This blog post was contributed by Sorcha Miller, a Birkbeck student from the Department of Media and Cultural Studies.
In his Orwell Lecture at Birkbeck, Alan Rusbridger talked about a vacuum of 18 months in connection to the widespread phone hacking phenomenon at News International. That is, roughly 18 months passed before anything happened about NI’s obvious widespread invasion of thousands of people’s privacy, their regular usage of blackmail and intimidation. All that was revealed by the Guardian, but was ignored by all relevant Government bodies. Nothing happened, nothing changed. NI still owned 40% of the British Media, was about to own more, and one of the former NI executives, under whose nose many questionable things happened, was the Prime Minister’s head of communication. In the meantime the Guardian kept coming up with the goods, the details and the filth. Despite the Sun attacking the Guardian’s investigation, senior policemen trying to convince Mr Rusbridger to stop pursuing the story, and persecution of journalists involved.
