Murdoch's Reporters Allegedly Listened To The Voicemails Of Hundreds

from the the-sort-of-journalism-that-needs-protectionism? dept

While there had been earlier reports of how some reporters for Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World had spied on members of the royal family by listening to their voicemails, new reports suggest this activity was endemic, impacted hundreds — and that Scotland Yard failed to let many who were victims of such spying know about it (and even focused their investigation on just one reporter, rather than looking into whether or not it was a widespread practice, as it apparently was).

Although Coulson has long insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity, sources who worked at the tabloid told the Times Coulson not only knew about it, he actively encouraged it. A dozen former reporters said the hacking was so pervasive at News of the World that everyone knew about it. “The office cat knew,” one longtime reporter said.

This is the kind of “reporting” that needs to be protected?

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Comments on “Murdoch's Reporters Allegedly Listened To The Voicemails Of Hundreds”

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21 Comments
out_of_the_blue says:

This *is* the kind of reporting that needs to be protected.

People who call themselves “royal” and believe that they’re inherently superior deserve to be treated with the contempt that *they* have for “commoners”, as serfs without rights. So too The Rich in general, or those who advocate torture, or to burn heretics at the stake, deserve to be the only ones treated as they advocate, in a simple application of the Golden Rule. The principle is that they’ve *voluntarily* removed themselves from the common law. — But in practice, they’re the first to claim to have rights.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: This *is* the kind of reporting that needs to be protected.

Uh, part of the point of the story is that Scotland Yard apparently investigated quite extensively in the cases of voicemail hacking of the princes, but failed to really follow up on leads with regard to all the other reporters hacking into the voicemail of the assorted “lesser” public figures.

Eugene (profile) says:

Re: This *is* the kind of reporting that needs to be protected.

Just trying to keep up here…you’re talking about “the royal family”, yeah? The group with zero political power or influence whatsoever, who serve no purpose in England except to keep tabloids running?

Why the hell should they be treated with anything other than complete and utter indifference?

PaulT (profile) says:

Of course, none of this is surprising in any way. It’s one of the reasons why I tend to automatically reject any higher moral ground claims by right-wing rags like The Times, The Sun, Daily Mail, etc. on the assumption that they are hypocrites and have no moral values whatsoever.

So far, that assumption has always been proven correct, and I’d hope that the rest of the world tries to do the same – especially with anything associated with Murdoch. Sadly, judging by certain political factions in the US, some people are falling for their tricks.

Ron Rezendes (profile) says:

Re: Re:

And does that matter?

I do know “Two wrongs don’t make a right” (but three lefts make a right!) and “A hypocrite is ALWAYS wrong AT LEAST half the time!”, but does it really matter that the guy who steals from others while touting his companies’ practically religious moral standards has no ground to stand on and has invaded the privacy of countless numbers of citizens and you are questioning those who brought this to light? Really?

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