This week's Family Dinner Table Talk, from HuffPost and The Family Dinner book:
This week, the 168-year-old weekly British tabloid New Of The World shut down amidst a huge scandal and police investigation involving possibly 4,000 people whose phones were hacked by the paper. In April 2011, after various allegations, the tabloid admitted to listening to subject's voicemail messages. Some of the people who were hacked included families of bombing victims and the phone of missing schoolgirl, later found to have been murdered. Most shockingly, the hackers deleted voicemail messages of the girl while she was missing, giving her family false hope that she was still alive.
The former editor of the paper has now been arrested. The scandal raises many concerns about privacy and questionable tactics employed by the media to gather information.
Should the top editors at the paper be held responsible for what happened under their watch? Is there any way for the perpetrators to fix what they have done? What can the media learn from this scandal? Will it affect journalism going forward? How would you feel if people hacked into your phone or email? What do you think compelled News Of The World to hack into people's phones in the first place?
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