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The New York Times article has a great article about the testimony of the former editor Paul McMullan of Murdoch's News of the World tabloid before a British enquiry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/world/europe/british-inquiry-is-told-hacking-is-worthy-tool.html
The Times raises some really interesting questions by quoting McMullan's testimony. There are two concepts that caught my attention:
First ...
Paul McMullan doesn't mince words when describing his former bosses inside Murdoch's money machine:
“They should have been the heroes of journalism, but they aren’t. They are the scum of journalism for trying to drop me and my colleagues in it.”
Yep! In a Newsvine thread, someone pointed out that Murdoch isn't in the news business, he's in the entertainment business. News doesn't pay, but entertainment rakes in trainloads of money. That's why they didn't have the strength of conviction of journalists. They're not journalists. They're just up there screaming, "Look at this! It's weird!" And it is, and the bread and circuses crowd just eats it up.
Second, and a more significant point .... (The first is obvious to anyone who thinks about it.)
Mr. McMullan said, asking whether “we really want to live in a world where the only people who can do the hacking are MI5 and MI6.”
No, he said, we do not.
“For a brief period of about 20 years, we have actually lived in a free society where we can hack back,” he said.
This is the Julian Assange "Wikileaks" proposition. Should everybody have a right to know everything all the time? Is there such a thing as a "privacy right" and if there is, is it good for society?
That's a really good question. Speaking for myself only, I'm not sure what the right answer is.
