Lessons To Learn from the Murdoch Phone-Hacking Scandal in the UK

I've been watching the UK Hacking scandal parliamentary hearings on France24 TV where both Murdoch and his son have appeared and were being grilled by law makers in the UK. Everything was going on well till when it was interrupted by someone who decided to attack Murdoch senior. The pictures indicated that Rupert Murdoch was saved by his younger wife. However, the old Murdoch seemed to be in control throughout the hearing compared to his son.

One thing for sure is that I kind of feel sorry for the Murdochs because what has happened in the News of the World happens in all newspapers or media outlets all over the world. News of the World had private investigators; they did phone hacking of high profile people; and they used to pay up the police officers to obtain certain information, but these are things, i believe, done by almost all giant newspaper around the world. They do go into such extremes to sell us stories the public has never heard of and to help bring our leaders or celebrities to account.

These guys at the News Of the World were just unlucky and I think it is going to shake up the Murdoch media empire off its feet a little bit. The shareholders of their company are likely to demand that the Murdochs resign to get new faces to run News Corp international if this issue keeps going for a long time. But let's not forget that Murdoch is a known survivor. He'll throw a few designated scapegoats to the wolves to satisfy their hunger and skitter off alive and well.

Fortunately for the Murdoch's, the phone-hacking story isn't getting much play in America's whole media, but it is growing day by day. It is not as radio active as we thought. Yes, there's the added pressure that the FBI has opened an investigation into the journalistic practices of News Corp in USA but bad news become nothing if they can be buried somewhere, and in this case, I believe they will be buried soon.

All our prime ministers here in the UK have been friends with the Murdoch's but everybody is now trying to distance themselves from them. Why? Politicians are hypocrites. If one reads the Telegraph report, Murdoch clearly points out that many of the members of Parliament on both sides of the aisle are held in thrall by Murdoch. Same as in the US and elsewhere. Those drones will do anything to block their "kingmaker" from taking a fall and have been doing so for 30 years. There was the remark that nobody got to be PM here in the UK without Murdoch's approval since before Maggie Thatcher.

Anyway, i believe David Cameron will be ok at the end of all this because Prime ministers tend to be protected in case of a scandal of this magnitude. If the worst comes to the worst, they will get someone else to take the ''bullet'' but not the PM.

However, knowing little about British politics though I really care, I wonder if Murdoch's tabloids ever showed a partisan bias in the politicians whose misdeeds they exposed? The role of the media in a democracy is to expose government corruption. The media should be unbiased, but it normally isn't, and the solution to the problem is competition. Unfortunately, the USA and UK have allowed News Corp. and several other giant corporations (Time Warner, Viacom, Clear Channel, etc.) to dominate the market, more like Uganda which has allowed the Newvision Group of Companies to dominate the media for a long time. Newvision makes more money than anybody else in the country and they have banned their journalists from being regular participants on online forums particulary Ugandans At Heart(UAH).

One problem for the Murdochs is that they crossed the line as far as the Milly Dowler issue was concerned. When the phone tapping scandal was just celebs, football players and royals, the public figured it was just the sort of sleazy crap you expect from Murdoch and his minions. But when it came to light that they had hacked the phone of then-missing Milly Dowler in 2002, and deleted mail to her in order to permit room for more messages in hopes that something juicy would roll in, public fury erupted. The fact the mails were being deleted remotely gave the parents false hope that she was alive, and of course eliminated an unknown number of possible leads. Public fury to that there is about the same level as the reaction to the Casey Anthony trial in USA. This was followed by revelations that they hacked the phones of troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and relatives of victims on 7/7.

By the way, all rich men and women should endeavor to educate their children in better schools and universities because they can be handy when things go peer- shaped in future as it has happened with Mr. Murdoch or as it happened with former Managing Director of Greenland Bank, late Dr. Sulaiman Kiggundu. Mudoch's son sounded so brilliant throughout the hearing when answering questions on TV and I think the father should be proud of him.

Similarly, when Dr.Kiggundu died, I interacted a little bit with especially his eldest daughter, Milbert Kiggundu. She is my cousin but we are not really so close, but she sounds like such a very intelligent and lovely woman. I'm sure she and her brothers will one day make us remember Kiggundu in an entrepreneurial way if they put their brains into more good use.