Ethics, the law and the News of the World.....

The News of the World scandal that was triggered by the trial of a man accused of murdering Millie Dowling will have no resonance in the US. But it should because the News of the Screws is owned by none other than the Dirty Digger, proprietor of the WSJ and other chunks of the US media. Millie was a young teenager who was abducted and murdered. The Screws hacked into her mobile phone and then deleted messages when the mailbox became too full. This misled both police and parents into thinking she was still alive.

This has opened a massive can of worms – in fact, a whole slimy, slithering pit of them, and it is now beginning to look as if the families of victims of 7/7 and war-dead were similarly infiltrated. There have been many other instances over the years involving politicians, the Royal family, and various other big shots, plus a public service that for many years now has leaked like a sieve. There is evidence to suggest that phone numbers and other personal information have been sold by the authorities to the meeja. This latter shouldn’t surprise us. I am sure that the Old Bill has made a quite bit of beer money frequently over the years in this way. I remember the arrest of the Maxwell brothers some years ago - at 6 a.m. The TV crews and Fleet St were outside in force at this ungodly hour. QED.

It has provoked a wide debate on the ethics and morality of information being obtained in this way, with a strongly-held view that all phone tapping, hacking and leaking is bad.

So let’s pick it to pieces and try to assess the realities.

First, the ethical and moral aspects are never clear-cut. The criminal aspects are. All these activities are criminal offences. I have no doubt that some pretty hefty prison sentences are in the offing later this year. Hacking and phone tapping are covered by specific legislation. Leaking confidential information is prima facie an offence under the Official Secrets Act and also probably constitutes theft.

Otherwise we begin to enter the minefields of moral ambiguity and relativism. Let’s take leaking; I loathe the very idea. I can tell you from personal experience that it poisons an organisation; it leads to mutual suspicion; it is a gross breach of confidence and also of contract.

I had a leakage problem over a period of months. Eventually it all hit the fan when a highly sensitive policy analysis was leaked to the local MP who immediately got it on the front page of the press. So the politicians ordered a full investigation by an outside expert. He did not find the culprit but for some reason suspicion fell on one guy whose career was then left in a shambles and caused a breakdown.

Very much later I discovered that the guilty person was one of the very politicians who had been demanding action – and others knew this! But they were happy to keep the deceit going regardless of the personal consequences to innocent people because it was embarrassing to the ruling party.

BUT........we must remember that Winston Churchill was able to pursue his campaign about the unpreparedness of UK defence in the 1930’s because a very brave RAF officer in the Ministry leaked documents to him. If caught he would have been imprisoned and ruined. And the revelations of criminal activity by MPs and peers in the DT was as a result of investigative journalism by Heather Brooke, a very feisty American journo whose book ‘The Silent State’ is a frightening account of how our masters lie and conceal information as a matter of course. MPs, led by a Tory, had persistently blocked attempts to get MPs to disclose their expenses claims – hardly surprising in view of subsequent events.

We then come to the vexed question of the ‘public interest’; the difficulty here is that it is not the same as ‘interesting to the public’ and is in any event largely subjective.

Was it in the public interest to expose Prince Charles’ adultery with Camilla? Many would say yes, because it exposed the glamorous Charles/Diana marriage as a sham based on deceit and lies. Fewer perhaps would say that the press were justified in phone tapping and releasing the lubricious details of the conversations.

Is the press justified in exposing the farm-yard sexual morals of selebs? If they have held themselves out to be role models for young people as athletes or soccer players, perhaps yes. Otherwise it is merely pandering to the salacious appetites of the public which appear to be insatiable.

Is phone tapping and hacking unacceptable under any circumstances? Some say yes. But what if it had led to Millie being found alive? Is its use by the forces of authority ever justified? If used to catch criminals and terrorists, the answer must be yes, but when it is used (along with surveillance cameras) to spy upon law abiding citizens it must be an abuse of authority. And come to that, is torture ever justified? In my book - no, for at least 2 reasons. One is that by resorting to torture we concede that al Qaeda or whatever has won, by reducing us to their level of barbarity. The other is that it probably doesn’t work because a person under torture will simply tell you what you want to hear.

And ‘media ethics’ is an oxymoron.

We are seeing a watershed. Rebekah Brooks at Newscorp is due for an early bath. Murdoch has said that he has full confidence in her, which is code for ‘death sentence’.  More heads will roll. Some Red Tops will fail – few are profitable and have nothing to offer but sleaze (and as I typed these words the BBC reported that the NotW is to close after Sunday’s edition. This is absolutely astonishing because it is UK’s largest circulation paper and the title alone will be worth mega-millions).

 There will be a raft of prosecutions and a witch-hunt inside the public service. Dave has cultivated the Murdoch gang, as did Blair, and as the old saying goes ‘if you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas’. Peter Oborne in the DT did the best hatchet-job on Cameron since Cassandra stitched up Joe McCarthy. (The irony is that Peter was replaced as political editor of the Speccie by Frazer Nelson, who was political editor of the News of the World – which must be the equivalent of Leader writer on the Exchange & Mart!)

 Dave has said that there will be a public enquiry (i.e. he will try to kick the can down the road, as did Blair with WMD and Dr Kelly). But this could be his tipping-point.

But I’m prepared to bet that Murdoch will still be seen by Ministers as a ‘fit and proper’ person to take over the full ownership of Sky TV, just as Dirty Desmond of top-shelf fame was allowed to take over Channel 5. Coming to you soon on C5 – Candybar Girls, set in a lesbian pub in Soho!

Personally I am more comfortable with the certainties of the law than with the dilemmas of moral relativism.