Tuesday 5 July 2011

Shame of the hackers

The News of the World hacking story has been rumbling on for quite a while now but in general it never really connected with many people, mainly because the victims of the phone-hacking were celebrities and most of us are selective with our sympathy where the rich and famous are concerned.
Now that the scene has moved away from celebrities, and the victims of hacking have been teenage murder victims and their families the public mood has changed.
How the News of the World thought it was acceptable to hack into the mobile phone of 13 year old Milly Downer in search of some juicy titbit of gossip about her or her family is unfathomable. Worse than that, they then deleted some of the messages left by concerned relatives so that they could get new ones to listen to which had the effect of making the parents and police believe that she may be alive and checking her messages.
Now Officers have told the parents of the two 10 year old girls killed in Soham in 2002 by Ian Huntley that their mobiles had been hacked.
The Murdoch Press, especially the Sun and the News of The World were always known to be the gutter press but this is a new low and I hope that these newspapers and any others who have been found to have done the same thing are suitable punished with historically high fines and if they are put out of business then I won't mourn them.
The public are sure to turn on them but Murdoch has deep pockets so they could run at a loss for years as Sky TV did so the key to whether the newspapers continue or not could be down to the advertisers and already a handful of high profile names have withdrawn their adverts.
Ford, npower, Halifax, T-Mobile and Orange are all reviewing or withdrawing their advertising in the News of the World and that is a serious dent to the paper.
Before nobody was fussed about John Prescott's or Hugh Grant's phones, just a bit of celebrity gossip, but a line has been crossed and I hope the News of The World folds and the guilty journalists, editors and anyone involved in the sick plot are severely dealt with.

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