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| One time NOTW editor Rebekah Brooks and papa Murdoch |
News of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World’s manipulation of a missing 13-year-old girls cell phone to provide false hope to the girl’s parents and readers of the publication has rocketed around the media and British parliament the last few days. Now comes news that the news organization was hacking the phones of families to those soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mercer, a former infantry officer and journalist, told the BBC that the revelations would add to trauma of the families of dead armed forces members. He said: “The idea that the death of their son or whatever is going to be the subject of a sordid investigation by journalists who are, at the end of the day, hoping to make monetary profit out of it, is deeply unpalatable and will only add to the grief.”
Support the troops?
This should not come as a shock to any observer of Rupert Murdoch’s modus operandi. The hijinks at Fox News should be enough evidence. The ‘news’ organizations owned by Murdoch all share their owner’s anything goes penchant for dishonesty, phony patriotism and cheap tricks. Whether it be the Wall Street Journal or News of the World, perhaps it is time for some scepticism from all those defenders of Fox News and co.
As an aside, it is intriguing how little space is being devoted in the Posts and Suns of Canada to this explosive story. It must be sobering to an editor of one of our national news outlets to know that perhaps there is a huge downside to following the Murdoch model. Could this be a wake up call to our media? I doubt it. There’s a sense of invulnerability to our conservative media that will take more than a missing teen or the desecration of brave soldiers to shake.
