Media Hacks Discuss Phone-Hacking Scandal Part 1

It’s a story that checks four boxes – the four P’s – Politics, Police, Press and custard Pie. The fourth P was actually shaving foam hurled at Mr. Rupert Murdoch and gave newspapers a page one photo too.

I was curious to find out: why this story went global, how was it covered in different parts of the world (outside of Britain) and why do regular people care about this?

You’ve heard many voices. Mary Kay Magistad reported from China, Alex Gallafent from New York and we’ve had many BBC reporters from London. A Pew research report indicates that this was the second-most read story in the US in the past week.

I looked at three countries – India, Russia and Nigeria and asked journalists to assess how they covered the story.

First, India – home to a vibrant media landscape which includes several television channels, newspapers and magazines. I spoke to Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN, a 24-hour English News channel based in New Delhi.

Sardesai devoted an entire television program on his network to the phone-hacking scandal.

“It was covered on all the major English news channels virtually 24-7,” he said. “Most of us didn’t even take breaks even though it was prime-time. It was really reality TV that we were seeing across all news channels. It was also the front page on all major newspapers.”

Sardesai thinks the story impacts how journalism is practiced in India. The story made editors think about what he calls the “Murduch-isation” of the Indian press. There are TV stations and newspapers that regularly employ very aggressive tactics to get stories.

But, will media barons in India (Sardesai calls them the ‘Murdochs of India’) introspect?

“There are many media proprietors who saw Murdoch as a role model,” he said. “Particularly in a manner that Murdoch (is) able to ‘commodify’ the media. That is a model more and more proprietors would like to see. The editor becomes irrelevant and the CEO becomes more dominant even in deciding news proprieties.”

Sardesai also attributes the high level of interest in Rupert Murdoch in India to the many television channels News Corp operates in the country.

Major Indian newspapers like the Times of India and The Hindu also featured this story on page one.

In a humorous Hindustan Times comment piece, a husband moans, “All I’m saying is that you’ve never defended me like Wendi defended her husband on Tuesday.”

(For my next blog I speak to Russian journalist Svetlana Kunitsyna who compares watching the Murdoch hearing to sipping British tea –“ too gentle.”)