Leveson asks why, not just how

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/22/leveson-tabloids-politicians-relationship

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If the correct relationship between journalist and politician is that of dog and lamppost, as the old adage has it, then it has been surprisingly hard lately to tell which side is which.

For months journalism has squirmed in the spotlight, its dirty secrets exposed by the government's decision to convene the Leveson inquiry. After years of living in fear of bullying tabloids, many politicians felt liberated, with falling sales and a rising new media only seeming to confirm the waning of newspaper barons' power. But is there life in the old dog yet?

The sheer glee with which Fleet Street has cocked a leg over recent coalition errors certainly suggests an industry no longer penitently on its knees. In retrospect, the Sunday Times's "cash for access" sting last month now feels like a turning point: old-fashioned investigative journalism in the public interest, putting Fleet Street for once on the moral high ground and Downing Street back in the dock.

As Rupert Murdoch tweeted when the story hit the newsstands: "What was Cameron thinking? No one, rightly or wrongly, will believe his story." It felt like a reminder that his industry may have been dragged through the gutter, but it retains a formidable power to sweep others down with it.

Now into this febrile atmosphere steps Murdoch himself, heading a queue of proprietors testifying before Leveson this week. Doubtless they all have embarrassing tales of how prime ministers fawned and courted them. The focus is shifting from Fleet Street's excesses to those politicians whose silence ultimately enabled them. And while neither side emerges trailing glory, at least the media's stock doesn't have much further to fall. For Westminster, the pain is just beginning, with senior politicians due before Leveson later this spring.

But this isn't just about settling scores. By summoning the organ grinders, Leveson is drawing closer to the nub of things: not tales of pyjama parties and borrowed horses, but the loaded question of whether anything inappropriate was discussed in all these cosy private get-togethers, free from civil servants or official minutes or any of the usual safeguards against undue influence.

And after months of examining what went wrong inside newsp apers, this new phase of the inquiry may help explain why it did – and particularly, why now? There is one dog that hasn't barked that proprietors are perfectly placed to discuss: the precarious economics of modern journalism.

Scoops don't come cheap: they're labour-intensive and require experienced reporters and months of patient digging. Hacking voicemails and bribing detectives are fast-track routes to the same exclusives, at a fraction of the cost.

Was it coincidence that dirty tricks became endemic as competition from new media ate into newspapers' profits? Or is hacking the price paid for cheap news, an equivalent to child labour in the bargain-basement fashion industry? Leveson might explore the link between intense commercial pressures, an alleged bullying culture in some newsrooms and unethical reporting practices.

But the biggest "why?" of all concerns the way successive governments turned a blind eye even when Rebekah Brooks publicly admitted paying police for information, when Cabinet phones were hacked, when No 10 was warned off Andy Coulson. Neither a natural fear of hostile coverage – nor even the systematic intimidation of MPs alleged by Tom Watson – completely explains it.

The editors and proprietors most assiduously courted were the most commercially successful, not just because they reached most readers but because they were felt to possess magical insights. New Labour courted the Daily Mail partly out of awe at editor-in-chief Paul Dacre's instinctive feel for middle England's psyche. Coulson, the comprehensive schoolboy raised in a council house, was the gilded Camerons' key to a struggling Sun-reading demographic – one they have alienated fast since dropping their toxic friends.

If nothing else, the Leveson inquiry should prompt politicians to question why they became so dependent on tabloid editors to explain what their own constituents think (and perhaps whether quite so many MPs should be broadsheet-reading graduates).

For somehow out of this rubble we must build a healthy relationship between politicians and the press, one where newspapers can speak truth unto power about their readers' concerns - but governments know those readers sufficiently well not to panic unnecessarily. If we don't, it's the public that will ultimately end up the lamppost.

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