As an adjunct to my colleague John Amato's piece in C&L today, I ran across two items regarding this rapidly developing story no one seems to know anything about over here, and one which no doubt will have cautious eyes peering over our own Media shortly. One via last week's Media Watch podcast from The Guardian and another from April 18th of this year via ABC Radio National Australia's PM newcast.

Both concern the issue of reporters from Rupert Murdoch's tabloid paper News Of The World hacking of cell-phones and e-mails and the Government's investigation over breaches of security, issues of privacy and the rash of smear campaigns over the past ten or so years directly attributable to them.

As was pointed out in Amato's piece, there is a certain tight-lipped air when it comes to matters concerning the Fourth Estate. But how much of this is investigative journalism and how much is a malicious manipulation in order to shade a story for a desired outcome?

It would seem in recent years that the Code of Ethics (written or unwritten) has gone largely in the trash in favor of doing damage, no matter the cost. And the aspect of "fast and loose with facts", solely the domain of tabloid newspapers, has gotten securely into mainstream media.

One of the interesting aspects of the Guardian Podcast is an interview with Piers Morgan. As host of his own CNN show, he also had the distinction of being an editor at News Of The World. And his defense of his former employer in the midst of these allegations points up to the fact that, what was once a newspaper problem, is now very much a media problem in general.

So to get you somewhat up to speed, and as a supplement to the C&L article, here is the Guardian Podcast excerpt from June 10th and below that is the ABC Radio National report from April 18th.

And the odds are you will probably not hear anything about this on the Evening news.