Ethics continuing education couldn’t be more important than now, given all this Murdoch phone-hacking business. One of the most monied of patriarchs worldwide, Murdoch makes billions from a diverse portfolio of properties and investments, one of which is the legendary News of the World tabloid. A long-time money-maker for him, this property has now become his greatest challenge yet, both personally as well as professionally.
But why does that relate at all to ethics continuing education? Simply that some common decency would have helped prevent the scandal in the first place. It all started with a missing girl. What with all the demand for the latest information on the case, The News of the World resorted to drastic measures to out-snoop its competition. What Murdoch’s News of the World did was hack into the girl’s mobile voicemail account.
That was already against the law, but what makes this matter one involving ethics continuing education is because the tabloid actually erased messages when the voicemail box was full so as to get new ones to report on! This created the impression to investigators that the girl was still alive, checking in and deleting old messages. Police resources had been squandered on a false lead, in effect.
Moreover, it’s now turned out that no one’s safe from such spying: not even the prime minister, nor the Queen herself were spared!
The upshot of it all is that a hundred year-old paper’s closed, wtih workers out of a job, while a grieving family feels toyed with, and the public’s trust in its police force (Scotland Yard had previously on two occasions denied any phone hacking at all by Murdoch’s company) shattered once more. Moreover, the tycoon has had the Sky Network acquisition fall through on account of intense concern over his control of the media!
