Greenslade Blog
There have been suggestions, inside and outside the newspaper world, that it's time to wind down on phone hacking. Some think there are more important stories to worry about. Some complain about vindictiveness. Others argue that it's all too complex to understand.
Is anyone seriously suggesting that we should go easy on journalists and executives who have profited by unjustifiable and casual vindictiveness?
Complexity? Well, it may often seem hard to follow but, as always in such stories, the devil really is in the detail.
I would argue that in the News of the World phone hacking case, a powerful corporation is seeking to prevent revelation and it has been guilty of a cover up.
I think the former is obvious. As for the latter, yesterday's Commons media select committee session provided some crucial evidence.
Did they go public with that knowledge? No. Did they immediately hold a rigorous internal inquiry? No.
In public, the paper and its publisher maintained the fiction that hacking was the work of a single rogue reporter.
That's not hard to grasp, is it?
The hacking scandal is a huge story with ramifications for the media, the police and the government - in other words, our democracy.
It justifies journalists' continuing inquiries and the public's continuing interest.
There have been suggestions, inside and outside the newspaper world, that it's time to wind down on phone hacking. Some think there are more important stories to worry about. Some complain about vindictiveness. Others argue that it's all too complex to understand.
I just can't share any of those negative thoughts, as I argue in my London Evening Standard column today.
Importance? Well, there are important stories - such as Libya, the eurozone crisis, the wider economic dramas - and The Guardian is hardly ignoring them.
But what British-based story of recent times has led to the resignation of two senior officers from the nation's largest police force, the closure of the country's second-highest selling national newspaper, the resignation of two senior executives from the world's largest news organisation, the resignation of the prime minister's media aide, the early retirement of the chairwoman of the press regulator, a judicial inquiry, two police investigations, two overlapping Commons inquiries, and the arrest of 16 people?Vindictiveness? Rupert Murdoch's News International newspapers - most especially, the late and unlamented News of the World and The Sun - have routinely acted in a vindictive manner to many thousands of people down the years.
Complexity? Well, it may often seem hard to follow but, as always in such stories, the devil really is in the detail.
Look back at the great investigative stories of the past - thalidomide, say, or Watergate - and note how the truth had to be extracted bit by painful bit.
In cases where powerful corporations seek to prevent revelation (thalidomide) and powerful institutions seek to cover up misbehaviour (Watergate), it takes time to wheedle out the truth (or, at least, an approximation of the truth).I would argue that in the News of the World phone hacking case, a powerful corporation is seeking to prevent revelation and it has been guilty of a cover up.
I think the former is obvious. As for the latter, yesterday's Commons media select committee session provided some crucial evidence.
Both the former News of the World editor, Colin Myler, and its legal manager, Tom Crone, admitted that they had documentary evidence in April 2008 that contradicted the rogue reporter defence the paper had stuck by since the arrest in 2006 of royal editor Clive Goodman.
In public, the paper and its publisher maintained the fiction that hacking was the work of a single rogue reporter.
That's not hard to grasp, is it?
The hacking scandal is a huge story with ramifications for the media, the police and the government - in other words, our democracy.
It justifies journalists' continuing inquiries and the public's continuing interest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/sep/07/phone-hacking-newsoftheworld?CMP=twt_fd
