{"id":53,"date":"2011-07-18T16:55:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T16:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zsoltr15.sg-host.com\/?p=53"},"modified":"2023-10-20T16:59:53","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T16:59:53","slug":"connecting-the-dots-on-uk-press-skulduggery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pressflex.com\/blog\/connecting-the-dots-on-uk-press-skulduggery\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting the dots on UK press skulduggery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The circle of complicity in the UK phone hacking conspiracy is spiraling outward and upward, with the arrest yesterday of Rupert Murdoch\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9e Rebekah Brooks and the resignation of Scotland Yard chief Paul Stephenson<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the New York Times noted yesterday<\/a>, Scotland Yard has been willfully negligent, if not actively collusive, in its investigation of the hacking into the phones of UK celebrities and crime victims by journalists at News of the World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, the focus has been on NOTW and Murdoch\u2019s hirelings and cronies. But isn\u2019t it now obvious that the conspiracy to cover up the journalistic phone hacking probably goes far wider, implicating many members of the UK press itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the UK press has slumbered, the aggressive reporting about phone hacking has been consistently led by US journalists, for example in the September 2010 investigative blast in the New York Times magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Times reported then, \u201cinterviews with more than a dozen former reporters and editors at News of the World \u2026 described a frantic, sometimes degrading atmosphere in which some reporters openly pursued hacking or other improper tactics to satisfy demanding editors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s assume that, at best, hacking was only perpetrated by NOTW journalists. That premise would still make hundreds of members of the UK press complicit in the hacking, since many either have once worked at NOTW and known about the hacking or had friends who worked there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview (below) before Brooks resigned, a TV journalist asks a spokesman for Newscorp, NOTW\u2019s owner, whether Rebekah Brooks could honestly lead an investigation into actions that had occurred under her own watch as editor of NOTW. The spokesman shudders and stutters, trying to avoid saying the obvious: you can\u2019t investigate yourself. The same logic must be true for many members (and former members) of the UK press itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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