The Tables Are Turned on Murdoch

[Commentary] You have to love the fact that when John Yates resigned as the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London -- a k a Scotland Yard -- he complained about the “huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed and, on occasion, downright malicious gossip” that had finally forced his hand. My first thought was: He didn't really say that, did he? My second thought was: Can any human being truly be that unaware?

When the writers and editors of the late, unlamented News of the World were busy bribing Mr. Yates’s police officers, what they wanted in return was -- gosh! -- malicious gossip. When they were hacking the phones of royal family members and murdered teenagers, they were seeking, you know, malicious gossip. When the recently arrested Rebekah Brooks called Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, to tell him that Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, which she then edited, was about to reveal that his infant child had cystic fibrosis -- information that Brown is convinced came from a hacked phone message -- she was telling him the paper was going to print a piece of gossip that a more humane institution would have let pass. She might not have viewed this as malicious, but the Brown family certainly did. Let’s be honest here. There is something undeniably rich about seeing the tables turned like this.