system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
LI5: Can someone explain what's allegedly happened with Murdoch's phone hacking scandal, and why it's so important?

All I can gather is something about the integrity of newspapers and such. What's going on exactly?
gpt
Police were investigating a girl's murder. One small detail of the case was that her family insisted she was still alive (possibly run away, kidnapped, whatever) because phone records showed her voice mail was still being remotely checked regularly and some messages were even deleted.

It turns out a News of the World (one of Murdoch's companies) employee was the one checking the voice mail as a way to get story leads. Messages were deleted so the voice mail box wouldn't fill up, blocking new messages. Deleting those messages is destroying evidence and is terrible because even the tiniest clue can catch a murderer.

This catches the public's attention, more investigation is done and it comes out that this has happened several times before. Most notably, another Murdoch employee allegedly tried to grease palms with September 11th first responders to get info from cell phones in the same vein. This REALLY catches the public's attention.

So, the debate, if we can call it that, is whether or not it's ok for reporters to illegally access your phone messages, delete the ones that could possibly catch the person who murdered you, etc. And, that's only the thing they were *caught* doing.