A cura di @NedCuttle21(Ulm).

In un longform pubblicato sul Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, ripercorrendo le tappe della sua carriera giornalistica, cerca di far luce sulle cause alla base del crollo, in seno all’opinione pubblica, della fiducia nei mass media tradizionali, per riottenere la quale sarebbe necessario, secondo l’autore, puntare su un giornalismo, di qualità, slegato da logiche di mercato. Rusbridger si sofferma in particolare sul lavoro d’indagine, condotto dal collega Nick Davies, sullo scandalo riguardante il settimanale News of the World, che vide a suo tempo alcuni giornalisti impiegati nell’impero editoriale di Rupert Murdoch, tra cui lo stesso direttore di News of the World, Andy Coulson – dimessosi nel 2007, dopo l’arresto di un suo collega, e divenuto in seguito, ai tempi dell’inchiesta di Nick Davies, responsabile della comunicazione del premier conservatore David Cameron – implicati in uno sgradevole caso di intercettazioni telefoniche e violazioni di email perpetrate ai danni di alcuni membri dello staff di Buckingham Palace e di altre personalità del mondo della politica, dello sport e dello spettacolo; attività che sarebbe stata funzionale allo sviluppo di un giornalismo scandalistico, di bassa qualità ma certamente profittevole, per coprire la quale tangenti onerose, dietro la regia degli stessi Murdoch, sarebbero finite nelle tasche di corrotti funzionari pubblici.

By early 2017 the world had woken up to a problem that, with a mixture of impotence, incomprehension and dread, journalists had seen coming for some time. News, the thing that helped people understand their world, that oiled the wheels of society, that pollinated communities, that kept the powerful honest – news was broken. The problem had many different names and diagnoses. Some thought we were drowning in too much news; others feared we were in danger of becoming newsless. Some believed we had too much free news; others, that paid-for news was leaving behind it a long caravan of ignorance. On this most people could agree: we were now up to our necks in a seething, ever churning ocean of information, some of it true, much of it wrong. There was too much false news, not enough reliable news. There might soon be entire communities without news, or without news they could trust. How did we get here? And how could we get back to where we once belonged?

In un’intervista pubblicata nell’agosto del 2014 sul quotidiano canadese The Star, il reporter Nick Davies parla della sua inchiesta.

Nick Davies is the British investigative reporter who uncovered the illegal behaviour of journalists working for Rupert Murdoch. He discovered that reporters and editors at the News of the World, and the private eyes they’d hired, were tapping into voicemails and hacking into emails of Royal Family members, British movie stars, politicians and members of Scotland Yard. Davies discloses the shameful facts in Hack Attack: The Inside Story of How the Truth Caught up with Rupert Murdoch. The most disturbing revelations detail how chummy Rupert and his son James were with those in power and how easily they were able to affect policy-making and business practices in the U.K.

Immagine da Flickr.