Over the last three years there has been a mounting scandal over journalists at the News of the World hacking cell phones in the UK.

Rupert Murdoch, the guy who owned that rag, shut it down following the revelation that amongst the victims of the phone hacking was a young girl who had vanished.

She had been murdered, but her family, frantic to try and get ahold of her, didn’t know that because The News of the World kept deleting ther messages so more could fit in her inbox.

This was low even for the guy who owns Fox News, not because Murdoch isn’t slimy but because getting caught at this stage threatened his bid to take over BSkyB.

The thing is, reading through David Cameron’s speech on the subject, I see something kind of disturbing building up as a result.

You see there was a police investigation into the News of the World’s phone hacking before, and Cameron mentions that the cops may have gotten bribed. The current police investigation pretty much makes me think that some laws got broken here.

The law as it stands is thus not the problem. The problem the way I see it is that the law went unenforced due to corruption - but this is a golden opportunity that only an idiot of a politician would miss.

David Cameron isn’t an idiot.

These are the questions that need answering:

• Why did the first police investigation fail so abysmally?
• What exactly was going on at the News of the World?
• And what was going on at other newspapers?

The illegal action of one rag is going to act as a means to restrict all the other papers. This is the threat to the news industry presented by unethical press.

If we do not behave ethically then the time will come when laws will be made to enforce ethics, and politicians will make these laws with their own interests in mind.

And that is something we need to consider in South Africa – because News of The World makes one heck of a strong case for a press tribunal.