I think the most fascinating fact was the speed of turnaround. This has been just on the radar of UK reporting for some years, with newspaper investigations and TV documentaries digging into the first and so far only convictions and doing everything but saying "And there is no way this was limited to only one reporter"
But no-one cared enough to turn it into action.
Then suddenly a court had evidence "someone" had deleted voicemails from a kidnap/rape/murder of a 13yr old. Within hours everyone from the PM down had hung them out to dry.
Overstepping the line is a herd instinct. I heard it on radio and just said "someone has to go to jail".
I am just wondering if Murdoch's lawyers are saying "It could be you"
Then suddenly a court had evidence "someone" had deleted voicemails from a kidnap/rape/murder of a 13yr old. Within hours everyone from the PM down had hung them out to dry.
Not just any murder victim -- she was one of the victims of serial killer Levi Bellfield, just recently convicted of multiple rape/murders. And the deletion of voice mails (allegedly because Milly's voicemail box had filled up, and the journalists wanted more material to work with, so they deleted earlier messages to free up space) had mislead Milly Dowler's parents, and probably the police, into thinking she was still alive -- thus impacting an investigation into a serial killer.
Let's also add that another assault/attempted abduction prosecution against Bellfield had to be called off this week due to the tabloid news media prejudicing the jury.
This goes beyond hacking and phone bugging and into the territory of interfering with the judicial system, to the detriment of extremely serious investigations and prosecutions.
A lot of the customers of the tabloids are the kind of people who think the death penalty should be brought in for child abductions and how there are pedophiles all over the internet. This is encouraged by these tabloids. Now it looks like this tabloid was sleazily giving a missing girls parents false hope, and interfering with the police who were trying to find her just to sell some newspapers. They did things that their target market would not like.
But no-one cared enough to turn it into action.
Then suddenly a court had evidence "someone" had deleted voicemails from a kidnap/rape/murder of a 13yr old. Within hours everyone from the PM down had hung them out to dry.
Overstepping the line is a herd instinct. I heard it on radio and just said "someone has to go to jail".
I am just wondering if Murdoch's lawyers are saying "It could be you"