Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Philip Patterson, Lee Wilkins

Exercise 10

Murdoch's Mess
LEE WILKINS
University of Missouri
It may have begun as an instance of "watching the watchdog." For two years, Guardian reporter Nick Davies had been doggedly investigating whether Britain's tabloid press-particularly the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World -had been engaging in unethical activities to report the news. Specifically Davies was investigating whether the voice-mail messages left on cell phones (most of the British public uses cell phones) had been accessed to gain information. In most instances such practices would be illegal. A 2005-2007 investigation concluded that only celebrities, the royal family and politicians had been the subjects of phone hacking and that the hacking had been conducted by a single reporter. The rest of the British press dropped the story, and the public didn't seem to care.
Murdoch continued to build his media empire, which included a sizable financial stake in BSkyB, the most lucrative broadcast holding in the United Kingdom. During this same period, Murdoch purchased the U.S. Wall Street Journal, adding it to his U.S. holdings that include several other newspapers and, most prominently, the Fox network including both its news and entertainment divisions.
Davies worked for The Guardian, an unusual publication on any continent. The Guardian is owned by a trust; it is not a traditional profit-making enterprise and its exemplar journalistic status is a relatively recent phenomenon. Guardian employees are required to take public transportation to cover most stories, and the paper itself conducts and publishes an ethical audit once a year that includes the paper's impact on the environment and its role as a citizen of its local community. In the British media market-almost all of which is focused in London- The Guardian competes fiercely with Murdoch publications, both tabloid and more traditional news organizations.
In July 2011, Davies reported that phone hacking extended beyond a single journalist and those usual and seemingly acceptable suspects. Voice-mail messages to families of British soldiers serving in Afghanistan, victims of the July 2007 London tube bombings and, most egregious, the voice-mails of murdered British schoolgirl Milly Dowler also had been hacked. In fact, according to Davies and subsequent investigations, Dowler's voice-mail had not merely been hacked, it had been altered, leaving her family with the impression that the child remained alive after she had been murdered. Davies's later reports also revealed that the journalists involved appeared to have bribed Scotland Yard as part of the newsgathering effort. The outrage was immediate: major advertisers withdrew from the News of the World and many others threatened to follow. On July 10, 2011, the 168-year-old paper published its last edition. About 200 journalists lost their jobs, and James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son and heir apparent, conceded that the paper had been irrevocably "sullied by behavior that was wrong."
On July 13, 2011, Murdoch announced he was withdrawing his bid to take over BSkyB. The announcement was made just a few hours before the British Parliament was scheduled to debate a resolution, supported by all political parties, calling on Murdoch to withdraw from the process. Despite the announcement, the House of Commons unanimously passed the resolution. On July 16 and 17, Murdoch published full-page apologies to the British public for the scandal and its impact. The next month, Wireless Generation, a News Corp. subsidiary, lost a no-bid contract with the state of New York to build an information system to track student performance. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNupoli said the revelations of corporate and individual malfeasance had made awarding this bid to Wireless Generation "untenable."
The elder Murdoch was politically influential on both sides of the Atlantic, but his power reached to the highest levels in Britain. At the time the phone hacking scandal broke, a former Murdoch employee was serving as Prime Minister David Cameron's chief communications officer.
Rupert and James Murdoch were called before Parliament. Both admitted that the hacking had occurred, but each denied, in different terms, the existence of a corrosive organizational culture that could have led to a widespread ethical and legal breach. Rupert Murdoch testified that he was a victim of a cover-up. Concurrently there were high-level resignations throughout the Murdoch empire, including that of Wes Hinton, who had been serving as the chief executive of Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal and a long time Murdoch employee. Hinton had testified to Parliament that there was never any evidence of phone hacking beyond the actions of a single employee.
However, as the scandal continued to unfold, it became apparent that other Murdoch-owned news organizations had engaged in similar newsgathering tactics. The FBI opened an investigation into whether any phone hacking had occurred in the United States, with potential targets the victims of the 9/11 bombing among others.
About a year later, a British inquiry ruled that Murdoch was not a "fit and proper" person to be allowed to own or acquire media outlets in the UK. In the meantime, multiple lawsuits were filed over the scandal-and the Murdoch empire has paid more than 1 million pounds to settle them. As of this writing, there have been more than 30 arrests of Murdoch current or former employees. In November 2012, indictments for bribing a public official, the most serious charge to emerge from the scandal to date, were filed against Brooks and David Coulson, former communications chief for Britain's Prime Minister Glen Cameron. To find updates of the latest events, access http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/phone-hacking.
Rupert Murdoch has been called the last of the media barons and the criticisms of him and his business practices parallel those leveled against Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst at the height of the yellow journalism era in the United States. All were accused of building media empires that lacked an ethical foundation. Journalism professor Karl Grossman, State University of New York at Old Westbury, accused Murdoch of building the most "dishonest, unprincipled and corrupt" media empire in history and turning the notion of public service journalism on its head. He also accused Murdoch of changing the newsroom culture at his most recent acquisitions, among them the Wall Street Journal. Newsweek in July 2011 quoted one of Murdoch's top executives as follows:
This scandal and all its implications could not have happened anywhere else. Only in Murdoch's orbit. The hacking at News of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means.... In the end, what you sow is what you reap. Now Murdoch is a victim of the culture that he created. It is a logical conclusion, and it is his people at the top who encouraged law-breaking and hacking phones and condoned it.
In July 2012, executives with News Corp. decided to break the company into two parts: one part devoted exclusively to newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, and a second, far more profitable part, devoted to broadcasting and entertainment, including Fox News. Rupert Murdoch also reigned from multiple boards controlling both corporations in the same month.
While many were willing to blame Murdoch personally, other critics noted that the 24/7 nature of competitive news on the Internet had created the sort of atmosphere in which hacking was not merely tolerated but encouraged. These critics noted that hidden cameras, lurking on Web sites, publishing stories before checking facts-all in the drive to increase Web hits-were merely less illegal, but not less ethically questionable results, of the 24/7, celebrity-driven news cycle.
Contrast phone hacking to the other deceptive techniques evaluated by investigative reporters and editors and reviewed in this chapter. How are they alike and different in an ethical sense?