The Bureau recommends: Independent phone hacking leader
The Bureau recommends a leader editorial in the Independent on the latest allegations in the phone hacking scandal.
It is alleged that in 2002 an investigator, working on behalf of the News of the World, hacked into the voicemails of the missing Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the private messages of the parents of the murdered Soham children, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
The Independent’s editorial sets out in plain terms why, if found to be true, these allegations represent a step change in the severity of the case.
The paper says that while “those with a vested interest in downplaying the phone-hacking story felt able to argue that it was not a matter of great concern to the general public” concerning only “a few celebrities and politicians”, this argument no longer carries any weight at all.
The hacking of the personal phones of a dead girl and bereaved parents, the paper says, “was not only a disgusting intrusion into the privacy of anxious private families; in the Dowler case it interfered with an urgent police investigation”.
In a world where so many papers have possible secrets to hide when it comes to these sorts of practices, it is good to see the Independent nailing its colours to the mast.
