Eavesdropping on voice mails ‘perfectly acceptable,’ says former NOTW journalist

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“Phone hacking is a perfectly acceptable tool given the sacrifices we make, if all we are trying to do is get to the truth,” Paul McMullan told a British parliamentary committee looking into practices of the British press. He defended the journalists who eavesdropped on Milly Dowler’s voice mail messages, saying “our intentions were honourable” and that the police were incompetent. The Guardian’s Nick Davies said News of the World journalists deleted Dowler’s voice mails, not private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. “I don’t think this is an industry which is interested or capable of self-regulation,” Davies said. || Related: The Guardian’s live blog of the day’s testimony | Why the Guardian’s Nick Davies paid child prostitutes for information (Poynter.org)