Crisis of trust – 2 ONORA O’NEILL
Sauce for the gander
Journalists constantly champion transparency in politics and commerce but have been reluctant to apply those same standards to their own profession. That must change, argues a leading advocate of the importance of trust in a just society
newspapers I can’t stand.” The debacle at the News of the World repeatedly reminds me of her pithy ambivalence. The debate that is swirling around us raises classic questions about combining press freedom with adequate media standards that help rather than obstruct public trust. Already we can see battle lines being drawn about ways in which media stand ards are to be secured in the future. Determining the proper shape of media freedom for the future will take a lot longer than starting to deal with past crimes and abuses. Dealing with the past is not easy, but it is under way. Phone hacking done by, or on behalf of, the News of the World was not occa- sional, was not directed “only” at a few celebrities and public figures. Rather, it was done “on an industrial scale”, targeting indi- viduals who could not conceivably count as
O
WHEN THENews of the Worldwas launched in 1843, it proudly proclaimed: “Our motto is the truth, our practice is the fearless advo- cacy of the truth.” That may have been the motto, but the menu targeting the newly lit- erate working class consisted of titillation in the form of stories culled from the coverage of court cases, mainly involving prostitutes and including vivid police descriptions of unseemly behaviour never before served up along with the fried eggs and mugs of tea at Sunday breakfast. It was a recipe that appealed to the taste of the masses, even if over the years the paper managed consistently to offend the social mores of the day and cause disquiet bordering on horror among the great and the good, who made sure they destroyed their copies after reading in case they fell into the hands of the servants. Yet it wasn’t the great and the good that brought about the News of the World’s downfall. Ultimately it had its throat cut because it failed to realise that even the proletariat is not immune from disgust.
6 | THE TABLET | 16 July 2011
ne of the characters in Tom Stoppard’s play Night and Day explains to a young journalist: “I’m with you on the free press. It’s the
public figures, often at times of high distress. Unsurprisingly there is little dissent about dealing decisively with past crimes and abuse. Already the second police inquiry into phone hacking has moved into high gear. There have been arrests, and it is clear that criminal charges are likely to be brought against journalists and the hackers who fed their habits, and against police officers who abused their office by providing or selling information. It is also clear that police officers may face disciplinary charges for inadequate conduct, and that the new police inquiry may spread beyond the News of the World. Already the Government has undertaken
to set up an inquiry into the disaster, to be chaired by a judge, with power to require docu ments to be presented and to hear evidence under oath. As I write, the remit for this inquiry has not been settled, and the judge who will chair it has not been appointed. Both are urgent matters: it is important to clarify the remit of the inquiry to make clear
The publicist Max Clifford, who fell victim to phone-hacking. Photo: AP/Robin Nowacki
what evidence is pertinent and that (further) destruction of that evidence would itself be a criminal offence. At least and at last a robust response to past misdeeds is under way. The News of the Word shipwreck has also brought to the surface two matters that cannot be resolved by dealing with past crimes and failures. The one most discussed at present is the bearing of persistent wrongdoing on News International’s bid to purchase the remaining shares of BSkyB. I shall not discuss these issues here: events move fast as I write, and much that may be relevant is unclear. The second problem for the future is to find
a less flimsy way of maintaining adequate media standards than that provided by the much derided Press Complaints Commission (PCC). The inadequacy of the PCC is hardly news, and hardly surprising. It provides self-
Why the messenger had to be shot
The phone-hacking scandal that closed the News of the World has shaken the newspaper industry to its core, straining public trust in the press to breaking point. Bill Hagerty, a former tabloid newspaper editor, explains what needs to happen if that trust is to be restored
What could have possessed those editorial
executives and other senior journalists who progressed from titillation – celebrity-based since the vice trade had obtained grudging respectability – to behave so crassly and so insensitively when chasing those ever-elusive exclusives?
Phone hacking, illegal for only little more than a decade, was bad enough; hacking the mobile telephones of the emotionally vul- nerable, from a missing girl to the parents of murdered children to those of soldiers killed on active duty, was what Lord McGregor, a former chairman of the Press
Complaints Commission, once described as “dabbling their fingers in the stuff of other people’s souls”. I have edited popular Sunday newspapers.
They occupy an especially tough area of an increasingly tough business. Circulations, and therefore profits, were shrinking even before the internet exploded worldwide com- munication in a way that whoever pointed the News of the World in the direction of “the fearless advocacy of the truth” could not pos- sibly have envisaged. Budgets were cut and so were corners: it is hardly a secret that the press sometimes sailed close to the line
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