On the other hand, much of what happened there was more typical of British journalism than specifically of Murdoch's News Corp. I'd guess most people here in the U.S. don't understand that the ground rules for journalism in the U.K. are different than the rules in the U.S.
U.S. journalism, for all of its leaning to the left, is considerably more honorable than its cousin in the U.K. "Freedom of the press" is Constitutionally protected here but not there.
In the U.S. we compartmentalize celebrity stories into one set of publications and "real news" stories into another set. Respectable papers in the U.K. read like a mixture of a real newspaper and People magazine or National Inquirer.
If reporters in the U.K. do underhanded things to chase stories, it shouldn't surprise us. Often times their stories are the prose equivalent of paparazzi's photos. If those ethics bleed over into the writing of serious news stories, for the same papers that run the celebrity stories, it is no wonder.
To the extent that people in the U.K. are upset about the issue, it is because they have just learned that paparazzi ethics have leaked over into their hard news stories. Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, they are shocked, shocked ... but they shouldn't be.
