Outrage against Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp grows as phone-hacking scandal widens

When we hear the word “scan­dal” in the same sen­tence as “politi­cians” or “celebri­ties”, we’re used to assum­ing that an elect­ed offi­cial, actor, or sports star has done some­thing wrong and is being sub­ject­ed to a harsh media spotlight.

But over in the Unit­ed King­dom, there’s a widen­ing scan­dal involv­ing politi­cians and celebri­ties in which the wrong­do­ers actu­al­ly belong to the media world.

The scan­dal is known as the News of the World hack­ing affair because it con­cerns that tabloid’s use of pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors to inter­cept voice­mail mes­sages left for peo­ple the tabloid was inter­est­ed in, includ­ing mem­bers of the roy­al fam­i­ly, politi­cians, celebri­ties, and even a mur­der victim.

The scan­dal first came to light in 2005 when it was dis­cov­ered that a News of the World edi­tor (Clive Good­man) and a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor (Glenn Mul­caire) employed by News of the World had gained access to voice­mail sys­tems belong­ing to aides of Prince William, who is sec­ond in line to the throne of the Unit­ed King­dom. Fol­low­ing a police inves­ti­ga­tion (begun after the roy­al house­hold had passed their sus­pi­cions along), Good­man and Mul­caire were jailed. At the same time, the News of the World’s chief edi­tor Andy Coul­son sud­den­ly resigned.

While these events cre­at­ed a stir in the Unit­ed King­dom at the time, they were only the open­ing act. In July 2009, The Guardian alleged that what had been revealed in 2006 and 2007 was only the tip of the ice­berg, and that evi­dence held by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police proved that there were more victims:

Accord­ing to one source with direct knowl­edge of the Scot­land Yard evi­dence, News of the World jour­nal­ists were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly using pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors who would break the law to obtain infor­ma­tion, hack­ing into thou­sands of mobile phones and sup­ply­ing raw mate­r­i­al which was then con­vert­ed into sto­ries that made no ref­er­ence to their real source.

The Guardian con­tin­ued to uncov­er more and more sor­did details about the hack­ing affair and the bun­gled police inves­ti­ga­tion that fol­lowed it as 2009 and 2010 wore on. As these sto­ries were being pub­lished, a round of law­suits were filed against News of the World by lawyers rep­re­sent­ing many of the vic­tims. Just last April, News Cor­po­ra­tion decid­ed to cut its loss­es and set­tle with eight of the vic­tims (who appar­ent­ly had the most promis­ing cas­es). The set­tle­ments includ­ed an admis­sion of lia­bil­i­ty, an apol­o­gy, and finan­cial compensation.

How­ev­er, those set­tle­ments have not made the phone hack­ing scan­dal go away.

On Mon­day, The Guardian report­ed that the police had uncov­ered evi­dence that Mul­caire (the afore­men­tioned pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor employed by News of the World and jailed in 2006) had in 2002 hacked into the voice­mail box of a miss­ing school­girl, lis­tened to mes­sages left by her fam­i­ly, and even delet­ed some of those mes­sages, lead­ing the fam­i­ly to believe she might be alive.

The  school­girl, Mil­ly Dowler, is well known to the British pub­lic because her dis­ap­pear­ance near­ly a decade ago was wide­ly report­ed upon.

(Some months after she went miss­ing, her body was found; ser­i­al killer Levi Bell­field was con­vict­ed of her mur­der just last month).

This lat­est rev­e­la­tion has sparked a mas­sive uproar in the Unit­ed King­dom. Furi­ous mem­bers of Par­lia­ment from each of the UK’s major polit­i­cal par­ties are demand­ing a renewed inves­ti­ga­tion, prefer­ably one led by a judge (a posi­tion artic­u­lat­ed by many Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic MPs). A num­ber of com­pa­nies have stopped adver­tis­ing in the News of the World, includ­ing Ford, Mit­subishi, Renault, Lloyds Bank­ing Group and Vir­gin Hol­i­days. Oth­er adver­tis­ers are review­ing their options and may fol­low suit.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the Dowlers has said the fam­i­ly is like­ly to take legal action against News of the World and News Inter­na­tion­al. (Inci­den­tal­ly, News Inter­na­tion­al is cur­rent­ly head­ed by one Rebekah Brooks, who — sur­prise, sur­prise! — was edi­tor of the News of the World dur­ing the time that this hack­ing took place.)

Appro­pri­ate­ly, the scan­dal now appears to be tak­ing a finan­cial toll on News Cor­po­ra­tion itself.  Its stock fell 3.6% dur­ing after­noon trad­ing today (to $17.47) as mar­kets post­ed light gains overall.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Rupert Mur­doch him­self is prob­a­bly to blame for the extent of this scan­dal. The rea­son that new and dam­ag­ing rev­e­la­tions keep com­ing to light is because News Cor­po­ra­tion tried to escape account­abil­i­ty and cov­er up what its sleazy Sun­day tabloid had done. For instance, News Inter­na­tion­al is alleged to have made improp­er pay­ments to the police, appar­ent­ly to ensure that the pub­lic would not know what its “jour­nal­ists” had done.

Mur­doch owns so much of the media in Britain that he has effec­tive­ly intim­i­dat­ed the police and the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment from prop­er­ly inves­ti­gat­ing what happened.

But he and his sub­or­di­nates’ attempts at sup­pres­sion have failed.

The truth is, at last, get­ting out.

It would be fit­ting if the even­tu­al result of this scan­dal was a dimin­ish­ing of Rupert Mur­doch’s pow­er — both in the Unit­ed King­dom and else­where. In our view, Mur­doch and many of his prop­er­ties are tox­ic influ­ences on the com­mu­ni­ties and coun­tries were they exist. News of the World and Fox Noise Chan­nel are mere­ly the most obvi­ous and care­less bad oper­a­tors that Mur­doch owns.

News Cor­po­ra­tion is now scram­bling to try and lim­it the fall­out from affect­ing its pro­posed acqui­si­tion of British broad­cast­er BSkyB. Crit­ics of Mur­doch in Britain fierce­ly oppose the deal because it would fur­ther con­sol­i­date Mur­doch’s pow­er. How­ev­er, David Cameron’s gov­ern­ment is expect­ed to even­tu­al­ly sign off on it.

We hope the peo­ple in charge of grant­i­ng or refus­ing reg­u­la­to­ry approval come to their sens­es and real­ize that con­cen­trat­ed media own­er­ship is a poi­so­nous thing. Media diver­si­ty is incred­i­bly impor­tant in a democ­ra­cy. When one man owns the news, soci­ety suf­fers. This scan­dal is cer­tain­ly proof of that.