Vultures

I've not been to bothered about the phone hacking of the News of the World up until know. Although it's wrong it hardly seemed that important in the grand scheme of things plus I figured that if public figures were too stupid to secure their phone messages then they were idiots, but this is disgusting:

The lawyer for the family of a murdered schoolgirl accused one of Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloids of a lack of humanity after claims that the paper had hacked her voicemail while she was the subject of a missing person’s hunt in 2002.

Mark Lewis, lawyer for the parents of the late Milly Dowler, said they had been told by police that a private detective acting for the newspaper had not only hacked into her mobile phone but had deleted messages, falsely raising hopes that the teenager was still alive.

It's not so much the hacking- deplorable though that is- but the deleting messages that rankles. Not only could it have jeapordised a murder investigation, the messages were presumably sent by people who loved her and were leaving heartfelt messages begging her to come home safely- and the journalists and investigators responsible decided they had a right to trash them.

The culture of reporting at the News of the World seems to have been deeply corrupt.