Phone Hacking: Is it our fault?

Recently the media has been ablaze with the stories of the News of the World and other newspapers, hacking the phones and email accounts of countless “important people” aka celebrities. The dirt has already been dished and it’s morally inept to say that Rebecca Brooks and Piers Morgan don’t deserve everything they have coming to them. But after all the anger of the situation has subsided and the dust has settled, one question will remain: Are we to blame?

In all fairness, we didn’t give the go ahead to hack Milly Dowler’s phone and give her parents false hope, nor did we hack the voicemail of illustrious Prince Harry, but did we in some way indirectly partake in the action? Take a moment to think about this; tabloids have created an industry and a product based upon exposing secrets and sex which mass consumers have bought into. Take ‘The Sun’ for example, if they got rid of page 3, would it still be commercially viable?

Calm down, I’m not pointing the finger at you. We’ve all landed on the Daily Mail’s website and perused the bullshit entertainment they provide whether we want to admit it or not. The problem here isn’t one of accountability, it’s one of complicity. Essentially, tabloids have become a form of Orwell’s ‘Big brother’ for the average Joe, and we have become counterparts in consuming this product. It’s not much different to the case of the NSA and GCHQ hacking our own personal emails. Imagine with all that data they gathered they started publishing a newspaper, exposing your secret lives; there would be a riot. So why is it different when it is celebrities? One reason. One big economic reason. We demand it.

Rupert Murdoch and his gang have created a product and we’ve bought into it. As consumers, even we know that what sells any product is a bit of sex, some scandal and definitely a bit of lying. So to that effect, as editor of one of these papers, you better be doing your very best to make sure you uncover some dirt for tomorrows headline lest you want to be given your marching orders.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t empathise or morally condone anything that was done. It’s pretty ignorant at best, downright stupid at worst. But when we look at it from an economic standpoint, as we do everything nowadays, you can see how they had to uncover the most secret of secrets to improve their own financial standings.

In essence, if we didn’t care so much about Prince Harry’s latest foray or any other footballer’s dirty dealings, would these things really happen? The answer is a resounding no. Will this stop anything? Again, a resounding no. Why, you ask. That’s easy: humans are curious, always have been always will be. Let’s just try and be a bit more curious about something more important than the girl from TOWIE’s left breast and we might get somewhere. 

By Viren Samani (@VirenSamani1)