NYT reports that a 3rd British journalist has been arrested for phone-hacking voice mail messages of British celebrities and royalty. All 3 journalists were from the tabloid, "The News of the World," so we could be thinking, ok tabloids, their employees obviously have lower standards and virtually no journalistic integrity. And this is in Europe so we could fall back on our patriotism and say Americans don't rely as heavily on tabloids for their news and our journalists wouldn't sink so low. But as the Times article points out this tabloid is, "one of Britain's most widely circulated newspapers." So people are getting their news from there as opposed to more prestigious publications just like many people get their news from blogs and The Daily Show today.
This provokes us to ask several probing questions: Aside from obviously illegal activities such as these British journalists were caught doing, how low can standards be set for such "news" sources? Some of these like Jon Stewart don't consider themselves "real news" so he can escape from such standards and restrictions and really get to the heart of the matter. But conversely like the British journalists, if these news sources don't have restrictions they could really begin to infringe upon people's privacy. What do you think? Do you think these "news" sources need some standards set?
Fact of the matter is Tabloids don't have and don't need reliable sources. They fabricate stories or blow things out of proportion all the time. The fact that they were phone-tapping is definitely not okay and sub-par system of getting information. In theory, there should be standards set for these types of news sources, but at the same time, that is not their role or purpose. These newspapers are written and printed solely to be lucrative and attention getting. It is also on the readers and consumers to know this and know not to believe or trust everything they read or to make sure what they read is accurate. It's no secret that tabloids usually aren't true.
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