The Phone Hacking Scandal
July 24, 2011 4 Comments
I think it’s terrible that Rupert Murdoch, or someone, hacked some peoples’s phones. But more importantly: WHY?
I guess to know the answer to that I’d actually have to have read something on The Phone Hacking Scandal. But I haven’t. To get interested enough in a story based on its headline to actually read it, I think I have to be able to at least imagine that the story which the headline signifies could be interesting.
In this case, I just can’t.
Basically, I just don’t have a vivid enough imagination to be able to complete the phrase “______’s phone was hacked by _____ because _____. _____ then used the information (s)he got from all the phone hacking – information such as _____ and _____ – in order to proceed to do _____ to ______” in any sort of interesting way.
The catalyst of the whole thing was a special case with emotional appeal: they hacked the voicemail of a murdered adolescent British girl, and then when it filled up, they deleted messages so new ones could come in. This action caused parents and others to believe the girl was somehow still alive. Ahh, incompetence: the natural enemy of evil.
I hope Murdoch gets roasted alive. The man and his evil empire have no redeeming qualities.
That was a mildly interesting two-sentence summary. Thanks. If only the news could have served that function for me…
If I were more curious I’d ask what in particular Rupert Murdoch had to do with it, but I’m actually not. From what you’ve described, on the Outrage scale it doesn’t really sound like it should rank anywhere close to the cops-shoot-innocent-person-or-dog-in-mistaken-drug-raid stories that come out roughly once a week, for example….
But of course those aren’t the sorts of things that obsess mass media…
Priorities….
See that. That makes complete sense. Rebekah Brooks, who later went on to become the CEO of News Corp. for England, made the decision (when she was merely the Editor of the terrible and ridiculous rag, News of the World) to hack phone messages.
So naturally, Rupert Murdoch ought to be torn from his thrown, have his entire empire removed from his possession and care, and, I guess, handed over to people to would administer it better, like say, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
I’d like to see Obama manage a newspaper. If he manages it as well as he’s managed the country, it would probably not only go bankrupt but every person working on it would end up sued and/or in prison, even the janitor. Clinton, on the other hand, would make a great newspaper editor. He’s got the charm and he’s a complete bastard. I think it’s a tragedy that he was diverted from his natural calling.
On the other hand, under Clinton’s news empire, phone hacking would be the least of its crimes.