After resigning on Friday, Rupert Murdoch protege Rebekah Brooks was
arrested on Sunday; hours later, Sir Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service (aka Scotland Yard),
resigned.
Two criminal investigations are at issue—one into the phone hacking itself, one into the related police corruption. Now, Jude Law is suing for hacking that happened in the United States, as he arrived in a New York airport.
But with two investigations, 10 arrests so far, and additional resignations including Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, who resigned Friday, the Wall Street Journal wants us to know that Rupert Murdoch's purchase of the Wall Street Journal four years ago was a great thing, that this whole scandal is being overblown by Murdoch's competitors and enemies, and that the failure of Scotland Yard to crack down when the hacking was first discovered is the real story. (No word on the, you know, bribery that may have influenced said failure to crack down.)
It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The understandable outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a noncelebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler.
The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren't attempting to influence public affairs, and don't skew their coverage to do so, can't stand a day's scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician.
How's that for obfuscation and attempts to shift blame by creating false equivalences? For the amount of time they spend explaining what amazing journalism their paper produces, the WSJ's editors seem awfully unclear on the distinction between shitty tabloid writing and actual criminality. Basically, the WSJ would have us know, everyone who has even commented on this story is implicated in something sleazy while they and their former publisher are journalists of astonishing integrity and success.
Reaction to the editorial has been rightly harsh, but the Washington Post is, bizarrely, thinking along similar lines, with a story suggesting that much of the coverage of the scandal comes from sour grapes and angry competitors.
Again, no. News Corp hacked into the phones of victims of murder and terrorism, including giving terrified parents hope that their murdered child was still alive. They revealed the most personal details of people's lives after obtaining them illegally. They corrupted one of the most famous police agencies in the world. I'll cop to some schadenfreude, but the notion that that somehow minimalizes News Corp's rampant law-breaking, or is reason to have left it undiscovered, is absurd. No, rather it's reason to look more closely at the operation of all of Murdoch's outlets, given what we now know about their embrace of illegality and corruption at the highest levels.
(For further discussion on the widening scandal, check out diarist Brit.)