Hacked off about British newspapers

How would you feel if someone was hacking into your life? Pretty disgusted, I imagine. The ongoing Leveson inquiry into News International and its corporate godfathers has now entered its second week, with yet more victims of unethical smear campaigns coming forward. We are left wondering about the future of UK journalism itself.

In the past few weeks high profile figures, from celebrities, journalists, and key witnesses to the families of murder victims have delivered a litany of damning evidence regarding the conduct of tabloid journalists for the News of the World, whose activities were nothing short of disgusting, intrusive, and perverted.

From stalking, harassing, and breaking and entering, to going through rubbish and hacking private phone lines to name a few, the unethical practices of journalism look more like the sinister machinations of a secret intelligence service.

Though the inquiry has yet to explain why this behaviour was allowed to go on for so long, analysts have suggested that it was our own voyeuristic fascination with celebrities that allowed these unethical practices to ruin the lives of many.

But if such so-called journalists knew the true meaning of their job, they should know that there are more important things out there that do not get as much attention as they ought to be awarded.

Right now, we should be more concerned with what’s going on not just beyond our street, but also beyond our borders. The freedom of speech and right to publish without fear or hindrance is not shared in many countries whose governments hate more than anything to wake up to find criticism of their regime whilst reading over breakfast.

In Putin’s Russia, the media are shackled into blindly obeying his every command; Syria, Iran, Burma and other regimes with appalling human rights records mercilessly crush the independent press through intimidation, coercion, humiliation and death; and in North Korea, forget it, it doesn’t even exist.

If there’s anything that should come out of this inquiry, it’s that there are people out there whose stories go unheard and we ought to write, listen and read about them. I’d much prefer to hear about people on the other side of the world than read the details of people’s private information and lives.

That kind of stuff should only interest the Thought Police.