On air at 1100GMT: Hackgate, Resignations & Schadenfreude
| 08:53 UK time, Monday, 18 July 2011
This topic was discussed on World Have Your Say on 18 July, 2011. Listen to the programme here.
Heads have been rolling in the phone-hacking scandal since we spoke last, with the resignations of Rebekah Brooks (who was also arrested yesterday), Les Hinton and Britain's most senior policeman, Sir Paul Stephenson.
News International, Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper publisher posted full-page statements of apology in papers over the weekend.
A lot of you are reading and sharing this editorial from today's Wall St Journal, in which the newspaper speaks up against what it calls "Schadenfreude ... so thick you can't cut it with a chainsaw":
Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product. The news hole is larger. Our foreign coverage in particular is more robust, our weekend edition more substantial, and our expansion into digital delivery ahead of the pack.
Another blogger, Tim Montgomerie, writes about "a world of black and white, hot and cold and little perspective" in the coverage of and reaction to the hacking-scandal, including the BBC's.
British Prime Minister David Cameron is now only spending a couple of days on his first trip to South Africa, in order to go back to the UK to handle the hacking story.
So here are a few questions to get our teeth into on the 1100GMT programme ...
1. Do the resignations of the senior News Corp executives and the top policeman, plus the apologies from Rupert Murdoch, draw any sort of line under the affair?
2. Is journalism - in particular, investigative journalism - damaged by newspapers turning on other newspapers in the wake of this scandal?
3. Is this story being covered at the expense of other important issues? Or does it raise such important issues that the coverage is warranted?
