Media ethics

With every passing day, the phone hacking scandal that has brought Rupert Murdoch’s New International to its knees claims a new victim. On July 18, Rebekah Brooks, often described as the daughter Murdoch never had (even though he does have actual daughters) was arrested. Brooks was editor of the News of the World at the time it carried out most of its illegal activities and it beggars belief that she was unaware of it. The noose is now tightening around Murdoch and his son James.

The sheer scale of crimes committed by News International is breathtaking. They hacked into the phone messages of murder victims, 9/11 survivors, members of the British royal family and celebrities. Then they followed that up by bribing police officers investigating them. But what is truly worrying is how Murdoch’s tentacles are spread throughout the world. In the US, he owns The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and Fox; in Asia he controls the Star TV network and, as the price of entry into China, agreed to mute criticism of the totalitarian government. There will now need to be a worldwide investigation to find out if the rest of his media assets were run with the same casual disregard for the law. There is also a larger lesson to be learned for governments and regulatory agencies. There will always be media entrepreneurs who treat the law as an obstacle that needs knocking down. To minimise the damage they can cause, it is essential that they not be allowed to dominate the market. Governments need to be stingier in handing out licenses to those who are already too powerful. Cross-media ownership, in particular, needs to be regulated. Rupert Murdoch has become so powerful and so feared by politicians of all ideologies that it took five years to uncover his media organisation’s corruption. As the rise of the electronic media in Pakistan has shown, not all media organisations abide by ethics. The watchdog on government abuses needs a watchdog of its own.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2011.