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MY COMMENT: The Guardian on the Murdoch phone hacking scandal
Journos and reporters have always been pressured to go beyond the ethical limit. The monetary bottomline is ever the force put on editors and their staff from above.
The Guardian's report on the Australian branch of NI, News Ltd, tells of the Australian NI heads calling for their several newspapers to report costs, outgoings, to ensure a clean record.
HA!
Who really trusts them? It's like asking the tobacco or petro or nuclear energy industries to give the public their research results.
It's called 'self-regulation', a furphy which always fails.
Once the pressure is off, the shonky practices resume, perhaps rebranded or retinted to look new and fresh and clean of the age-old corrupt methodologies.
These phone hacking scandals are but the tip of the iceberg.
The remaining 95% underwater bulk of filth extends right through big business, law, policing and lawyers. and of course, professional politicians, who are but reps for the largest corporate powers in...., military equipment, weapons manufacture and sales, petro-chemicals, medicine, land, mining etc etc.
Politics, like war, has always been a case of getting ahead of the other side, and once there, doing any-and-everything to stay one or more steps ahead.
This is what 'spy' agencies are all about, and most of us don't want to know what they gather without ethical or legal permission!
So it is with business, whether a 2nd hand car sale yard versus the other one round the corner, large competitive corporations, friendly and unfriendly national governments..., and media.
I'm for a REALInquiry, yes. And I'm for dissolving all-and-any unwarranted authority and power of a clearly over-stepping Murdoch dynastic cabal.
But really...? How far can one go so that it gets to the very crux of this need to play info-thieves?
Governments and all business concerns rely on it, and therefore it is the Duty of news services to be willing to go where no ethical man would.
So the paradox is that news media should have some right to delve. But clearly not into the small personal issues which have nothing to do with the management and economy etc, of both private corporations and public affairs of nations.
I can see the current rush by the main parties in Britain, and elsewhere, for "Inquiry-Inquiry-Inquiry!" becoming a hatchet job on media, clamping-down on their rights and duty of inquiring into dodgy government/corporate dealings, if both the media and the public are not allowed to monitor and adjudicate.
But in Britain at least the media, or sections of it, are resilient enough to withstand and resist any foul turns.
So any inquiry has to actually increase media powers of inquiry, by instituting protections, but only when the media digs into affairs which concern the welfare of the public at large.
And an inquiry, which really has to be about 'ethics', has to get to why the media is so forced to break the laws to stay in business.
That, requires that media can go-to, indeed, are given license to go-to issues very-political, which extremely few politicians, big party or independents, have the collective strength to place on the table.
Years ago I heard of one youthful British politician who attempted something similar in parliament in around 1908, of introducing a reform bill on Land Tax to the House. It caused one hell of a ruckass.
6 years later, WW1 began.
Winston Churchill was that Man.
Today however, anyone who sees the Wisdom of getting down to earth on REALPolitik issues which underlie all these needs for corrupt practices, would find they have perhaps the strongest and most widespread body of Strong Support and Protection ever. So a Real inquiry into media and government relationships may not have to fear brutal repercussions as of the bad old days of last century.
All things considered, it's still better that these issues of the secret wars between Ethical media and brown-paper-bag politicians are brought into the public eye.
How far the British PM and party leaders can take it, is for the People to decide.
But, do they care?
As in my blog (maxearth.blogspot.com) I recommend an 'Amnesty Tribunal' be set-up, where all are able to talk true without fear of a heavy weight placed upon them.
It, such a Tribunal, would definitely not be before time.
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