Fall of media mughal

‘Beg borrow steal’, for news-gathering, is allowed in journalism. But, snooping on somebody is a crime. Bribing someone (police in this case) is even more a serious offence. And that is the reason why Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World (NOTW) is closed today.

The global media mughal could not throw his weight around in London to save the 168-year-old Sunday tabloid even as its star editors are facing prosecution. With the last edition hitting the streets, on Sunday, an era ended. And the immolation also saw the end of the pre-eminent political influence of the last three decades in Britain. Murdoch’s pass to the prime minister’s office is withdrawn; the access code for his editors and senior executives has expired. “ All the unseen deal-making, fixing, manipulation and bullying, as well as that princely sense of entitlement emanating from News International (the holding company of NOTW) headquarters have gone,” writes a columnist, in a British daily.

NOTW’s mischief was not a small thing to ignore. Its editors had hired private detectives to eavesdrop on the family members of a teenaged girl, who was abducted and then killed, in 2002. The private detectives had hacked phones of the family members and in the due course had deleted mails of the girl that intern misled the police investigating the case. There are instances of NOTW bribing police to acquire information, and interfered with a murder investigation.

The incident has brought disgrace even for the UK government as the then editor of the tabloid Andy Coulson had served as the media in-charge for the premier David Cameron. While he is under pressure to take action against Murdoch, Cameron has asked the media baron to sack his chief executive Rebekah Brooks. But, it is not helping to bail himself out of the issue.

While the incident has rattled the media world, the question is: who and how uncovered it? It must be viewed though the prevailing situation of cut throat media competition in Britain taking the timing of Murdoch vouching for taking over BSkyB, the leading provider of pay TV, into consideration.

The Guardian, one of the leading dailies, unearthed the scam through a sting operation conducted by its reporters. “The News of the World's termination is the price Murdoch is willing to pay to halt the accelerating erosion of the British wing of his international empire and to secure full ownership of "the cash machine", the satellite broadcaster BskyB”, it said in its editorial. The venom was evident, when the paper suggested the government stopping Murdoch from acquiring BskyB.

The muck raised in London is the result of the dog fight between the media houses that has also taken the toll on very credibility of the fourth estate.

Have we Indian media got anything to learn from this? While hiring private detective for news-gathering is something alien to us, the incident of Tehelka hiring prostitutes to entrap corrupt Army officers had stirred the country even as its editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal admitting “ethical transgression”. The star journalists figured in Nira Radia tapes changed our perception of their stardom.

The lesson to learn is: media must be in its ethical limits lest the hacks would be seen as the hackers and tools in the hands of powerbrokers.

More dangerously, there is a possibility of journalists unwittingly becoming the parties to the issues in which case they will be killing themselves physically and professionally.

Heard a reporter was about to be fired in a local media house in Bangalore after she was found tipping off a gangster about police planning to eliminate him through an encounter. The rumour is that she was rewarded handsomely by the gangster.

Imagine a rival gang in place of the police and the reporter leaking the information. If she had been killed, we were forced to seen her as a slain and our condolences would have beatified her to the sainthood.

Pray god spares us talking about the ‘rogue reporters’ in the same breath when we remember J Dey, who stood for values of journalism before giving away his life for it.