What Murdoch Made
Did Murdoch know his London newspaper hacked into the voicemail of private phone lines—not only those of the royal family, but of a thirteen-year-old murder victim, and possibly relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan—and paid police to unearth information?
The better question: is Murdoch responsible? Of course he is. He fathered a tabloid culture on three continents that reveled in the kind of news that could produce screaming headlines. He celebrated reporters and editors who generated such stories, and he sneered at “boring” newspapers that avoided them. There is simply no way that Rupert Murdoch, who has escaped more snares than Houdini, can cleanly escape the trap he has laid himself.