Sarah Ellison in her Murdoch And The Vicious Circle in Vanity Fair says that News International in Britain was hacking into thousands of people’s private voice mails, paying off the police and had politicians dancing on a string.

This cartoon by Edward Sorel highlights the defensiveness of News Ltd in spite of the culture of denial within the organization.

The phone-hacking scandal has created a culture of paranoia amongst the British political class in that anyone in politics, government, or the media—anyone with even the tiniest toe in public life, and many ordinary people besides—now live in fear of having his or her privacy violated by one outlaw party or another.