AN ARREST IN BRITAIN – AT 10:46 A.M. ET:  A key figure in the News Corporation "phone hacking" scandal has been arrested.  From WaPo:

LONDON— Rebekah Brooks, a top executive in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire before resigning Friday in the wake of a phone hacking scandal, was arrested Sunday by Scotland Yard in a broadening probe into illicit newsgathering.

Police confirmed a 43-year- old woman was taken into custody Sunday on charges of conspiring to intercept communications and on corruption allegations, a reference to bribes made to police officers for news tips. David Wilson, Brooks’ spokesman, confirmed the woman as Brooks, making her the highest-ranking News Corp official yet to be arrested in the case.

COMMENT:  The hypocrisy and phoniness in the press continue.  Yes, this is a serious matter, and, if Brooks is guilty, she must pay the price.  But note two things:  There is a constant reference to "Rupert Murdoch's" News Corporation, but with no balancing statement that not a single piece of evidence has been put forward showing that Murdoch knew anything about the phone hacking charges.  He's a smart guy.  I doubt very much if he'd go along with anything so loopy as hacking into the phones of news sources. 

Second, note the refusal of the press and broadcasting outlets, in reporting this story about journalistic ethics, to practice any on their own.  We need statements informing readers that News Corporation publishes newspapers, and runs broadcast networks, that are direct competitors of those covering the scandal, and that these competitors have a great deal to gain from the News Corporation's decline.  It is imperative, for example, that CNN run the following when reporting the story:  "News Corporation owns Fox News, our strongest competitor.  Viewers have a right to know that CNN stands to gain financially if Fox News is damaged and loses viewership or advertising."  I've seen no ethically required statement at all.

Jennifer Rubin, at Contentions, sums it up:

...while it is also understandable some in the media would get up on their hind legs and huff and puff about how awful this scandal is, the fact that the alleged hacking really is terrible stuff is no excuse for some of the hypocritical criticism doled out by those who don’t work for Murdoch.

One comical example was a piece published in the Washington Post on Friday by, of all people, pornographer Larry Flynt. The idea the publisher of Hustler could teach anyone a lesson about the ethics of journalism is so bizarre you might have thought it was a parody.

Far worse was Joe Nocera’s anti-Murdoch rant in the New York Times on Saturday. Nocera’s interest was in bashing the Wall Street Journal and claiming that Murdoch had destroyed a once-great paper, not commenting about the scandal. The Journal had no role in the hacking, and despite Nocera’s carping, the changes Murdoch wrought at the Journal have been widely praised for bringing new energy and improved features to a paper directly competing with the Times in a way that it has never done before.

Well said. 

A major British pol, Ed Miliband, is calling for a breakup of News Corporation.  Ed Miliband is a leftist.  News Corp is conservative.  You don't think politics is playing a role, do you?

July 17, 2011