

In our view Rupert Murdoch deserved better than he has got so far in this round. He cut more slack for the British leaders — sometimes a Tory, such as Baroness Thatcher, sometimes a Laborite, such as Anthony “Tony” Blair — than any leaders in either party has cut him. We do not suggest there was or ever should be a quid pro quo. But it will be something to remember on Sunday mornings to come if, as is speculated, the Murdoch empire moves to fill the void left by the News of the World by bringing out a Sunday edition of its Sun.