The Guardian view: News International was a media giant out of control
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Version 0 of 1. Before the last election the Guardian was not alone in trying to warn David Cameron, as well as other party leaders, about Andy Coulson's involvement with private investigators linked to criminal activity. Mr Cameron seemed determined, come what may, to take the former News of the World editor into the heart of government. He ignored the warnings, which included concerns raised by Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown as well as figures in his own party. On Tuesday, as Coulson was convicted of conspiracy to hack phones, the prime minister offered profound apologies for a lamentable lapse of judgment. The prime minister was right to apologise quickly. It was a bad mistake to have ignored the multiple clues that Coulson had no place at the prime minister's side in Downing Street. That the former editor was never properly vetted suggests that, in his heart, Cameron knew that this was a cavalier and reckless decision. There remain serious questions for him and the cabinet secretary about the procedures – or lack of them – involved in his hiring. Tuesday's verdicts were the primary ones to date to follow from this paper's 2009 reporting which showed that the lone "rotten apple" theory of phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloid was simply not true. At the time News International and the police rubbished the Guardian's reporting. The regulator shrugged. Most politicians stayed silent. The trial that is ending at the Old Bailey produced incontrovertible evidence that the Guardian's reporting was not only true, but rather understated the extent of criminality within the News of the World. The paper's main private investigator targeted well over 6,000 victims for hacking or blagging. To date News International has paid compensation to more than 700 victims – many multiples of the "handful" the police originally claimed. Of eight journalists charged with hacking, six have now been found, or have pleaded, guilty – one editor, three news editors and two hackers. Twelve more trials of NI journalists are currently scheduled. One way of thinking about the criminal proceedings now drawing to an end is to imagine how the press would have reacted had the company at the heart of the scandal been a major bank or an international oil company. Over the past few months a picture emerged in court of Britain's most dominant newspaper business, News International, being literally out of control. There is no dispute that widespread criminality was occurring on a near daily basis. But the company's most senior executives and board members insisted they had no idea what was going on. Imagine for a moment that the chief executive of a bank or the boss of a major energy company had mounted the same defence. They might succeed in persuading a jury that, because it was all going on behind their backs, they were innocent of criminal behaviour themselves. But newspapers would call for board-level resignations, for a public inquiry into what went wrong, for tougher regulation, for executive heads to roll. They would find distasteful the sight of foot soldiers taking the punishment while the most senior generals walked free. And they would be right. Public life feels cleaner now As it is, the response to the deeply ingrained corruption at the heart of News International has, over the past five years, been muddled. Yes, there was a public inquiry of sorts. But there is, as yet, no settled public acceptance that proposed new forms of regulation will be significantly different from the discredited mediation service that so abjectly failed to deal with the revelations of phone hacking. There has been precious little discussion about issues of media concentration, ownership and power. The police – who for years failed properly to investigate what was going on; who misled the public; and who didn't bother to alert the vast majority of the victims of criminality – have not held any sort of review into what went wrong. So, on one view, less has changed than might have been expected back in the summer of 2011 when there was a broad acknowledgment in British public life that something had gone badly astray in politics, government, media, regulation and policing. But there is another sense in which much has changed in the three years since the News of the World was closed by Rupert Murdoch – mainly, it must be said, because he feared that its "toxic" brand might stymie his bid to win full control of BSkyB. Hacking people's phones on an industrial scale may have been a repellent practice – but it made sense as a short-term business model, serving up, with little journalistic endeavour, a conveyor belt of public figures for routine disgrace or embarrassment. That has largely stopped – if only because proper reporting without casual illegal snooping is much harder (and more expensive) to do. The weekly tabloid ritual of seek-and-destroy – usually with no sustainable public interest justification – is greatly diminished. Public life in Britain feels a cleaner place as a result. The vast majority of journalists in this country have never hacked a phone, bribed a public official or used a private detective. Even those who worked on the tiny handful of (albeit influential) papers that regularly trampled on privacy often felt deeply uneasy about it. Numerous individuals within the News of the World newsroom guided Nick Davies's investigations into phone hacking because they felt so uncomfortable about the practices going on around them. So, most journalists feel no regret about the cleansing of the stables, even if they feel conflicted about the prospect of journalists facing jail sentences for crimes committed. On Tuesday the jury at the Old Bailey found that Andy Coulson was guilty of conspiracy to hack phones. His former colleague Rebekah Brooks was cleared of all charges. Five executives, reporters or contracted employees have pleaded guilty in this trial to breaking the law. In addition there are dozens of journalists potentially facing charges from the police investigations which belatedly kicked off once Scotland Yard realised the extent of public disquiet over their previous failure to investigate criminality in Fleet Street. It is right that both police and regulators should investigate criminality within newsrooms – and shameful that both initially turned a blind eye to the evidence. No journalist claims a special privilege of being above the law. Equally, it is right – as proposed last year by the former director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer – that journalists ought to be able to plead a public-interest defence. Any reporter or editor who can show that they were reporting on matters of genuine significance, exposing wrongdoing or contributing to important matters of debate, ought to be safe from both prosecution and conviction. It was one of the beneficial by-products of the Leveson inquiry that clear guidance for prosecutors and journalists now exists. But it is undesirable – as is currently happening – for journalists to be left in legal limbo for months, if not years, while police sift through evidence. A universal right to privacy This government and its supporters in the media are fond of talking about British values. A respect for privacy used to be considered a primary and inalienable British value: the notion that one's home was one's castle; that the state – and other entities – were not, except in exceptional circumstances, entitled to intrude into citizens' homes or lives, or to intercept their communications. Steaming open someone's private correspondence was once considered profoundly un-British. The search and seizure of private information has been condemned in English law since cases such as that of John Wilkes in the 18th century. The recent revelations by Edward Snowden show how far we have travelled from that ideal – with the state now claiming the right to scoop up vast amounts of personal communications and data. For a while the notion took hold in some tabloid newsrooms – the same ones that shout most loudly about British values – that there was no such thing as privacy. If a newspaper's business model demanded unfettered access to an individual's life, so be it. That era is, perhaps, now over. In its place should come respect for the universal right to privacy, honoured by all those who wield power – a mighty news company no less than the state itself. |