Media, Police and politics in the dock:

'Something is rotten in the State of England'

The News of the World has drowned in its own dirt. The final edition of this scandal-laden paper will be out tomorrow (Sunday - 1)), with no advertisements, because of its best and biggest advertisers pulling out after the phone hacking scandal exploded into a major media, police and political scandal earlier this week.

The move underscored the damage to News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's vast and powerful media company, from allegations that one of its papers, News of the World, was involved in hacking cell phones belonging to not only a 13-year-old murder victim but also relatives of fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Wednesday, a member of the Commons also raised allegations that nine years ago, News of the World had participated in efforts to disrupt a murder investigation.

The 168-year-old newspaper, one of the oldest and best-selling newspapers in Britain, selling more than 2.5 million copies every Sunday, was brought down by an avalanche of public and political fury in the wake of revelations that hacking victims included a missing 13-year-old girl who was later found to have been murdered. On Thursday, shortly before announcement of the closure, the Police said they have identified the names of nearly 4,000 potential victims of phone hacking.

It is not just Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and News of the World that's got a heavy beating following the revelation of phone hacking by newspapers in the UK. While the News of the World is at the centre of what has become a major political challenge to Prime Minister David Cameron's judgment of people, other media in the UK are also feeling the heat from the latest exposure of unethical and even criminal practice in journalism.

After days of disclosures that have horrified the British public about hackers working for News of the World listening to voice mail message left on the phones of murder and terrorism victims, David Cameron told an angry Parliament, "We do need to have an inquiry, possibly inquiries, into what has happened."

What caused the biggest shock and anger was the news that one hacker victim was a 13-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 2002. Additionally, Scotland Yard detectives are also investigating whether the voice mail accounts of relatives of victims of the bombings of three London subway trains and a double-decker bus on July 7, 2005, had also been hacked, according to some of the relatives.

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, himself a victim of phone hacking by the Press told CNN the failure of Police officers to investigate the scandal properly pointed to the fact "something is rotten in the State of England." Prescott, whose affair with a secretary was splashed across the front pages in 2006, said officers initially dismissed his fears that his voicemail had been intercepted and investigated his complaint only when he took legal action. Eventually he said Police told him his phone had been hacked into on 44 occasions.

What stands out in the crisis that has now struck the British media and the Conservative leadership too, is the lack of concern for both the privacy and sensitivities of the people who are the victims of the hacking, as well as members of their families. This brings to mind the observation by our High Commission in London soon after the June 14 telecast of the Channel 4 video footage "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields", on alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka.

Channel 4 film

In the first reaction from the government, the High Commission said: "The government is concerned about the distress the images in the Channel 4 film aired without any guarantee of their authenticity might have caused to the viewers, particularly to those belonging to different communities in Sri Lanka. This is an exercise which is carried out by a small section of international media at the behest of certain parties with vested interests and it caters only to the interests of separatist forces living outside Sri Lanka, the final objective of which is to push Sri Lanka back to war, by way of lacerating the wounds that the country is attempting to heal."

Significantly, Prime Minister, David Cameron, facing a potential minefield from the scandal's fallout, resisted immediately ordering a full inquiry into the workings of the often adversarial, scoop-driven British press, saying that such a step would have to wait for the outcome of the current Police investigation, which was ordered after the Police initially got nowhere, said the New York Times. Interestingly, this is the same Cameron who is not ready to wait for the findings of the LLRC investigating many more charges levelled against Sri Lanka, and impatient for an 'independent' international probe of the West's own picking.

Politicians and celebrities

"We are no longer talking here about politicians and celebrities, we are talking about murder victims, potentially terrorist victims, having their phones hacked into," Cameron said. "It is absolutely disgusting, what has taken place, and I think everyone in this House and indeed this country will be revolted by what they have heard and what they have seen on their television screens," the NYT reported.

The problems for News of the World began in 2005 when it published a seemingly mundane story about Prince William injuring his knee. It was just another exclusive for a newspaper that had made its reputation on hard-hitting exclusives, often exposing the embarrassments of celebrities and politicians.

Although Britain's newspaper culture which developed around London's Fleet Street, nicknamed the 'Street of Shame' by satirical magazine Private Eye, has long been based on cut-throat competition and dirty dealings - anything goes if you can land the big story, this scoop was different from the others. Royal officials realized that it could only have been sourced by the illegal interception of Prince William's mobile phone voicemail, and complained to the Police, stated CNN.

Media empire

This started a chain reaction of allegation and scandal that enveloped not just members of the royal family and celebrities, but also murder victims and those injured in terrorist attacks. It is linked to the office of UK Prime Minister David Cameron whose judgment has been called into question by Opposition lawmakers including Labour leader Ed Milliband for later employing the editor of the paper as his press spokesman. The growing scandal implicates London's Police force and has now seen the closure of one of the biggest assets of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

Murdoch's News Corp also owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times in Britain. Its media empire also encompasses Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Harper Collins publishers.

Here is a sampling of what media commentators told BBC about the new crisis in the British media.

"The hacking saga has the potential to besmirch the rest of the press and the journalists who work for it. "Unless we cleanse the Augean stables of Wapping, we will suffer forever from public odium. "We have lost public trust and credibility because too much published material is of no lasting benefit to society." - Roy Greenslade, Professor of Journalism, City University.

"Every bona-fide news organization in the UK needs to look at its staff and make sure they have had proper training in ethics, media law, and so on. - Dominic Ponsford, editor, Press Gazette.

"Clearly, it's very bad for the News of the World, and it's very bad for News International, but if this doesn't spread beyond News International in a significant way then I'm a Dutchman.

"The News of the World may have done more of it but I would be very surprised if it wasn't more widespread than that. - Steve Hewlett, presenter BBC Radio 4 Media Show.

The News of the World will fold up tomorrow, but the British media, the Metropolitan Police and politicians who depend on the scum of the media for advancement, will now be under much more scrutiny by a skeptical and angry public.