When I was living in London last year, it seemed as though you couldn't pick up one of the free metro papers or tune into BBC without hearing something of the phone hacking scandals involving The News of the World, the British newspaper holding of Richard Murdoch's News Corp.
The inquiries begin today with the stated purpose to "investigate the way journalists operate and the elusive balance between press freedom and individual rights to privacy." These hearings will undoubtedly become a seminal example in news history and their outcome very important to the future of journalistic ethics.
Read it here from the New York Times
Read it here from UPI.com
The Murdoch journalists did evil under the sun. But I wonder if anything substantive will come from these hearings? If existing laws were broken, the journalists should be punished, but I hope the government doesn't use the incident to hamstring legitimately vigorous reporting.
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