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The responsibility of freedomAfter 168 years, News of the World – Britain’s most popular newspaper, with more than seven million readers an edition – abruptly closed.
The cause of the demise, now well exposed by international news media, was its illegal hacking of telephones. Most telling and most appalling to all was a report that the tabloid hired a private investigator who allegedly hacked into the mobile phone of murdered Amanda “Milly” Dowler, the 13-year-old girl who disappeared in 2002; listened to her voice mails and deleted messages that gave hope to her parents and the police that she was still alive.
The public outcry over these revelations is now reverberating through the halls of Westminster where, because of close relationships between the government and the media, huge questions must be asked and accounted for. With prominent figures involved by deed or association, a long ripple effect – nay, wake effect – will carry on in the British media and on all free press enterprises around the world.
Just how far can reporters go to hound down their story?
What is legal? What is justifiable? What is moral? What gives the public their right to know?
What makes compelling reading? What will sell more newspapers?
How much can one bend the rules, and what becomes acceptable in any given society? How far can one pursue the quest to reveal corruption before becoming corrupt in the process? How far does one go before one reaches a tipping point?
The relationship between news media, government, business and the population at large is symbiotic: the one needs the other to disseminate information and, conversely, there is a hunger to know – not only the good, but the bad and the ugly.
Democracy, and particularly a new democracy, needs a robust, free and independent press as its guardian and promoter.
Rupert Murdoch’s empire – built on genius, breathtaking pioneering innovation, dogged determination and focus – is on a quest to dominate world media. After 6 874 editions, the closing of a paper founded in 1843 emphatically showed how empires crumble (this one will not) through misadventure down the ranks.
Right creates might. But with freedom comes inherent responsibility.
