Second Shoe Drops in Fleet Street Phone-Hacking Scandal

The long-running Fleet Street phone-hacking scandal took a fresh and ominous turn today, when prosecutors said they were charging two former editors at Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, and one current reporter, with paying public officials for stories, including stories about the royal family, a practice the prosectuors say amounted to bribery and corruption. Coming on top of the phone-hacking allegations that have been levelled at some of the same journalists, today’s development confirms that the British authorities are aggressively targeting another covert and disreputable but long-established tabloid practice—checkbook journalism involving payments to government employees.

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