Defining 'the public interest' - Hamilton Spectator

And so the scandal that's been simmering for years and bubbling for months started to boil over this week as the chief executives of News Corp. appeared before a parliamentary committee in Britain.

Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and former chief executive Rebekah Brooks answered questions about the scandalous behaviour of journalists at the company's now defunct News of the World newspaper.

It was high drama, but as usual with such affairs, few answers emerged, and one in particular remains a mystery: how did this happen, and frankly, how could it?

What's more, how can we really be expected to believe journalists can carry on illegal phone-hacking activities without the knowledge of their superiors?

It boggles the mind how the editor of any newspaper, whether it's the News of the World or The Hamilton Spectator, could not know of illegal activity when the results appear in the newspaper.

But that is exactly what Brooks claims. She simply didn't know.

How is it that the billionaire boss who runs the company could have excused this? It begs the question: If she didn't know it, why didn't she know it? What kind of a newspaper was she running? What kind of an organization is Murdoch running?

Perhaps Murdoch himself offered an explanation, when asked this week if he felt he should resign as boss given the egregious behaviour of his employees, and his failure to act until recently when public opinion forced him to.

His answer: "No, because I feel that people I trusted – I'm not saying who, I don't know at what level – let me down and I think they behaved disgracefully, betrayed the company and me and it's for them to pay. I think that frankly I'm the best person to clean this up."

Wouldn't a good chief executive say "it happened on my watch, therefore it's my responsibility" rather than blame the people they hired? Meanwhile, it may be true in some cases, but I'm not sure the person who presided over this mess is necessarily the best one to clean it up, especially since he elected not to clean it up for years.

But remember, this is a man who long ago got over the money – when you own homes in Melbourne, Beijing, Beverley Hills, London, and two in New York, what more do you need? – and now lives for the power and influence that comes from owning all those media properties, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, on almost every continent. Like media moguls of another darker era, he enjoys influencing the course of history and politics and shaping it to fit his own tastes.

Do all newspaper owners and editors secretly want this? I don't know, but most I've met simply want to run a good business and genuinely help the communities they serve. You're forgiven, given the circumstances, if that sounds as preposterous as some of the things coming out of News Corp. recently. The events in Britain have tainted an entire industry.

It's true, all journalists will go to great lengths to unearth information – it's our job – especially when we believe it's in the public interest.

But phone-hacking was not aimed at uncovering government corruption or scandal in high places. Many journalists, police and government officials seemed to look the other way when the hacking targeted rich celebrities and well-paid public figures. It's only when it affected ordinary Britons that it broke wide open.

Public interest was never a factor, whether it was Hugh Grant or Elle Macpherson or the families of soldiers or murder victims. And it never led to any real scandal but the phone-hacking scandal itself.

Paul Berton is editor-in-chief of The Hamilton Spectator and thespec.com. You can reach him at 905-526-3482 or pberton@thespec.com.