Publication Date
2014
Abstract
In July 2011, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that journalists and private investigators working for Rupert Murdoch's tabloid News of the World had hacked into the mobile phone messages of teenage murder victim Milly Dowler after her reported abduction in 2002, thereby giving her parents and friends the false hope that she had accessed her phone and was still alive. While journalistic "dark arts"-such as phone hacking, covert surveillance, blagging had been used by the British tabloid press vis-A-vis celebrities and public persons for some time without triggering much press interest or public outrage, the Dowler story enraged the entire British public, regardless of class or newspaper preference. The results of the phone-hacking scandal included the closure of the News of the World; the payment by News Corporation, the tabloid's parent, of almost $400 million in settlements and litigation fees resulting from private civil actions brought by phone-hacking victims; continuing prosecutorial inquiries into the activities of other tabloid newspapers; the commencement of criminal trials against high-profile tabloid editors; and Prime Minister David Cameron's appointment of Lord Justice Brian Leveson to conduct a wide-ranging independent public inquiry into the culture, practices, and ethics of the newspaper industry in Britain.
Recommended Citation
Levi, Lili
(2014)
"Journalism Standards and "The Dark Arts": The U.K.'s Leveson Inquiry and the U.S. Media in the Age of Surveillance,"
Georgia Law Review: Vol. 48:
No.
3, Article 11.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/glr/vol48/iss3/11