Hacking Hacks and the Cops, Readers and Pols Who Looked the Other Way

Holman Jenkins on the News Corp hacking scandal.

Had police pursued obvious wrongdoing and jailed a few journalists back in 1999, a lot fewer British citizens would have been victims of privacy invasions. Those who've likened the hacking scandal to Britain's Watergate are onto something. After the Watergate break-in, behavior that had been tolerated, routine and abetted by official agencies became, overnight, untolerated and prosecuted. Remember, it was the FBI's No. 2, blowing a whistle on his own agency, who played "Deep Throat" to the press.

It would never occur to me to hack into someone's phone messages to get information for a news story. But if somebody else hacked into somebody's phone messages and found out some juicy interesting stuff, I admit I'd probably read it.

I've recently come to the opinion that journalists ought to come with warning labels. But then so should just about everybody.