Fear and loathing: media accountability after the phone-hacking affair

Hackgate is the biggest scandal to engulf the mainstream press in decades. What started as a small bush fire News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and his private detective friend Glenn 'Trigger' Mulcaire being detained at Her Majesty's pleasure in 2007 for hacking illegally into the phones of the royal family and others � has become a forest fire destroying countless reputations (and the NoW itself) in its wake. The few hacked by NI in 2007 became nearly 6,000 in late 2011. Hackgate has also thrown the spotlight on the somewhat excessively close ties between the press, police and political elite � and raised countless questions about media standards and regulation.