Ethics, phone tapping and the Murdoch press

[basilio]

There has been a huge storm in UK developing over the past days/weeks and and years over the phone tapping practices of News of the World journalists.

News of the World is a tacky, low rent UK tabloid that specialises in gossip and sleaze. Over the years to keep up with it's readers appetites the journalists have tapped into the phones and mailboxes of celebrities, sports starts, murder victims, the royalty in fact thousands of people. They have derailed police investigations into murders and confused and destroyed victims of crime. There is now a full Parliamentary inquiry into this scandal.

News of the World is owned by Rupert Murdoch. One of the fallouts of this issue is News limited push to gain further media control through it's expansion of British Sky B and the push to be Australia's overseas media controller. (The government has currently stopped the tender process for this )

So what should be done about rogue media organizations that routinely hack thousands of peoples phones and lives to flog sex, scandal and tears stories ?

http://www.theage.com.au/world/shameless-20110706-1h2db.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/06/phone-hacking-david-cameron-forced-to-act

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...rs-lost-self-control-phone-hacking?intcmp=239

 

[Wysiwyg]

Whack them ticks several million as punishment for invading privacy.

 

[basilio]

Just noticed one of the responses to this scandel. Apparently there is now a lot of pressure on advertisers in News of the world to pull off their ads to avoid being associated with the rubbish. Having an effect it seems.

Particularly interesting to see how News of the World broke into a murder victims phone to delete messages which then suggested to her parents that she might still be alive. And then the News of the world journos ran interviews with the parents on their false hopes.. !:

Why I set about hitting the News of the World where it hurts – its advertising

The Twitter campaign has struck a chord with the phenomenal number of people sickened by reports of the NoW's behaviour


Like many people, I've learned to live with a generalised, low-level irritation about the content of some of the tabloids. The sexism, the xenophobia, the hypocrisy: you wish you could change these things but, for the most part, you accept them as the price you pay for a free press.

But on Monday night, years of irritation were transformed into rage for me by the suggestion that one tabloid, the News of the World, had paid a private investigator who hacked into the mobile phone of a missing 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler. Worse, it is alleged that he deleted messages from her voicemail, giving her parents false hope that she might be alive – with the tabloid all the while running interviews with those parents in which they spoke about their hope.

There is only one sane reaction to this: utter revulsion. I knew that hundreds – maybe thousands – of people would be feeling the same way, and I also knew that this time it wouldn't only be the lefties, the liberals and the hand-wringers who would want something to change, who would be looking for something they could do. It would be all of us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/06/news-of-the-world-twitter-campaign

 

[Purple XS2]

Broadly speaking, there are 2 categories of politician:

1. those who despise News Limited/News-of-the-World/Fox-News, have as little to do with News Ltd as possible and who are in turn loathed and targeted by News.

2. the News Ltd friendly sort, always available to contribute entertainment, who have sought out News's approval and who can usually be counted on to defend or deny any outrage coming from the News Ltd group.

Now ask yourself: which group despises News Ltd more?

What we are seeing in the UK at present is the stirrings of the collective of castrated monkeys who have just briefly sensed a premonition of what life could be like if the organ-grinder was dead, and their leashes severed. A glimpse of freedom. A whiff of self-respect.

i'll be interested to see how long these poor simians can maintain their hopes. Much depends on the UK public: if a serious backlash were to diminish revenues (and advertising) the monkeys could just possibly find the courage to go on an unstoppable rampage.

Not pretty. But most entertaining.

 

[banco]

Have to admit I always thought 80% of the celebrity stuff in the UK tabloids was made up out of whole cloth or based on rumours but it appears they are/were willing to go to quite extraordinary lengths to dig up the dirt.

 

[Solly]

Ethics & Journalism....
Maybe I shouldn't say any more.

But a learning from this event.

RULE 1: Always change your default PIN on all devices, accesses & VOICEMAIL.

 

[Knobby22]

The English were going to let Rupert take over BksyB so he could control the media like he does in the USA and Australia. Good to see they are having second thoughts.

 

[basilio]

Typically creative move from Rupert Murdoch in the face of the News of the World debacle.

He has announced closure of the paper. End of story. Clean slate. More BS.
(Of course he just might reopen another paper with a different name to provide the same xxxx).

So all the all the staff are taken out and shot and the hope is that the thousands of people affected by this rottenness will have no one to sue . And of course that Rupert can somehow have "clean " hands in wanting to expand BSkyB.

If the Editors and management responsible for these systematic abuses are allowed to get away with no sanctions there is no justice. ( Off soap box now..)

Hacking out truth a painful operation
July 8, 2011

Phone hacking ... "the entire body is badly infected".

The News of the World phone hacking mud slide provides an object lesson in the damage that flows from an intractably arrogant corporate culture.

The rule is that criminality, corruption, moral turpitude and civil liability are all denied by the wrongdoers until they are blue in the face. By the time the blue turns puce, you know enough evidence has emerged, leaving no option but for whoever is in the frame to be taken out the back and shot. The company has decided to close the paper itself.

Initially, the strategic defence was that hacking Prince William's mobile phone was the work of a rogue reporter and a lone private investigator, Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire. Goodman got four months' porridge after pleading guilty to breaches of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Mulcaire got six months

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/so...l-operation-20110707-1h4lj.html#ixzz1RSd1IbvD

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

There has been a huge storm in UK developing over the past days/weeks and and years over the phone tapping practices of News of the World journalists.

News of the World is a tacky, low rent UK tabloid that specialises in gossip and sleaze. Over the years to keep up with it's readers appetites the journalists have tapped into the phones and mailboxes of celebrities, sports starts, murder victims, the royalty in fact thousands of people. They have derailed police investigations into murders and confused and destroyed victims of crime. There is now a full Parliamentary inquiry into this scandal.

News of the World is owned by Rupert Murdoch. One of the fallouts of this issue is News limited push to gain further media control through it's expansion of British Sky B and the push to be Australia's overseas media controller. (The government has currently stopped the tender process for this )

So what should be done about rogue media organizations that routinely hack thousands of peoples phones and lives to flog sex, scandal and tears stories ?

http://www.theage.com.au/world/shameless-20110706-1h2db.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/06/phone-hacking-david-cameron-forced-to-act

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...rs-lost-self-control-phone-hacking?intcmp=239

Their editors and owners should be jailed, is the simple answer.

Fines and commercial penalties do not concentrate the mind as much as sitting across a cell from a same sex monster who finds one attractive, with a screw gone off to find a quiet place to read The Sun.

Excellent post basilio, and this story ain't over yet. Talk is that Cameron their PM is involved as well.

gg

 

[Knobby22]

Excellent post basilio, and this story ain't over yet. Talk is that Cameron their PM is involved as well.

gg

Cameron and the editor have who now is CEO of News Britin have holdiay housew very close to each other and mix socially. All the Murdoch papers and media supported him in the last election. He is handling News BSkyB on a platter so Murdoch will have effective control of the countries opinions and will be able to control the government to some extent.

...and we want this foreign company to run the Australia network???? When I worked in Indonesia it was a pleasure to be able to switch on the Australia network as a couterpoint to Fox and Cnn.

 

[basilio]

Fines and commercial penalties do not concentrate the mind as much as sitting across a cell from a same sex monster who finds one attractive, with a screw gone off to find a quiet place to read The Sun. Quote GG

Nice line GG. Will keep it in mind when thinking about consequences for the next commercial mobster.

There would certainly be some satisfaction in seeing a decent jail term for the principals in this case. It would also be good to see a hefty series of fines/payments to the 7000 odd people whose phones had been hacked. At say an average of 60,000 pounds each (net) that could be 480m.

I think that would be a sufficiently eyewatering punishment to make it clear to the rest of the media that hacking peoples phones was not a good idea.

 

[Calliope]

Fines and commercial penalties do not concentrate the mind as much as sitting across a cell from a same sex monster who finds one attractive, with a screw gone off to find a quiet place to read The Sun. Quote GG

Nice line GG. Will keep it in mind when thinking about consequences for the next commercial mobster.

There would certainly be some satisfaction in seeing a decent jail term for the principals in this case. It would also be good to see a hefty series of fines/payments to the 7000 odd people whose phones had been hacked. At say an average of 60,000 pounds each (net) that could be 480m.

I think that would be a sufficiently eyewatering punishment to make it clear to the rest of the media that hacking peoples phones was not a good idea.

At least the Guardian, the Fairfax press and yourself are enjoying the schadenfreude.

 

[basilio]

At least the Guardian, the Fairfax press and yourself are enjoying the schadenfreude.

Sometimes, Calliope, it's just good to actually see the mean, the nasty and the plain evil get their just deserts. It's so rare these days. Not sure if it will actually happen here in the end but we can only hope.

Of course you wern't offering support for the ungodly...... were you ?

 

[Calliope]

Of course you wern't offering support for the ungodly...... were you ?

No I wern't.(sic) I avoid the Guardian like the plague.

 

[bellenuit]

Brilliant!

'Brooks, catastrophe': Last laugh for NoTW staff as final crossword takes aim at Rebekah

http://www.smh.com.au/world/brooks-...word-takes-aim-at-rebekah-20110711-1h9p4.html

 

[basilio]

It's interesting to see how widespread and matter of fact the phone tapping, information gathering process of News International had become. The Guardian is breaking the news on multiple breaches.

1) Gordon Brown was tapped, his medical records accessed as well as bank details and so on. The papers managed to break the "news"of his children's deaths and illnesses scarcely before he know it himself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jul/11/gordon-brown-sun-destroy?intcmp=239
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/11/phone-hacking-news-international-gordon-brown

2) News of the World bribed police officer for phone numbers and personal details of the royal familiy. This enabled them to hack the phones at will.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/11/phone-hacking-royal-contact-book?intcmp=239

3) It seems certain that News of the World Executives lied at a 2007 inquiry into the phone hacking of Prince William and Prince Harry. At the time they tried to say it was a one off rogue reporter. This obviously wasn't the case.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/10/news-of-the-world-executives?intcmp=239

Pulling it all together George Monbiot offers a view on why the papers have been united in their deceptions.

This media is corrupt – we need a Hippocratic oath for journalists

Our job is to hold power to account. Instead, most of the profession simply ventriloquises the concerns of the elite


George Monbiot

Is Murdoch now finished in the UK? As the pursuit of Gordon Brown by the Sunday Times and the Sun blows the hacking scandal into new corners of the old man's empire, this story begins to feel like the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. The naked attempt to destroy Brown by any means, including hacking the medical files of his sick baby son, means that there is no obvious limit to the story's ramifications.

The scandal radically changes public perceptions of how politics works, the danger corporate power presents to democracy, and the extent to which it has compromised and corrupted the Metropolitan police, who have now been dragged in so deep they are beginning to look like Murdoch's private army. It has electrified a dozy parliament and subjected the least accountable and most corrupt profession in Britain – journalism – to belated public scrutiny.

The cracks are appearing in the most unexpected places. Look at the remarkable admission by the rightwing columnist Janet Daley in this week's Sunday Telegraph. "British political journalism is basically a club to which politicians and journalists both belong," she wrote. "It is this familiarity, this intimacy, this set of shared assumptions … which is the real corruptor of political life. The self-limiting spectrum of what can and cannot be said … the self-reinforcing cowardice which takes for granted that certain vested interests are too powerful to be worth confronting. All of these things are constant dangers in the political life of any democracy."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/11/media-corrupt-hippocratic-oath-journalists

 

[BradK]

I am not going into detail, but I have a friend who was screwed beyond measure by a journalist and resulted in an attempted suicide. I know how these pr!cks work.

I am sitting back in glee ... absolute elation, hoping that the whole industry has a dose of epsom salts run through it.

I would give EVERYTHING I own for Murdoch and his empire to crumble and watch that carnt hang himself.

This is like Christmas to me and I am reading everything I can get my hands on.

GG - I agree. Jail with the worst of the worst for every single journalist in the NEWS Ltd stable.

Brad

 

[BradK]

PS. This is just the tip. Why do you think that ranga Brooks said, 'You will see in 12 months time and understand' ... just the tip.

Hopefully Murdoch and Madoff can spend the rest of their lives in jail together, comforting each other.

Brad

 

[Julia]

Jail with the worst of the worst for every single journalist in the NEWS Ltd stable.

Brad

That's pretty ridiculous. A lot of the people who have lost their jobs with the closing of the NOTW have only been there a short time and had absolutely nothing to do with all the scandal.

Likewise, why should you cast such an unproven slur on even all our local News Ltd journalists?

By all means be as critical as you like where wrongdoing has actually occurred but don't be so unreasonable as to assume everyone employed by the organisation behaves similarly.

 

[basilio]

That's pretty ridiculous. A lot of the people who have lost their jobs with the closing of the NOTW have only been there a short time and had absolutely nothing to do with all the scandal.

Likewise, why should you cast such an unproven slur on even all our local News Ltd journalists?

By all means be as critical as you like where wrongdoing has actually occurred but don't be so unreasonable as to assume everyone employed by the organization behaves similarly.

It was over the top and I'm sure Brad didn't mean every employee at News Ltd should end up in the slammer.

But it is interesting how suddenly "everyone" has turned on the Murdoch Press for their relentless abuse of power and willingness to break into peoples phones, lives, bank accounts, hospital records and so on. I think for a very long time people thought that that was just what journalists did and that bleating about such invasions was faintly ridiculous. Like saying wrestling was fake.

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