The 'News of the World' scandal has exposed a self-serving agenda that threatens press freedom, writes DAVID ADAMS
ONLY SLIGHTLY less nauseating than the news-gathering methods of some News of the Worldjournalists has been the posturing of a bunch of high-profile hypocrites who have swarmed over UK radio and television during the past few weeks to express their horror and condemnation.
One cannot help but wonder where they were when the News of the World's stable mate, the Sun, was grotesquely misreporting the Hillsborough disaster. I refuse to repeat its obnoxious claims; blackening the name of a city and heaping enormous extra grief on the already distraught relatives, friends and fellow supporters of 96 innocent victims.
It seems as though no studio discussion on the hacking scandal is considered complete without an input from Tony Blair's former media henchman, ex-journalist Alistair Campbell. Notorious as a ruthless media manipulator when he was Blair's director of communications, Campbell assiduously courted Rupert Murdoch's News International for years – building particularly close relationships with reporters from the Sunand the News of the World.
Now we are led to believe that he despises everything that Murdoch has stood for. Among much else that happened on Campbell’s watch, we had the Blair government’s “dodgy dossiers” on Iraq and the subsequent suicide of media whistleblower, weapons expert Dr David Kelly, who rubbished the dossiers’ outlandish claims.
Yet all is forgotten as Campbell, a newly minted paragon of journalistic integrity, pontificates at length on how the press should behave. As I recall, neither British Labour leader Ed Miliband nor former deputy prime minister John Prescott ever complained about their party’s cosy relationship with Murdoch during Labour’s halcyon years in power. Yet both have been conspicuously to the fore in recent weeks, expressing concern that the News Corp chief may not be a “fit and proper” custodian of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
Miliband appeared not to have any such qualms about Murdoch as recently as three weeks ago, when he and members of his shadow cabinet were the media mogul’s guests at a swish London reception. Although this took place before it emerged that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile phone had been hacked, it could hardly be argued that Miliband and others were unaware of the activities of some Murdoch journalists.
The News of the Worldhas been under a cloud since 2006, when its then royal editor and a private investigator were arrested for hacking into the phone messages of members of the British royal household. The pair were later jailed for four months and six months respectively. After the arrests, it was discovered that the messages of innumerable celebrities, sports people and politicians had also been intercepted.
There isn’t even anything new in the contention that some London Metropolitan police officers were being paid to supply the newspaper with information. Former editor of the paper Andy Coulson admitted as much to a House of Commons select committee in 2009. Yet Miliband and his coterie still agreed to join Murdoch and his minions for drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
The actor Hugh Grant is another who has been popping up on programme after programme, prattling on about how absolutely outrageous were the invasions of privacy perpetrated by the newspaper. Right sentiments, but wrong messenger I’m afraid. Doubtless, Grant is partly motivated by revenge for the extensive and graphic coverage News International gave to his arrest in Los Angeles in 1995, which is somewhat understandable.
However, from some of his comments, one suspects he is exploiting the situation to lobby for the introduction of a privacy law. The same applies to another recently-omnipresent critic of the News of the World: the comedian, writer and actor Steve Coogan, whose past indiscretions were also the subject of much coverage by the Murdoch press.
You don’t have to be very perceptive to realise what a considerable boon a privacy law would be to those among the rich, famous and powerful who garner substantial rewards from exploiting a public image that bears little resemblance to the far less wholesome reality.
A privacy law would be the equivalent of granting diplomatic immunity to the types of reprobate who of late have sought refuge in the UK's so-called super-injunctions. For everyone else the existing legal framework provides protection enough, just so long as the law is rigorously applied – which, self-evidently, it wasn't in respect of the News of the World, the Sunand other Murdoch publications (and, as I believe will soon become clear, a few non-Murdoch and even non-UK titles).
Although I feel deeply for the majority of now-unemployed News of the Worldworkers who were guilty of nothing, I have absolutely no sympathy for Murdoch and his senior executives: let them sink or swim according to the law of the land.
However, it would be a grave mistake to alter the law of the land to the detriment of freedom of investigative journalism, at the behest of a gaggle of self-servers and political advantage-seekers, who appear to be exploiting public anger and disgust for their own ends.