US and UK journalism are different. But they’re going to get a lot more similar

‘Will Lewis combines two qualities that Jeff Bezos will need if he is going to either turn around or offload the Post.’ Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

When I first joined Columbia Journalism School as a faculty member in the sweltering summer of 2010, the joke was that I had been recruited to help instill “the high ethical standards of British journalism” in the student body. I opened with this in my introductory lectures and it always raised a laugh.

Around that time, the Guardian was breaking story after story about news organizations, particularly the Murdoch-owned News of the World, hacking private phones to access information. The Guardian’s investigations often met a muted response from the rest of the British press, which felt that phone-hacking was a scandal “hidden in plain sight”; everyone was aware of tabloid tactics, if not directly using them.