Dear Ammonite,

There are several stages in the process of selecting the criminal. Only a proportion of crimes are detected, only a proportion of those detected are reported to the police, on;y a proportion of those reported lead to an arrest, only a proportion of arrests lead to prosecution, only a proportion of prosecutions lead to conviction, and only a proportion of convictions lead to imprisonment.

The chances of going from one stage to the next depend largely on two factors: the seriousness of the offense, and the social status of the offender.

According to several studies done in the US judges tend to take the social status of a convicted criminal into account before passing sentence, frequently reasoning that a higher-status offender has "already suffered" through damage to reputation and loss of employment. Although around approx. 70 percent of people convicted of crime offenses go to prison, about 60 percent of white-collar criminals receive no jail terms, and of those who are jailed, the great majority serve one year or less.

In part this discrepancy reflects the public fear of, and outrage at, crimes that are physically directed toward individuals or their property, but in part it also reflects the greater ability of high-status people to evade the full impact of the law.

Big business trusts its associations with the law, government and public complacency.

"There is also a significant matter of commercial interest being currently decided by the Gillard government — a $223 million contract for overseas broadcasting on the Australia Television channel, currently carried out by the ABC. Sky News, which is part-owned by Murdoch and pursues a typically News Limited style of political coverage, is also bidding for the tender. As Stephen Mayne pointed out this week, "it takes a certain level of chutzpah to simultaneously run an utterly biased campaign against the Government whilst sticking your hand out for a juicy government contract, but that’s News Ltd for you."

Richard Ackland writes that the British accusations are now so serious, and the police and government response so feeble, that "what is really needed is a judicial inquiry to see the extent to which the body politic has been poisoned by this and, maybe, by other media organisations. It should cover not just the extent of phone hacking but also the relationship between journalists, newspaper executives and politicians and the way important institutions such as the police and the Press Complaints Commission have been suborned."

The implications for Australian media and democracy may not at first blush seem as serious, but in fact they are identical. They are certainly bigger than questions about who gets a big contract for foreign broadcasting. At stake is nothing less than the democratic trust essential for ordinary citizens to believe and engage with news as it is reported.

News Limited here in Australia has long been understood to have a culture inimical to everyday understandings of democratic beliefs or professional ethics. The toxic culture of News Limited is alive and well in this country, much for the worse of our democracy. "

http://newmatilda.com/2011/07/08/murdochs-business-pox-democracy

Dear Ammonite,

The Age newspaper today - Saturday, 9th July 2011, had an excellent editorial on your question, "Where, Oh Where Does The Buck Stop?"
It was under the title, "A newspaper goes, but doubts live on."
It begins with the following:

"Severely infected limbs are sometimes amputated lest they threaten the life of the patient. James Murdoch - acting, it may be presumed, at the behest of his father, Rupert - yesterday applied that surgical model to the "News of the World," the Sunday tabloid at the centre of Britain's phone-hacking scandal. Mr Murdoch announced that tomorrow's edition of the 168-year-old newspaper would be the last. "The News Of The World," is in the business of holding others to account," he said.
"But it failed when it came to itself."

As The Age states - "Indeed it did." And it continues to point out that there has to be an independent inquiry into the matter and that "no one, however highly placed, evades being held to account. If this is not done, News International's credibility, already severely damaged, may be lost entirely."

Lexi

A lot of this insanity began as you pointed out, when a corporation was granted status as a person. Idiotic, another example of the authoritarianism that hides itself under the cloak called "libertarian". They're about as libertarian as the North Korean government.

Please consider:

"The battle we are in cannot be defined by the old categories. This is not an issue of Right versus Left, at least as those terms are defined by worn-out old cliches and beliefs. It is an issue of the individual versus unaccountable, irresponsible and infinitely powerful authority."

http://www.dogcanyon.org/2010/01/22/unaccountable-irresponsible-and-infinitely-powerful-authority/

"Ask yourself this question. If you had to persuade your community about political opinion X, but corporations opposed your view, would you stand a chance knowing that their “political speech” was worth much more than your political speech? The answer is obvious. Mere people have been thrown on the scrap heap. The U.S. Supreme Court is lifting corporations to the top of the evolutionary ladder."

http://www.dogcanyon.org/2010/01/21/u-s-supreme-court-makes-corporations-supreme-people-mere-monkeys/

On a very local level in one's own job have you kept quiet regarding safety issues, workplace bullying or inequitable wages because to speak out means losing your job?

In the 21st century, just disagreeing with someone who has even a little more power than you can lead to your voice being silenced. We hear a lot of rhetoric about individual rights and have less rights than we did at the end of WW2.

At the bottom of the corporate pyramid, workers are tied up in so much paperwork as to not be able to perform their jobs, for example, policing, nursing, teaching. In fact most jobs that involve the welfare of the average person are the least supported and first to go when a corporation or government is under threat.

Dear Ammonite,

We are on the same page with this issue. No argument from me here, as I've been pointing out in my posts with various explanations about the realities of life in the corporate world. Have you read the Editorial in Saturday's The Age?

The Age tells us: "Those whose privacy has been invaded could reasonably ask why the "News of the World's" journalists - most of
whom, Mr Murdoch onceded, were not even employed by the paper when the
worst abuses took place - appear to have been made scapegoats for those further up the hiererchy of "News International", and News Corp
Rebekah Brooks, who edited the paper in 2002, when Glen Mucaire hacked into and manipulated the voicemail of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, is now chief executive of "News International." Yet Ms Brooks has not been sacked and insists that she knew nothing of any criminal
activity. Mr Murdoch and his father have accepted her avowals, even though "News of the World" paid Mulcaire nearly $A150,000 a year..."

There are many questions that need answers in this case - and an
independent investigation needs to get to the bottom of it and as I stated in my previous post - no one, however highly placed, should be allowed to evade being held to account. But again as I also indicated previously - I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Lexi

The ruthless expediency of Murdoch was the catalyst for this topic. However, I am interested in creating awareness that for every Newsworld violation of people's lives, there remain plenty of other corporations beneath the public radar, acting legally yet free of any ethical constraints.

I can't solve all the world's problems, nor can any single person.

Constant vigilance, my friend.