Ideas@TheCentre
Crooked coppers, repulsive reporters ... and hypocritical readers
The News of the World, a Sunday tabloid with more than 7 million readers, has been in existence for 168 years and was, until last week, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper. Last Sunday, Rupert Murdoch, the proprietor, closed it down. The paper had become embroiled in a scandal about the methods used by its journalists to get their stories, and Murdoch, perhaps in an effort to save his now withdrawn buyout of BSkyB - the country’s biggest satellite broadcaster, pulled the plug.
For years, the paper has been setting stings and laying traps for crooked coppers, bent vicars, corrupt politicians, dodgy businessmen, high-class hookers, unfaithful footballers, and drug-taking rock stars. Reporters have often got down in the gutter to gets these stories. Wrongdoers have been enticed by bribes, police officers have been given backhanders in return for information, and often, people have been filmed secretly, their offices bugged, and (it turns out) their mobile phone accounts illegally accessed. Every Sunday, millions of Britons have happily lapped up the results with their egg and bacon.
The paper’s downfall came with evidence that NOTW reporters had been hacking into voicemail messages on mobile phones. When celebrities complained that their privacy had been violated, nobody took much notice, but then it was revealed that the phone of a murdered schoolgirl had been hacked, and this was followed by allegations that relatives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and the families of victims of the 7/7 London bombings had had their phones accessed too.
The anti-Murdoch media sensed blood, and advertisers started withdrawing their support. The public was said to be ‘disgusted’ and ‘appalled,’ and politicians queued up to tell us how outraged they were. Prime Minister Cameron announced a public inquiry, and demands were made to tighten government control of the press.
What the NOTW reporters did was clearly illegal. It is against the law to hack into people’s phones, and for police officers to accept payments in return for tip-offs to journalists. There is also something very distasteful about fishing around in the voicemail messages of dead schoolgirls and the relatives of terrorist bomb victims. But how on earth do people think the papers have been able to come by their stories, scoops and exposés down the years? We’ve been buying and reading this stuff all our lives, so isn’t it just a tad hypocritical for us now to peg our noses when we are forced to confront the methods used to generate it?
What is also disturbing are the cries for greater control over the press that this issue has provoked. There is nothing many politicians would like more than to shackle the papers. But there are already laws protecting privacy and criminalising corruption, and if journalists bend or break them, they run the risk of prosecution. If this scandal gives politicians the opportunity to further circumscribe the powers of the press, we shall all be the poorer for it.
Peter Saunders is an Honorary Senior Fellow with the Social Foundations Program at The Centre for Independent Studies.
