For some time now, reporters, writers and the many scribes of our day have been nervously worrying over the changing face, and apparent declining market share, of journalism. The dreaded Internet has been sucking the air out of media’s sails, especially on the print side. And a few years back the biz buzz was that a new breed of journalist was the answer.
I remember seeing a piece from Time that helped focus attention on computer nerds in the media. The article suggested that it would take someone who could combine high-tech savvy with hard-nosed newsman skills. These “hacker journalists,” as they came to be called, could find their way around the web and be the key to a sweet co-existence between new-age tech and old-fashioned reporting.
Earlier this week, however, The New York Times laid out a story about a different application of hacker journalism.
A 13-year-old girl named Milly Dowler vanished in the UK in 2002, and became a huge media sensation there, much like the Natalee Halloway case was here in the States. (Tragically, Dowler was found dead several months after her disappearance.) According to the Times, reporters from a tabloid called News of the World were recently arrested for allegedly hacking into the missing girl’s voicemail in pursuit of their story. Says the Times:
The newspaper not only intercepted messages left on the phone of the girl … by her increasingly frantic family after her disappearance, but also deleted some of those messages when her voice mailbox became full—thus making room for new ones and listening to those in turn. This confused investigators and gave false hope to Milly’s relatives, who believed it showed she was still alive and deleting the messages herself.
According to the independent.co.uk, the News of the World editor stated that she was “appalled and shocked” that a private investigator working for the paper hacked into the voicemail account. But so far, three of the tabloid’s journalists have been arrested in connection with the scandal, and the police have been investigating the News of the World’s practice of “intercepting the cellphone messages of celebrities, politicians and other public figures,” according to the Times.
As seems always to be the case, when something new comes along somebody’s ready to make a mess of it. You can call this case an anomaly, and I’d like to think that it is. But the skills and the tech to accomplish these kinds of invasive deeds are readily available. And, hey, even the news-breaking New York Times hasn’t balked at publishing illegally hacked materials that outside sources happened to plop down in its inbox. (Wikileaks, anyone?) So one can’t help wondering just how rare this latest brand of “reporting” will continue to be.
[Editor’s note: Less than an hour after this blog was posted, News of the World owner James Murdoch announced that the tabloid is shutting its doors. Its last issue will be published Sunday.]
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