Foreign Correspondent: July 12

The UK’s phone hacking scandal and the demise of the News of the World tabloid is causing ripples throughout international media cricles.

Late last year Foreign Correspondent investigated the scandal in the story, “Allo’,’ Allo ‘Allo.” Now as the scandal spins wider it returns to the story in “What a Shocker!” from reporter: Eric Campbell

Paul McMullan was once a senior editor with News of the World and late last year he became one of the few to confess to a practice long suspected to be rampant among his paper’s reporting staff. He told us he regularly hacked into the mobile phone message banks of celebrities, listened to the recordings and turned anything he thought interesting or – even better – scandalous into scoops for his racy tabloid.

But in recent weeks it’s been revealed the practice went way beyond entertainers, sports stars and even politicians. News of The World reporters hacked into the message bank of a murdered teenager (even deleting messages in the hope of getting more), the phones of servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and even fished around in the private phone messages of victims killed in the London Tube terror attacks.

The latest revelations instantly transformed a story about grubby celebrity stalking into a sickening and sordid one that has shocked the British public, shaken the political and business establishment and dramatically rocked the tectonic plates under Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire.

Murdoch and his son James have shut down the big circulating News Of the World, former editor Andy Coulson – until recently media advisor to British PM David Cameron has been arrested and speculation is intensifying about who knew what about the widespread practice and how high that knowledge reached.

As the scandal spins ever wider Foreign Correspondent’s Eric Campbell rejoins the drama from the revelations of our 2010 story to the explosive new developments testing one of the world’s most powerful men, scorching the son who’s taking the reins and threatening one of the biggest media deals on the planet – and Murdoch’s bid to gobble up all of the big TV money-spinner BSkyB.

It airs at 8pm Tuesday on ABC1.