Is Phone Hacking Acceptable?

One of the world’s oldest publication that has been surviving up till the millennium, News of the World has been under fire for hacking to phones of their subject of preference, depending on the article they would like to cover, for the sake of getting private information from these people. The reporter or hired private investigator would call the subject, and proceed to enter a four digit pin to access the voice mail. Some hackers go to the extent of requesting the call carriers for assistance resetting PINs for the authentic users of the phone just so that they can access their voice mails. 

The information that they had retrieved were quite private, as they involved the information of those who were victims of murder, family members of terrorists attacks as well as fallen soldiers. The police are being suspected of taking bribes to provide secret information to these panel of hackers.

Phone hacking not an ethical resolution to retrieving information

Despite the popular belief that journalists should report things as they are with no intentions of hiding anything from their readers, it is crucial for them to understand that this doesn’t translate to having to invade the privacy of these subjects. Personally, I feel that it is ethically wrong to retrieve information in such a way as it can be viewed upon as stealing information instead of the traditional way of interview and report.

Over the years, many journalists have been termed the 'street of shame' and seen as 'low culture' due to their sensationalised method of reporting news as well as the methods that have been approached to retrieve information (Keeble, R 2009). Invasion of privacy has always been a staple issue in the world of journalism since the 1700's. However, does this mean that such behavior should be acceptable to the society?

As opposed to ethics of medicine or ethics of law, journalism has a strong influence on nurturing the public opinion on various topics (Iggers 1999). Publishing private information that may come as a shock to the audience may actually garner the public idea that revealing such data is alright and may actually harm the mindsets of the society. Shock journalism might be great for the industry as it costs much lesser than official methods of retrievening information and can be a hit amongst readers (Wisdom 2011)


REFERENCES

Keeble, R 2009, 'Dumbing Down or Dumbing Up' from 'Ethics for Journalists', Routledge, United States, pp. 159-160

Iggers 1999, from 'How Journalists Talk About Ethics' from 'Good News Bad News', WestView Press, United States, pp. 15

Wisdom 2011, Shock and Awe Journalism, online, viewed 15th November from http://www.wisdomismisery.com/2011/03/24/guest-blogger-2/shock-and-awe-journalism-how-we-feed-the-panic-machine/