As media mogul Rupert Murdoch quivers in a very vat of icy British schadenfreude, the inevitable question arises: will an outrage-causing, government-shaking, media-shaming, phone-hacking scandal happen in America?
After all, Murdoch's big News Corp. owns newspapers and tabloids over here, too, together with the big apple Post, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News cable channel. Have they been hacking into people's phones to urge scoops? And if they haven't, why not?
So far, there is no proof that widespread phone hacking happens in yankee newsrooms, not by Republican-leaning Murdoch papers, not even by the rowdiest non-Murdoch tabloids, in line with people who monitor journalism ethics. Why not? For one factor, there are massive variations within the media cultures of the U.S. and the U.K.: America includes a written constitution and also the initial change protecting the press from government regulation. Britain doesn't.
"My theory is that after you don't seem to be regulated, you've got to self-regulate," says Kelly McBride, who teaches journalism ethics at the journalism assume tank Poynter Institute. "Maybe it's true that individuals take a lot of responsibility after they grasp there's solely self-regulation."
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British tabloids, against this, got to sometimes answer to a government press commission, and nevertheless still they're rather more aggressive than America's tabloid press. "(British tabs) are a lot of doubtless to try to to things that respectable media here do not do — they're fiercely competitive and ruthless," says Rem Reider, editor of yankee Journalism Review at the University of Maryland journalism faculty.
But notwithstanding Murdoch's yankee media properties haven't engaged in hacking, spying and bribing, as alleged within the U.K., that's not the tip of the matter. Murdoch's political and money power within the U.K. have already been diminished by the scandal; currently calls are mounting to analyze what News Corp. could be doing in America.
On Wednesday, four Democratic U.S. senators — Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation; Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of latest Jersey; and Barbara Boxer of California — immersed an investigation into whether or not Murdoch's News Corp. had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act through the actions of his British properties. Rep. Peter King of latest York, the Republican chairman of the House homeland security committee, additionally demanded an investigation of Murdoch. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act may be a 1970s-era law makes it a criminal offense for an organization with U.S. holdings to bribe foreign officers to get or retain business.
Their moves came once shield Our Elections, a government accountability cluster, petitioned the FBI and also the Securities and Exchange Commission to analyze News Corp. for attainable criminal and civil violations of the act arising from the allegations within the U.K. the results of criminal conviction beneath the act may be the maximum amount as $5 million fines for people for every offense and up to $25 million for an organization.
"I do not know if this can be happening within the U.S. however there is a ton of smoke," says Kevin Zeese, spokesman and attorney for the cluster, that has previously criticized Republicans like Karl Rove for alleged manipulation of U.S. elections.
Meanwhile, a brand new allegation surfaced in London that advised a British reporter could have sought to hack into the yankee phones of British victims of 9/11 (67 British voters died within the 2001 terrorist attack on the planet Trade Center in New York). Rockefeller said this addition to the already beautiful revelations of recent days spurred him to act.
"(The allegations) raise serious questions about whether or not the corporate has broken U.S. law, and that i encourage the suitable agencies to analyze to make sure that Americans haven't had their privacy violated," Rockefeller said in a very statement.
David Cameron, the Tory prime minister who is an ally of Murdoch and his U.K. executives and whose shaky coalition government has been rocked by the revelations, announced an inquiry Wednesday, together with the question of whether or not yankee phones could are hacked. The inquiry's initial mission, he said, are to analyze the culture, practices and ethics of the British press, its relationship with the London police and also the failure of this system of press regulation.
Now strive imagining the same investigation by the U.S. government of the yankee press. "The overarching tragedy of the scandal is that the risk it'll end in important reduction in press freedom in Britain," Reider says.
