Murdoch Is Served (17)

As Nick Davies, the Guardian man who has been ferreting around ceaselessly after Rupe’s troops and their involvement in phone hacking, put it in his excellent Flat Earth News, “dog doesn’t eat dog”. The Fourth Estate, generally, keeps schtum about those of its members whose activity strays beyond the boundaries of lawful investigation.

So Davies has had a less than straightforward passage in his attempts to nail the story. Moreover, because the first casualty might be Young Dave’s new head spinmeister Andy Coulson, former editor of the Screws, many of a right of centre persuasion have convinced themselves that this is a “non story”.

But things may be about to change: the New York Times has now picked up on Phonehackgate and is running the story in its magazine this week. And their piece concludes that Rupe’s troops at the Screws, far from keeping their heads down, are still happily hacking away.

There have been the usual denials from News Corp., and the characteristic attempts to put the NYT story down to the activities of a rival media outfit. But they do things differently in the USA: the thought of other media outlets keeping quiet does not enter. The HuffPo Media section has already linked prominently to the NYT story.

There will be more on this. And it may come sooner rather than later.