Ethics and Corruption at News International Essay - 3

Ethics and Corruption at News International - Essay Example d in 2005 when Clive Goodman wrote an article at News of the World stating that a member of the Royal Family, Prince William borrowed a portable editing suite from Tom Bradby, a correspondent from ITV. There were no other people who were aware of it except for Prince William and Tom Bradby and figured it was likely that their voicemails must have been illegally tapped. An investigation followed headed by Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police that led to search of News of the World London office where they found voice mail accounts belonging to Prince William’s aides that included Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton. Clive Goodman and his associate Glenn Mulcaire were later arrested by the Metropolitan Police and were charged with tapping the telephones of the royal family which is a criminal offence under section 79 of the  Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (The National Archives). Both plead guilty of the charge and were sentenced to four and six months in jail. During a July 2011 investigation, it was revealed that the phone tapping were not only limited to the Royal Family and other public figures but also included the relatives of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the victims of the July 7 London bombings. The Metropolitan Police also estimated that there may be 4,000 possible targets from the documents they seized from News of the World Today (BBC News 2011a) Further investigation revealed that moneys were paid to police between  £20,000 to  £30,000 in exchange for information that News International would published as confirmed by a former Scotland Yard chief (Chapman 2011). These incidents of phone tapping and police bribery revealed the extent of unethical practice in the journalism industry in the UK that resulted in a public outcry against New International’s insensitivity for the already aggrieved victims of crimes and its total disregard of ethical propriety in obtaining information. The News International case also