Hacking
The relationship between British politicians and the media has always been fraught. And so it should be. H.L. Mencken, the so-called Sage of Baltimore, famously said it should be like that between a dog and a lamp-post. He didn't say which was the dog and which the lamp-post and in truth the roles keep being reversed.
Two years ago our newspapers were in self-confident mood having just exposed a combination of massive fraud and petty fiddling by British legislators when claiming their expenses. Now it is the press that is on the receiving end. Yesterday Parliament held an emergency debate into extraordinary and shocking allegations about illegal activities allegedly carried out by journalists on the country's best-selling newspaper, the News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. It's claimed the paper paid private investigators to hack into the cellphone messages not just of politicians and celebrities, but also of the victims of serious crime and their relatives. The most shocking case involves a missing teenager who was later found dead. Her family and the police thought she was still alive because they could see somebody had been accessing her voice mail and even deleting some messages to make room for more. It's now alleged that was being done on behalf of the paper.
People are asking if there are no lengths the papers won't go to in search of a story. Some legislators want stricter regulation of the media. The Prime Minister has backed calls for a big investigation. Meanwhile Ford has been the first to pull its advertising from the paper. There have been calls for a boycott and all Mr. Murdoch's British titles are under threat. Every attempt at press regulation has failed in the past. But now it has to happen. The papers love to expose the wrongdoings of others. Now a bright light has to be shone on their own illegal activities. It's not a threat to freedom of speech. It's a defence against serious abuses by an over-powerful industry that has bullied elected politicians for far too long. Mencken would have no cause to complain. After all, the relationship between a dog and a lamp-post is the same whether the lamp is lit or not. This is Lance Price for CBS News in London.