About the time of his 1991 movie ‘Hook’, Steven Spielberg used to suggest that scientists were increasingly using lawyers instead of rats for experiments in behavioural psychology. He gave several reasons why this might be so. It helped that lawyers were becoming more plentiful than rats in Hollywood
Nowadays the lawyers face stiff competition from bankers and journalists; all vying with one another to prove their profession the most dishonest, the most disreputable, the most amoral, the least concerned with the interests of anyone but themselves. You have to wonder what is going wrong in a society where standards of professional integrity melt faster than ice-cream on a summer day. Can it all just be down to money?
Historically, the ownership of newspapers has attracted some outstanding scallywags. In recent years we might make mention of Conrad Black at the Telegraph and Robert Maxwell at the Mirror. Publishing newspapers is a basic right but owning them and controlling them is a privilege. I don’t believe that people like Rupert Murdoch own newspapers for philanthropic reasons. But nor is their interest entirely driven by profit. They could almost certainly become even richer if they disposed of their newspaper holdings and invested the cash in something else. But they don’t do that because they crave the power and influence press ownership brings.
Does anyone seriously believe that Rupert Murdoch leaves the running of his papers entirely to his editors, while he relaxes on his sun-lounger and waits to see the bottom line? Mr Murdoch has an agenda which courses through the veins of his media empire and affects the decisions made by his executives. Tony Blair and David Cameron both assiduously courted Murdoch. It wasn’t just for his magnetic personality, his sparkling wit and his affable Aussie charm. They were convinced that to achieve their own political ambitions they needed the active endorsement of his media empire – “IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT”[1]. And that is why we are entitled to enquire whether Mr Murdoch is a fit and proper person to wield such power.
It’s an issue close to the heart of our claim to a democracy. Rupert Murdoch is Chairman of News Corp which, according to Wikipedia, is second only to Disney as a global media conglomerate. How worrying is that? Very, I’d say, but I was cheered a little last night by some subversive newsreader on the radio describing Murdoch as now ‘the Head of News Corpse’.
I remember once, a long time ago – say, 1957 or thereabouts – my primary school teacher wanted to introduce our class to the idea of newspapers. To begin, he asked pupils to name a newspaper their parents read. I answered ‘Daily Express’ because I’d seen it at home and liked the image of the medieval knight it used as its logo. Then another boy piped up with, ‘News of the World, sir!’
“Damn my useless parents,” I thought, registering a ten-year old’s disappointment that there was this paper containing all the news from all the world and my stupid family didn’t have the nous to buy it. When I got home that afternoon I announced to Mum and Dad that there was now a paper carrying all the news in the world and why didn’t they buy it? Oh how they chortled! They laughed then as we all should surely laugh now at the preposterous title Murdoch retains for his pathetic rag. “News of the World”? Leave it out.
“Reality,” sa molesworth 2, “is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.”[2]
Somebody on the television news last night was wondering where to draw the “moral line” in British journalism. The line has always been there. It doesn’t need drawing but it does need holding. The Press Complaints Commission has a voluntary Code of Practice under which the print media are supposed to regulate themselves. The Code is clear and probably laudable. However, when it comes to enforcement, the PCC has, kindly, been described as “toothless” and, more unkindly, as being “about as much us as a chocolate teapot”.
The Chair of the PCC is Baroness Buscombe. She was reported in The Independent [3] to be “indescribably angry at being misled”. The revelation that journalists were capable of telling lies apparently caused her to swoon. Well, that’s how much of a grip she has on the situation. Journalist tells porky! Shock! Horror! Etc.
The Express Group of newspapers walked away from the PCC earlier this year and seems no better nor worse as a result. You could try replacing the PCC with a statutory body with real teeth in the form of financial penalties and similar sanctions. That would solve one problem but risk creating another in the form of what would be, to all intents and purposes, an official censor. Maybe that’s what we deserve? Maybe that’s what the ambitions of clan-Murdoch have brought us to? As with its police force, perhaps a nation gets the newspapers it deserves. But who then shall guard us from the guardians?
I would prefer to pin whatever feint hopes I still retain on the notion of ‘fit and proper persons.’ You will have guessed by now that I am not persuaded Rupert Murdoch qualifies in this regard. Nor does his notorious acolyte, Rebekah (sic) Brooks (nee Wade); famed for her ability to rise without trace and for her constant bad-hair day. The PCC should be able to adjudicate robustly and pillory those who fail to follow its Code. Name them and shame them. Name the individual journalists, name their editors and name their proprietors. Establish a clear link between ownership and the Code – fail to follow the Code and they certainly forfeit the right to extend their media empire to fresh titles.
The people who hacked their way into the private telephone messages of murdered children and their families knew what they were doing was wrong. The editors who used that information may, briefly, when facing an imminent deadline, have not asked sufficient questions about its provenance. But after twenty-four hours or a night’s sleep, or when they had sobered-up – then they surely knew the answer – and that was when they needed to display some basic integrity. That was when they needed to screw their courage to the max and blow the whistle, pull the plug or do whatever was necessary to bring the house of cards tumbling down. The fact that they didn’t is rightfully now their downfall. That was when they failed to be ‘fit and proper persons’; failed to be professionals, revealed themselves as mere mercenaries.
We don’t need a Judicial Enquiry or a Royal Commission composed of the great and the good to draw lines around what journalists can and can’t do because ultimately that will put the mother of all super-injunctions on us, proscribing what can and can’t be written. Publish and be damned – but first be damned sure that what you are publishing and how you came by it, can be squared with your conscience and not just with your employer’s prejudices and/or bank balance. At present, everyone is pointing at someone else and all are shouting, “Round up the usual suspects!”
The origins of the word profession can be found in Latin with words literally meaning ‘publicly to confess’. A person who writes for a living should ultimately be prepared, when challenged, to defend and justify their research and their words openly and in public. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got it wrong. Coming to the wrong conclusion is not what matters. We can all do that. We’ve all told a few porkies, ducked and dived, invented this and not checked that. Yes, these are sins, but they are venial sins. The sins committed at the News of the World were mortal. They were not excusable, not justifiable and cannot be pardoned or washed away by an apology or retraction. Off with their headlines if not their heads!
You wouldn’t even want to wrap your chips in a Murdoch paper, would you? Let alone read it…
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