Journalism’s Misdeeds Get a Glance in the Mirror

Imagine this chain of events: a division of a large multinational company is accused of a pattern of corporate misconduct that includes surveillance, hacking into phones and bribery of law enforcement officials. Dozens of employees are arrested over the course of a year, and seven are charged in one day with grievous criminal conduct. Add in that the company seeks to cover up its actions at every turn, in some cases reportedly bribing law enforcement officials, while some of its political opponents are singled out for surveillance and black ops. Let’s further stipulate that the company may just be the most visible perpetrator in an industry that has lost its way. It sounds improbable, like a John Grisham legal thriller about a corrupt law firm or a fast-and-loose brokerage house, but it actually happened at a newspaper company, of all things. If this happened in any other industry — the banking sector during the financial crisis, the oil companies after the BP spill, or Blackwater during the Iraq war — you would expect to see a full-court press by journalists seeking to shine a light on a corrupt culture allowed to run amok.