End of News of the World (1843 - 2011)

London, July 7, 2010: The phone hacking/police informant scandal at NewsCorp has finally come to a head. The 168 year old British paper is being shut down. Today is the last print run for the newspaper.

For those that aren't aware, The News of the World is a Sunday tabloid that features the sordid private lives of celebrities. To get some of their stories, they used private detectives who hacked into celebrities’ voice mails. They also paid police for information for stories.

Politicians are coming out of the woodwork in droves with guns blazing condemning the media, crying out against the invasion of privacy and talking of regulation of the media and of formal inquiries. The hypocrisy here is that it these same politicians that were behind the "legal" hacking of citizens through laws to capture people’s emails, internet activities, phone calls and to ensure that this information is to be stored so that government bodies can retrieve at will. Also the legal hacking the government does every day to get users information from the likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook and any number of internet companies where people store their data.

The politicians talk about the powerful press and their fear of getting on the wrong side of the media. The problem here is that the saying "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" which they spew out anytime they seek more powers, really applies to government. They have no need to fear the press if they have done nothing wrong.

The press needs to be free from government regulations. The truth with the NotW hacking is that justice is being done. The people behind the illegal activities are being investigated and are being prosecuted. It was the freedom of the press that allowed the issues to be exposed. The Guardian newspaper were the ones that lead an investigation into NotW hacking. The New York Times had even published an investigation into the matter. It was through this, the public outrage, and advertisers pulling out that lead to the end of NotW.

People are being compensated and criminals are being put into jail. This is how a free society works where laws protect the individual. You aren't going to stop criminal activity by regulation. If it was that easy, then there would be no crime. The truth is that while governments are looking at regulations, the real answer lies in empowering the public. The public need to be more media savvy, and also need the powers that can enable them to keep an eye on the powers of the government. A simple one would be the removing of absurd law that prevents people from photographic or video taping police in the public arena. Also, the problem it has taken so long to get to the facts is that the police's failure to investigate.

No doubt millions will be spent by government to host an independent inquiry, even though millions will already be spent on trials. These trials should be enough to get to the facts of the matter. A formal enquiry would be just a waste of money and is nothing more than trying to appease opposition parties. If there is to be a public enquiry, it should be in the Police role in this whole affair and their taking of bribes.

What this event has shown is that invasion of privacy is a terrible thing.

However, politicians have no right to express their outrage; hacking and intruding into peoples private lives is something they sanction everyday with impunity.