By now the reverberations of how a Murdoch owned newspaper, The News of the World, hacked into the phones of murder victims, family members of the July 7 bombings and the royal families should have reached the other-side of the Atlantic.
This story is not only disgusting, but for political junkies (especially those who keep up to date with UK politics) it’s proving to be a fascinating affair. For the leader of the Labour Party, this hacking story is proving to be a gift that keeps on giving. Not only is it providing Ed Milliband with constant ammunition to level at the Prime Minister for hiring Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the World who is tied to many of the wrong doings, but its helping the Labour leader to divide the coalition government, putting himself on the right side of public opinion and making his party appear as if it has had nothing to do with the disturbingly cosy relationship between the media and politics.
For the latter at least, this is absolutely not true. The two main parties in British politics, the Labour Party and Conservative Party, have been stepping over each other to gain favour with the media since the days of Margret Thatcher. When it comes to Rupert Murdoch, the two parties have basically been begging to kiss his ring ever since ‘The Sun’ newspaper played a supposedly decisive role in helping the Conservative Party win re-election in 1992. The close former advisor and ‘New Labour’ architect, Peter Mandelson wrote in his auto-biography, “The Third Man”, that when Murdoch showed interest in switching is allegiance from Conservative to Labour, he advised Tory Blair to drop everything, head over to Australia and woo the influential media titan – which Blair did. The Sun switched parties and Blair won a historic landslide victory in 1997. The Conservatives, under David Cameron started to flirt intensely with the Murdochs clan -The Sun changed allegiance, again, to the Conservatives and now Cameron is Prime Minister.
The point is, only the Liberal Democrats are innocent in this disgraceful story. The sheer volume of disgust shown by the British public since this crisis broke out and the resulting reactions from News International shareholders and advertisers show that this has gone far beyond a PR disaster. The accusation of corruption by Metropolitan Police Officers has elevated his scandal into a full blown nightmare, not only for News International or David Cameron, but for the whole political establishment in the UK. Firing the former editor of The News of the World and now chief-executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks is not going to quell this storm. The news that the Culture Secretary wants to review Rupert Murdoch’s bid for the huge broadcasting company, Sky, also spells the beginning of further bad news for the Australian.
This whole mess is leading to one thing, tougher media regulation. Something which many thought would be a non-starter in the UK, is now looking very likely as there is now the political and public will to see that the practices of the News of the World do not happen every again. Supporters of a self regulated press are nowhere to be heard. There isn’t a politician in their right mind that is going argue that the press are capable of behaving responsibly when the spectre of murder and terrorist victims hangs over this whole debate.
But supporters of a “free-press” should have a voice in this debate. Yes, what the News of the World did was wrong, but not one was complaining about phone hacking when it was only happening to Celebrities. Nobody cared about the rights of Sienna Miller, right? Also, how can the media investigate corrupt politicians such as Jeffery Archer or MP’s who wrongly declared their expenses when they are likely to be at the mercy of the very same politicians.
Again, it is a very interesting time for UK political watchers. It will be interesting to see how US audiences react to this story, if they react at all.
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