there is widespread public revulsion in the uk over the shockingly unethical and illegal tactics deployed by rupert murdochs masscirculated 27 million weekly tabloid news of the world india has seen its share of controversies over phone tapping niira radia and bugging the finance ministers office but unlike notw the media here has not been responsible for such clandestine operations indeed the indian media comes off as sober and responsible compared to the cutthroat stopatnothing aggression of british tabloids when a tabloid hacks into the phone of a 13yearold murdered girl it has only one objective to exploit grief and rupert murdochowned news of the world to be shut down this sunday had mastered the art of exposing the private realm of the individual it was unabashedly intrusive and along with the other murdoch owned redtop the sun had given tabloid journalism a whole new dimension no wonder the british parliament voiced its concern over tabloid culture in general when it launched a scathing criticism of notws reporting tactics on thursday and it was not just the teenaged girl milly dowlers 2002 abduction and murder that caught the interest of the newsgatherers in notw the phonehackers eavesdropped on conversations of families mourning the loss of their loved ones in the london train bombing of july 5 2005 just as they did with the families of troops killed in the wars in iraq and afghanistan sorrow had acquired a new meaning in the notw lexicon and it engaged private investigators to help hack into the targeted phones and lay bare what is extremely private and intimate before its readers as one blogger said the notw had begun dealing with the pornography of grief these are newsgathering practices that are unheard of in india where journalism techniques have not trespassed into private affairs beyond sting operations in recent times there has been furore over tapping of lobbyist niira radias phone the tapping however had not been done at the behest of the media similarly allegations of the finance minister pranab mukherjees office being bugged had nothing to do with news operations the notw would have probably got away despite public revulsion if it had only eavesdropped but there were other charges which suggested flouting of much more than privacy laws for instance it had paid police officers money to acquire information that amounted to bribing public officials no wonder former editor andy coulson was being pursued by investigators for some time now it is also the allegation of having interfered with a murder investigation thats got notw in deep trouble and it appears that the newspaper had enough interest to interrupt the probe it had permitted two murder suspects to use the newspapers leased assets which include photographers and vans to spy on detective chief superintendant david cook the two men private investigators jonathan rees and sid fillery were suspected of murdering their former partner daniel morgan 15 years ago and were linked to the paper not that the