It’s not possible to write a blog this week without mentioning the News Corporation phone hacking scandal.

There’s a few of us at Ideas Shop who have worked for Murdoch papers, both in New Zealand and   overseas.  None of us experienced phone hacking I’m pleased to say.  But we did experience the Murdoch phenomena and its effect on how we went about our jobs.

In Murdoch’s overseas publications, his presence was undeniable and palpable in a way that none of us experienced under different owners at other Fleet Street papers, on other publications, or even the media in New Zealand when they were owned by Murdoch. Except, perhaps, for the old pension fund misappropriater, Robert Maxwell – yes, we’ve worked for him too!

Murdoch’s uncompromising  desire to succeed, whatever the cost, has had an undeniably profound effect on the journalism in his media outlets. 

Even in the height of the story, his own publications are struggling with how to cover the story. Those that would ordinarily be dismembering any other media mogul for similar actions are only nipping around the edges.  Even the venerable publication the Wall Street Journal (acquired by Murdoch in 2007 and considered the jewel in the News Corporation crown) is grappling with how to bite the hand that feeds it. 

A "special committee" at that paper, set up "to oversee the continued editorial integrity of the Journal and its sister organisation, Dow Jones Newswires" when News Corporation took over, has just criticised the WSJ’s coverage of the phone-hacking scandal, calling it too slow, and slamming the paper for an interview with Rupert Murdoch it characterised as not being tough enough.

And it just keeps coming. The cover-up is proving to be more damaging than the crime. Each day's news brings a fresh harvest of investigative journalism, with the Guardian playing the role that the Washington Post did in the '70s, the New York Times lapping at its heels and the BBC raking up several decades of archival footage to add some sauce to the story.

The suspense continues to be how far all this will go?  What damage will the allegations of police corruption do, and will Prime Minister David Cameron's appointing the British equivalent of Roger Ailes as his press secretary bring down Cameron's government? Has News Corp - an American company - violated American laws and made its executives susceptible to US prosecution? Will shareholder panic fracture the Murdoch family's grip on the company? And ultimately will Murdoch, like Nixon, fall or rise again?

It’s like something between All The President’s Men and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.  

And if that is all too much, we can always speculate on the casting for The Movie.  What do we think? Lucy Liu as Wendi, Geoffrey Rush as Rupert Murdoch and Colin Firth as Hugh Grant? Or is that descending to a similar low?