It is easy to mistake Rupert Murdoch for Emperor Palpatine, and he certainly leads a pretty evil Empire.
The media mogul has been in the hot seat over a scandal that has rocked Britain and sent shock waves across the Atlantic and to the U.S.
In case you missed the “anarchy in the U.K.,” as Christiane Amanpour put it, here is the run down.
It was uncovered that The News of the World, a British tabloid owned by Murdoch, hacked into the private voicemails of everyone from celebrities to the families of British soldiers killed in Iraq to families of 9/11 victims.
As if that wasn't bad enough, The News of the World had been paying the police to help them track cell phones and keep quiet about what was going on.
Rebekah Brooks, the (now former) editor of the paper resigned Friday, caving in to public pressure just more than a week after saying she will not step down.
Things are not looking good for Murdoch, and not just because he lost one of many lucrative media outlets.
Murdoch wields, or did wield, massive political influence in Britain; the former editor of The News of the World, Andy Coulson, was British Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications — he resigned in January and was arrested Friday morning in relation to the phone hacking investigation.
This has destroyed the influence Murdoch had in the U.K.
But what does this mean for the U.S.? Do we even need to care? Britain is a long way away after all.
This incident is indicative of the type of journalism that is becoming the norm; journalism that is controlled, owned and manufactured to cater to a certain audience, without giving a thought to ethics or the privacy of individuals.
Murdoch has made his millions by giving people not what they need, but what they want. Truth and editorial integrity have become less important than biased, misleading, narrow-focused and selective reporting. As long as your story is juicy enough, who cares where the information came from, or who was hurt in process.
If anyone noticed, Fox News has not touched this story. Now, I understand the opinion shows not covering this, but no one on Fox wants to do this story. Fox News is owned by Murdoch's company, News International, in case you were wondering.
What The News of the World did is disgusting. They invaded the privacy of thousands of individuals — there were at least 4,000 incidents of hacking — and made a mockery of journalistic integrity.
The phone hacking went on under Brooks' nose, and it is becoming more and more apparent that she sanctioned it.
Brooks is Murdoch's protégé. He knew this was happening, and he turned a blind eye. This man, who allowed a newspaper he owned to delete the voicemails of a missing girl, giving her family hope she was still alive, is the most powerful man in media.
It scares me to think that someone with a flagrant disregard for ethics, or even common human decency, has one of the world's largest media empires.
If he allowed this to happen, it implies an institutionalized lack of integrity, and that is something that must be stopped.
Murdoch's empire needs to be broken up or better managed, otherwise this type of invasion is going to become commonplace.
This is a hard time for journalism — that I know. The world is moving faster, and it is challenging for newspapers to stay relevant when stories come and go in less than 24 hours. But losing the trust of the public will do more harm than Twitter ever could.
Allowing Murdoch to go unpunished for what his company did sends a very dangerous message to other media moguls: do what you like, make as much money as you can, and never mind the consequences.
