Day four and it's official: all journalists are scum. This is what it felt like to be an MP.
Let's start with a moral absolute. There can be no defence, of any kind, for breaking into the voicemail of a murdered 13-year-old schoolgirl. There can be no defence either for hacking the mobile phones of the victims of a terrorist attack, or the family of servicemen killed in action. It goes without saying that the fact that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's notes listed these numbers does not automatically prove that the phones were all hacked - but if they were, and it seems certain some were, then that was really, truly awful.
There's no 'but'. None of what follows is intended to excuse the phone hacking allegations revealed this week. There is no excuse.
It is worth noting though some of the moral ambiguities involved in much of what journalists do.
The outrage behind the allegations published this week stems almost entirely from the nature of the victims. There's nothing new about the fact that phones were hacked by tabloid journalists - what's new is that they targeted not only celebrities and politicians, for whom it's sometimes hard to feel much sympathy, but ordinary people who had been the victims of the most appalling crimes, for whom it's impossible not to feel sympathy.
In other words, there's a clear distinction between what the general public is outraged at (harassing people who deserve our sympathy) and the crime (hacking into voicemails). The current anger, advertisers' boycott of the News of the World and widespread media coverage are to do with the former, rather than the latter.
Ask yourself this. What would the average man in the street be more outraged about? Journalists knocking on the door of a murdered teenager's family and asking if they wanted to give an interview? Or journalists hacking into Rupert Murdoch's phone?
We're guessing it would be journalists knocking on the door of a murdered teenager's family - but that's not the crime. Journalists regularly knock on the doors of the recently-deceased - it's an unpleasant but necessary part of the job - and so long as they do so politely, respectfully and leave if asked, that's what they should do. On the other hand, hacking Rupert Murdoch's phone is clearly illegal, regardless of what nuggets of pressing public interest you might uncover.
Lots of journalists walk in legally and ethically grey areas when it comes to how they practise their journalism, and sometimes with good cause. Should the Telegraph have sent undercover journalists to meet Vince Cable? Should the Independent still employ as its top columnist a journalist who has admitted copying and pasting large parts of interviews? Even the Observer has faced questions in the past over the use of private investigators.
Likewise, every day journalists across the country have to carry out, legally and as part of their job, tasks which members of the wider public find unpalatable, if not immoral. The death knock is one example. Reporting claims made in court which besmirch the reputation of a murder victim's dad - the same murder victim's dad, in fact - is another. There are more.
The point, then, is that journalism involves a lot of grey areas. The phone hacking story has rightly been widely reported this week because it involves alleged behaviour which is clearly wrong both legally and morally. But trying to extrapolate in any direction from the specifics of this story to a wider point about the state of journalism today is a dangerous game, and logically flawed.
Yesterday, amid the general hack-bashing, FleetStreetBlues was asked a couple of times if we could name one real reason why journalists could be #hackandproud. Well, we'd refer to you a case entirely different from this week's repugnant phone hacking allegations - but one which at first glance also appears to be morally on the line.
It involves a reporter who smelled a story going undercover, lying about his CV to falsely obtain a job, covertly and no doubt illegally filming the most vulnerable people in society, then standing by and doing nothing as they were submitted to the most horrific physical and mental abuse.
The resulting BBC Panorama film was one of the best and most effective pieces of investigative journalism we've seen in recent years.
Because this piece will inevitably be seen as a defence of phone hacking, we'll say it one more time: some things are black and white. The phone hacking we've heard about this week was entirely wrong, morally appalling and absolutely without justification. But not all journalists should be held responsible for the crimes of a minority. Once you get beyond the shocking specifics of phone-hacking, a wider debate about media ethics gets very complicated, very quickly. And a lot of journalism, good and bad, lives in the grey areas.
29 comments:
Oh please, your persecution complex is showing.
Its not simply anger at the phone hacking scandal. The article and accompanying graph in the Spectator clearly show that not only is it tenuous to attribute this to the actions of the minority but the complete failure of your supposed majority to do anything to stop it. Its not that we think all journalists are scum (some certainly are) its just that you have been exposed as either lazy or cowardly or both when it came to policing your own profession.
We know there is nothing new about phone hacking. But guess what, it was as outrageous then as it is now. The outrage not only stems from the nature of the victims but for how widespread and comprehensive the policy of phone hacking was (is?) and how it was allowed to continue unimpeded. The only reason that outrage didn't last longer was because of the aforementioned reluctance of anyone but a small number of your profession to do any sort of follow up.
Perhaps if there is a logical flaw in that argument you would do best to analyse it formally rather than state it as some tautology beneath you.
Your ridiculous hypothetical situation which draws some kind of outrage-based equivalence between a clearly illegal and immoral act and a legal one (hacking versus knocking) just shows the kind of laziness which passes for critical thought in journalism.
Assange was right when he said Journalism should be scientific. Maybe if you and your profession adopt the rigour and standards expected by the scientific community you'll finally get the respect you think you're entitled to.
I'm unclear about; "Journalists regularly knock on the doors of the recently-deceased - it's an unpleasant but necessary part of the job"
Why is it necessary?
Excellent piece - well done! No-one can defend phone hacking, as you say. It's simply wrong. But journalism forces you to make up your own ethics sometimes and the decisions are not easy.
In my experience, only those who don't allow themselves to think too deeply about the issues can handle those tough calls. If you're part of an organisation determined to 'get the story' at all costs, it is easy to be swept along.
Great post. Another thing I would emphasise is our civic duty.
As the fourth estate we are there to hold to account the powers that be. Governments and large businesses that can, through their spin machines, hide information from the wider world. We are there to ask the awkward questions.
This leads to a clear distinction between the two types of journalism you highlighted above.
The NOTW, which hacked Milly Dowler’s phone, did so purely to get a story to sell newspapers. It had no intrinsic moral worth from the outset. It was purely for profit.
The BBC’s investigation had a wider civic value, which brought an awful atrocity to the attention of a wider public.
We don’t do it for the money, so why else do it? Every journalist should be asking himself or herself this question. I think one thing to cling to at this time when our profession is being dragged through the mud, and then some, is that we do an incredibly selfless job serving our democracy. Be it local reporters spending their evenings in council meetings, to health correspondents uncovering allegations of NHS misspending – we do it because we care.
Surely that should be at the kernel of everyone setting out in his profession? Or am I hopelessly romantic?
Absolutely bloody A1 tophole brilliant.
Well, no - Johann Hari should no longer be writing for the Guardian. I don't think the Telegraph should have snared Vince in that way.
The doings of celebs bother me not one whit, and I'm well aware that journos are listening to other people's voicemails all the time (please let's not call it "hacking"). What made it far worse for me was that the NOTW chaps actually deleted messages, allowing Millie's family to hope that she might still be alive - that somehow took it all to a complete new level.
If only many stories produced by the press over the years were so nuanced.
I have very limited sympathy as what journalists are currently experiencing is no different to what social
Workers, police officers and others have experienced as a result of stories whipped into a frenzy by journalists.
Now you know how it feels!
In other words "we are so important that the rules made for others do not apply to us". You may think that the NOTW phone hacking is "really, truly awful", but you are perfectly willing to defend the mentality which underlay it.
>Well, no - Johann Hari should no longer be writing for the Guardian.
Loving people who get the details right !
Fair enough. But why would a private investigator have details of the NOK of deceased Service personnel? Reporters can go to the MoD or to the unit, who will have a protocol for media inquiries. If NOK wish to contact the media - not unusual - then they will get in touch with a news desk or reporter. This is way out of line and I bet it wasn't just the Screws.
'Day four and it's official: all journalists are scum.'
Not so sure that 'all' is correct. Depending on what you read, or watch, there seems to be a fair bit of moral relativism going on.
Some actually justified. Others hilariously hypocritical.
However, I am reading more into the term 'dead tree press' these days.
Yes, it is an engulfing wave of revulsion that plainly condemns hacking the phones of ordinary victims of any atrocity. We do understand that life is not always black & white, that grey is sometimes the only way, because we employ this in our own lives daily to cut a corner or just to feel we’re beating the game somehow. And we accept that journalists do this regularly, to provide us with a little titillation that sells your newspapers. But also to represent us in grey or black, when needed, against the idiots that cannot manage their own edicts or those that squeeze us for every last ounce of our ability to view life in mostly white. Yes, you are in the black book today, because you have let your constituents down. The very arrogance that News Corp has portrayed in thinking this was acceptable, the ignorance that allows the Met Police to engage in recalcitrance in dealing with the matter, and the further incompetence of government in Britain – these are failings on your watch. Now go get ‘em. #hacking #notw
I am not going to condone phone hacking either, but one thing that really does worry me in this age of hack bashing is that that it can be used as an excuse to further restrict the flow of information through the press to the public. In the last twenty or so years we have seen a gradual but sure erosion of what information is publicly available. The data protection act and shift to computers gave the police the power to remove the right to access to the daily crime logs, for example. The first morning job for local crime reporters up and down the country would be to demand, and be shown their local police station's crime book. An open and transparent mechanism which ensured that local reporters working on behalf of their readers got the access to information they needed to carry out their important democratic role. Fast forward to today where Press Officers are instructed to restrict the flow of information not facilitate it, and Chief Constables make it policy to withhold information from the press (as has been claimed in the Midlands in recent years) and suddenly it is a very different democracy. Add to this local courts no longer publishing court lists and verdicts, councils squeezing out local papers with their own publications, successive central government policy of evasion, spin and quite often outright misinformation and it is no wonder hacks struggle to remain productive. As the powerbrokers increase their strangle hold on information and the democratic role of journalists is made harder or impossible it is no wonder some (a tiny number) have found ethical line breaking and in some cases criminality a way to respond. Sure politicians are elected, police chiefs are appointed, but newspapers sell 12.6m a day (Guardian, 2010) and are said to be read by multiples more. 29.6m voted in the last election. (BBC Online, 2010) Isn't it about time we remembered that newspapers and their reporters have a vital democratic job to do too - are actively encouraged to do it as shown by their daily sales - and we get our politicians to start to let them do it again?
In the same way as illegally appropriated evidence is inadmissible in a court of law, illegally appropriated information should be unusable in the media. The example of the Panorama report sets out an example of an investigation carried out for noble reasons but using illegal methods. As such it should have been unusable and all the information found handed over to the police and the courts for their action.
The more 'Hacks' stand up and declare that illegal methods are 'sometimes' a valid form of investigation, the more I wonder how rotten their so called 'noble' profession is. Is a profession that runs roughshod over the feelings of the innocent and advocates ignoring the rule of the law in the name of a story, which is after all just a commercial product, something to be proud of?
To Charlie,
Because sometimes they want to talk. Some people find it cathartic to speak to a newspaper. Some people keep scrap books of the coverage. It's the biggest event in their world and they think it should be in the newspaper. Without the personal details and photographs of, say, the 7/7 victims, then it's hard for the public to truly emphasise. That's why we don't care about the thousands of dead Iraqis, but, rightly, have a large sympathy for the British soldiers who have died. We know they are. Sometimes the journalist knows there's more to a death - corporate incompetence, negligence etc - and it needs investigating. None of this might be the case. But without asking you never know.
In response to the first commenter, 'anon', it might enlighten things to stop thinking of everyone who works on a newspaper as a journalist. There is a distinction between journalists, those who act like journalists but might be better called professional reputation trashers, and those who run newspapers; they are not the same group of people, though they might work for the same company in the same newsroom. Lastly, there is a super-elite of those who own newspapers.
In the 'good' journalist pool, you have the majority of those who populate newsrooms; dare I say it they have a moral compass, and broadly do what they do for a perceived good. 'Stitching up' other people is NOT the reason they get out of bed. They may hang their head at some of the stories their paper puts out, but they credit the readership with being able to see good where it exists and taking the 'silly stuff' for fluff, or entertainment.
The smaller but (in this case) more influential group are those that the aforementioned good journalists despise: those who call themselves journalists but by any measure would be better described as muck-rakers, reputation tramplers,the stitch-up mob, you name it. THEY ARE HATED because time and again it is these people who cloak themselves in the privileges afforded the profession thanks to the efforts of the good journalists, all while doing stuff any reasonable person would regard as classless or outright unpleasant. It is this group who will employ the most heinous tactics and pre-judge a story's angle in the most unpleasant way, but be the first to shout 'Remember the campaign for... [insert good cause here]' to effectively cloak their low-rent behaviour in high-class reputation. Their motivation is to get on and get paid as much as possible as quickly as possible, and take as many shortcuts as they can - they have no 'calling' to be a journalist, but they love being part of a big newspaper. The very thought of showing respect to their readership, or crediting them with critical faculty, is alien to this lot. I won't go as far as saying they all think readers are scum, but some do. The rest don't really think about the reader at all.
Unfortunately, and dreadfully, it is often (though by no means always) this second group who elevate most rapidly to the third group on certain titles: those who run newspapers... the executives. These people are decision makers, influential middle management that define how a paper looks to the outside world, by choosing stories, choosing the thrust of a treatment of a story, and embodying which culture is the right one to be part of in a newsroom: if you have executives who promote and encourage the tactics that will lead to the stories we are now hearing, then that is exactly what you will get on the front of your paper – and the good journos suffer in silence, or leave (and 'Fleet Street' has an enormous churn of staff between sections, titles, and proprietors). The executives are quick to use their power not merely in choosing and backing stories, but in office patronage (Fleet Street is full of mini-mes), and absolutely set the tone for a newsroom and how it works, and for how the paper reads. To the bad lot amongst this group (as said, not all are) power is the drug: a fawning politician, or an obsequious celebrity is, simply, heaven. Don't be deluded to thinking they give a flying F about left or right wing politics.
So there you have three groups all working on the same title at the same time. The good are in the majority, but have no power. The troublemakers are a minority, but get all the attention. And the decision makers set the rules of the game.
Cont’d…/
Lastly, of course, you have proprietors. Deadly business enemies, who – surprise surprise – all exist rather cosily in a relative status quo, and have an equal amount of dirt on each other: we won't call you a pornographer, if you don't call us Nazis, we won't analyse your tax affairs if you don't analyse ours, and so forth. To them it's all business. Tragically, this lot are the least well-known of the lot, but are those to whom any right thinking democracy would direct the most scrutiny and light. Everything you fear about this lot is well-founded.
Believe me, so so many good-hearted people, who feel strongly that they do something for the greater good, work in 'Fleet Street'; if one positive thing can come from this it might be that – at a newsroom level – the unethical bottom feeders who swim a once-clean pool trailing poison behind them might be hounded out of the profession. Unfortunately, it will take a wholesale clear-out of execs to make that happen, and this lot have a habit of circling Fleet Street like turds in a bowl – another reason to reiterate that this is not about a single newspaper's methodology, it is about a practice adopted by a group of people who happen to have worked at a single paper but WILL HAVE WORKED ELSEWHERE TOO taking their belief system of what's acceptable, and many staff, with them. Does anyone really think the NotW was the only one at it?
In so many ways, big media is like big politics – a massive amount of power concentrated into a very select group who are able to do unimaginable damage in front of the eyes of a disbelieving majority – which is why it is no surprise at all that they appear not to be able to work without each other.
Rarely, both are absolutely beholden to pubic opinion. Hopefully this is one coinciding moment for that to be the case. The trick is to get rid of the bad apples and empower the good.
Sorry for needing two posts. I need a good executive to make me see the light.
Mrc.
Phone hacking is a criminal act, pure and simple, not matter who is hacked.
"As the fourth estate we are there to hold to account the powers that be."
...a tad tricky when much of the national news media is the power in question of course.
That's the real story here. It's the failure of the PCC, Government, readers - and yes, journalists- to challenge the self-imposed authority that the likes of NI have claimed.
As such it should have been unusable and all the information found handed over to the police and the courts for their action.
But of course, one thing that the hacking case has highlighted, is that the police can bury, soft-pedal or lose interest in any investigation into allegations you present to them, given the motivation and no way to hold them to account via the press. There's nothing more disgusting than a free press in full flow - apart from the lack of a free press, of course. It ill behoves the government to start hanging journalists from lamp posts. Policemen yes, journalists no. They should leave that to properly constituted popular lynch mobs. Or failing that, advertisers and (non-)readers.
Spot on. Well done.
I'm a public sector working. For the last year the media have been portraying people like me as bureaucratic clock watching time wasting bottom feeders. Well, now you know how it feels.
Circles within circles:
I posted the first comment.
Your entire post is a "no true Scotsman" fallacy and addresses none of the meat of my criticism with the original post.
If the majority of true journalists in fleet street are powerless to do anything to stop this sort of thing, how are we supposed to infer that they are in fact good-hearted or working towards the common good or whatever other cliches you want to use.
The fact is this reflects terribly on the journalism profession and rather than an empty campaign to announce that you're a "hack and proud" surely your cause would be best served by positive actions and speaking out about the culture of fleet street which allows this sort of thing to happen?
This isn't the first example of the press being terrible either. The run up to Iraq is another great example of the press toeing the official line and nobody wanting to stick their neck out. I'm sorry but for all of us outside looking in, there simply isn't evidence for the existence of these good hearted people that fleet street is supposedly populated by.
'The death knock' a necessary part of journalism? Necessary if you want to exploit people at the worst possible time of their life.Tears would be a bonus I suppose,that's why journalists are scum.
The majority of journalists reside under the belly of a snake in mud, some in the mud, a thin layer above paedophiles, although some interbreeding exists, whilst the remainder of the majority live in the filth on top. Confirming why you are known as the great unwashed.
Your pitfall defence explanation simply confirms why your profession is always at the bottom (or that close that it doesn't matter) to the professions that people admire the most.
Hi Brian,
I am not the original poster, so didn't feel right to try to address your concerns with his/her post. I think you and I are in agreement about many things - I was just trying to add some colour to the dynamics of the working environment.
I'm not apologising for anyone, and would not apologise for inaction either. As to why 'good' journos do nothing, I agree: it's good men standing by that allows evil to flourish etc etc. They must examine their consciences.
However, there are many good journos, who do not feel the need or inclination to stoop to the lowest levels to get a story, and have been in many ways at the forefront – where given the right environment – in pursuing this very story.
None of this is an excuse for the actions of the papers, please don't take it as such. Hopefully, particularly after today's events (newspaper closure), those in the future that DO raise their hands in concern will not be sidelined or ignored again. There is a reason why this story has rumbled on for years – because some journos somewhere kept digging away. It was not those same journos who managed to keep it from full exposure and genuine action – and there lies a group of people who many of us would love to see publicly forced to account for their activities, because you are talking about execs, police, politicians AND journos. Just not all execs, all police, all politicians, or all journos.
Mrc.
What drivel.
Man up and stop moaning. The worst elements of our trade have tarred us with their brush for years and years. It's not like journalists suddenly got a bad rep because of this one incident, for Christ's sake. Most normal people have despised us for years.
And the fault lies squarely with us. When did you last hear a journalist – any journalist – decrying the NOTW, Murdoch and all his works as evil scumbags?
Answer: Never (unless it was a Guardian hack, happily protected from reality and Murdoch by the Scott Trust).
We were all far too afraid. We wanted jobs, we needed to pay the rent and we feared what ostracisation would do to us in our frightfully small and frightfully tribal little industry where everyone moves around working for everyone else and grassing up the 'off-message' idealists.
I welcome this opportunity to say this to members of my own industry: Isn't it time we grew a pair and started to point fingers at the people we know have been wrongdoing for years and years and years?
If not now, when? Or have we all, as a group, forgotten what 'right' looks like?
Brilliant post. I built on your argument in a blog post of my own.
http://emmalofgren.com/2011/07/11/quite-simply-we-lost-our-way/
It's big news, some stories are worth following up using clandestine means, well done.
It's old news, there's been a huge amount of hacking done of the phones of victims of crime and relatives of deceased soldiers. This is indefensible. This has gone on thanks to the complicity of some corrupt policemen, this too is indefensible.
And oh the hypocrisy of the, 'it's all on the public interest argument'. Come up with some proper justification for snooping through peoples bins and emails or just leave it.
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