The News of the World Phone Hacking Scandal from Business Ethics and CSR Point of View
Date: 21 June 2012
Executive Summary
The focus of the project you’re about to read is on the recently phone hacking scandal of famous UK News agency, - The News of The World. The report include a brief explanation of what has happened based on pre-selected online articles, analysis of the scandal from Business Ethics point of view by using various CSR theories discussed during the CSR course in period four and provides conclusion and recommendations on what could have been done.
The research is built on identification of the moral problem identification, analysis of the scandal, optional actions which could have been taken to avoid the…show more content… However when it was revealed in July 2011, that the phones of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s , relatives of deceased military members, victims of the 7/7 London bombings and some of the 9/11 victims were also accessed. As a result of those unethical actions a public outcry against News Corporation and owner Rupert Murdoch culminated. (UK: BBC. (2011). News of the World to close amid hacking scandal. Available: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733. Last accessed 14 June 2012.)
Even though the public relatively calmed down after the company was closed, the anti-Murdoch and anti-News Corp. protests culminated once again after the owner of the company announced that they are planning to start a new newspaper agency by hiring the same staff under different name.
1. Stakeholder Analysis
2.1. Who acted and who had to act?
Phone hacking scandal covered multi level stakeholders.
The following were the major stakeholders:
In this case the main responsible stakeholders were the News Corp Management, Richard Murdoch; - the owner of the company and the British Government/monitoring institutions within the government. These stakeholders were legally responsible for making it sure that the newspaper was operating within the legal borders.
Once the company was suspected for its fraud activities the governmental institutions did their job by starting an investigation
