See no evil, hear no evil, but read all about it

It is pretty disturbing that The News of the World (and almost certainly all the other red tops and mid-market tabloids) engaged in hacking phones of celebrities and politicians on an industrial scale, but to be revealed to have hacked the phones not just of ordinary people but people going through unimaginable ordeals is of a new order of depravity. As bad as hacking into Milly Dowler’s phone was the fact that Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator authorised to conduct the illegality, deleted some of the messages so as to see who else would call, thus raising hope among the Dowlers that Milly was still alive and deleting these herself, as well as interfering with a police investigation that became a murder enquiry. Furthermore, there are suggestions that the NotW broke into the phones of the parents of one of the child victims of Soham murderer Ian Huntley. This paper was always shameless but to befriend these bereaved parents while at the same time betraying them reveals the journalists to be less than human.
Tory politicians are scrabbling to say that this has no bearing on News Corp’s bid to take over BSkyB because that is based on media plurality. But the silence of not just The Times, but the entire tabloid market bar The Independent of coverage of this on their front pages shows plurality or the ability to hear multiple voices is seriously impaired by the immorality of tabloid journalism. These newspapers are probably all guilty not just of phone hacking (hence their shying away from drawing attention to it as well as kind of honour between crooks) but a whole range of wickedness.
For those who say that this phone-hacking business, terrible as it is, is in the past and practices have changed, well, this very morning Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, has opened proceedings of contempt of court against both The Sun and The Mirror. Now, translating that dry language, these two papers for the sake of a scoop were prepared to jeopardise the murder trial of Joanna Yates and thus potentially led a murderer go free. When the police arrested Miss Yates’ landlord, Christopher Jeffries, the reporting of these two rags was so prejudicial to his character that Grieve has decided that if it had gone to court, it would have been impossible for him to have a fair trial. Since the character assassination of Mr Jeffries, a lodger in the same building as Miss Yates has confessed to the killing and understandably Mr Jeffries is suing not just the two mentioned newspapers but four others for libel. It is proof positive that the PCC (which has been sued for libel by a lawyer when defending – a newspaper complaints commission defending newspapers! – the NotW) is a broken reed, although that has been clear for a long time and that the British tabloids are out of control, punch drunk on the power and influence they wield.
Inside sources at the NotW (who either have a conscience or an axe to grind) said that those who were in charge of news reporting called themselves ‘the princes of darkness’ – maybe in jest, but the best jokes have searing accuracy. The daughter of Babylon lauded it over all and thought she was untouchable but she was laid low and everything she had laid waste. You reap what you sow. You encourage lynch mobs yet who will defend you if they come round your home, outraged at the Dowler case (and any more that might emerge). The Labour party, who you stabbed so delightedly in the back when Gordon Brown gave his keynote party conference speech by announcing you were switching your support to the Tories, are calling for a public enquiry. The full consequences have yet to run their course.
And Rupert, Rupert, Rupert. You gave your incompetent children positions of authority within your organisation and they have presided over chaos and illegality. You would never have been so careless in your pomp. Everything you have strived and built up over your lifetime, all of it will be dissipated and lost within less than a generation. The Mughals thought they were invincible yet following the death of the brutal Aurangzeb, the same fate befell their empire. Everyone who knows anything about newspapers, remembers (via popular history) William Randolph Hearst, old Citizen Kane himself, but no-one remembers who came after him.