Tomorrow, the last copy of the News of the World will be printed, bringing to an end the 168-year history of the tabloid.

The News of the World has been rocked by a hacking and payoff scandal that has shocked the UK public to the core. It is understood that the paper used operatives to tap into the phones of missing Milly Dowler, later found dead, and hindered the police investigation. Relatives of Afghanistan veterans and bereaved families were also hacked and it was also understood to be standard practice to offer kickbacks to the police in exchange for information. Rupert Murdoch has pulled the plug on the venture, after legions of customers pulled their adverts as the publication’s credibility continued to nosedive.

The News of the World has long had a history of being outrageous, controversial, tabloid and sensational. But it was only in the last decade or so that the company crossed the line in more ways than one.

The newspaper was first published on 1 October 1843, in London by John Browne Bell. Priced at just three pence (equal to £1.04 today), it was the cheapest newspaper of its time and was aimed directly at the newly literate working classes. It quickly established itself as a purveyor of titillation, shock and criminal news. Much of the source material came from coverage of vice prosecutions, including transcripts of police descriptions of alleged brothels, streetwalkers, and “immoral” women.

But it was in 2007, when Andy Coulson (now spokesman of the British Prime Minister) resigned that News of the World first showed its true colours, in having tapped into the phone lines of members of the Royal Family.

Love it or hate it, it is indeed a shame to see that a publication will have to cease operations at a time when newspapers are going through a crisis of identity. At its height, in 1950, the News of the World had become the biggest-selling newspaper in the world with a weekly sale of 8,441,000 and individual editions sold over nine million copies. In 2010, it was still doing well, packed with adverts and with sales averaging 2,812,005 copies per week.

But just as citizens are demanding more in terms of transparency, accountability and morality from politicians, the same can be said of companies such as this. All the media have a role to play in society, those of Malta included.

Our role is to gather information, analyse it and disseminate it to the general public. But how far can one go in performing their duties? We understand that it is sometimes like trying to get blood out of a stone when seeking information, but hacking into people’s phones is simply unacceptable in any day or age.

Possibly hindering a police investigation to find a missing child, is criminal and deserved of only the highest punishment according to law. Murdoch was right to close down the publication, it is so caught up in its own web of deception and gutter style approach that it is now beyond redemption. Greed manifests itself in many ways, it does not only have to be money. In News of the World’s case, the greed was for the scandal, the scoop, the ‘story’.