Few people seemed concerned about the legal and ethical implications earlier this year when the News of the World (NOTW), Britain’s most popular weekly tabloid, issued a public apology and paid over $150,000.00 to actress Sienna Miller for illegally hacking her cell phone and eavesdropping on her voice messages.
This did not change even when it became clear that the NOTW was not the only UK tabloid hacking the phones of celebrities – most notably married soccer players whose philandering provided such salacious and profitable fodder.
But nobody could have fathomed the depth and breadth of this practice, which is only now coming to light:
Scotland Yard has revealed up to 4,000 people may have been the target of phone hacking by a private investigator working for the News of the World.
(SKY News, July 7, 2011)
That’s 4,000 people hacked by just one investigator for just one tabloid folks. Therefore, just imagine how widespread this practice – of so-called journalists sitting on their asses and having front-page stories fed to them digitally – must have been given the competitive and hyena-like nature of Britain’s tabloid press.
Even so, if the targets were all public figures and professionals (like shady investment bankers), I doubt this revelation would have incited much moral outrage. It turns out, however, that among those the NOTW targeted were the grieving relatives of servicemen who died in Iraq and Afghanistan and victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London:
Relatives’ personal details have been found by police combing the files of former NOTW investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
(Daily Telegraph, July 7, 2011)
What is most shocking and appalling in this respect is the revelation that this tabloid targeted the mobile phone of a missing schoolgirl named Milly Dowler and deleted messages when her voicemail inbox became full. The NOTW clearly had no scruples about raising false hope in her worried parents (whose phones were also hacked) that Milly was still alive. In fact, she was already dead … murdered.
That British Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to condemn it during a joint press conference with President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan indicates how much this one revelation has offended the collective conscience of the British people:
If they are true this is a truly dreadful act and a truly dreadful situation. What I’ve read in the papers is quite shocking, that someone could do this knowing that the police were trying to find this person and find out what happened…
There is a police investigation into hacking allegations … they should investigate this without any fear, without any favour, without any worry about where the evidence should lead them.
(Cameron, London Guardian, July 5, 2011)
Interestingly enough, Scotland Yard will have to launch an internal investigation as well because a number of police officers have been accused of taking bribes from the NOTW to help facilitate this phone-hacking spree. Labour home shadow secretary, Yvette Cooper, expressed her party’s indignation in the same Guardian report as follows:
Everyone across the country will be deeply disturbed and horrified at this shocking news. The idea that private investigators working for a newspaper would hack into the phone of a missing 13-year-old girl is truly despicable.
But nobody is more concerned about the legal and ethical implications of these latest revelations than the NOTW’s owner, Rupert Murdoch. Because in light of the apology and amount of cash he gave to settle with Sienna Miller, only God knows what it’s going to take for him to settle 4,000 or more similar claims, many of which are bound to evoke far greater sympathy.
In any case, the fate of his prized tabloid became clear after nearly all of its major advertisers began abandoning it like rats from a sinking ship. No doubt it was this, and not some pang of conscience, that compelled Murdoch to decide that Sunday’s edition of the NOTW would be its last.
Here, in part, is how his son James, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, News Corporation, and Chairman, News International, made the announcement today:
You do not need to be told that the News of the World is 168 years old. That it is read by more people than any other English language newspaper. That it has enjoyed support from Britain’s largest advertisers. And that it has a proud history of fighting crime, exposing wrong-doing and regularly setting the news agenda for the nation…
The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself…
In 2006, the police focused their investigations on two men. Both went to jail. But the News of the World and News International failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose.
(Financial Times, July 7, 2011)
No shit. Unfortunately, this dramatic execution, which amounts to cutting off his nose to save his face, will do nothing to save the hides of all the reporters, editors, and executives involved in this scandal.
Because, as James alluded to in his statement, all who knew or should have known about the hacking will probably end up in jail too … and deservedly so. And it is noteworthy that the suspects include former NOTW editors Rebekah Brooks, a reputed close friend of PM Cameron, and Andy Coulson, Cameron’s former press spokesman.
Not to mention that, in the face of serious legal jeopardy, Brooks and Coulson might be induced to implicate James and Rupert himself. This explains the Murdochs’ surprisingly defiant together-we-stand,-divided-we-fall support for them.
On the other hand, nobody should shed a tear for any financial loss Murdoch suffers. This, after all, is the über businessman who sold MySpace for $35 million just days ago – only six years after purchasing it for $580 million; i.e., $545 million down the drain. Besides, in this case, industry experts speculate that he will simply refashion another of his existing tabloids (like The Sun), or create a new one, to effectively continue publishing the NOTW on Sundays … only by another name. And he’ll get away with it too.
Finally, Labour leader Ed Miliband was quoted in the Guardian yesterday lamenting that this hacking scandal “represents one of the darkest days in British journalism”. But, frankly, this is an almost galling understatement. As a matter of fact, the irony is not lost on me that this scandal is unfolding in the UK where public figures always insisted that privacy laws gave them far greater protection against the kinds of prurient media intrusions they experience in the USA.
Hell, the NOTW was conducting the kind of spying on British citizens that Westerners routinely condemn the Chinese government for conducting on its citizens: This “represents [just] one of the darkest days in British journalism”? No, Mr Miliband, it’s a bloody national disgrace!
NOTE: I’m just waiting for a similar phone-hacking scandal to hit the New York Post, Murdoch’s flagship American tabloid. Only this kind of illegal eavesdropping explains this paper’s many headline-grabbing scoops, as well as the juicy gossip items that have made its ‘Page Six’ section so popular.
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Thursday, at 7:51 pm