The collapse of the News of the World can be blamed on a number of people. Rupert Murdoch as the proprietor of the paper, the police for their shallow initial investigation, the politicians for being too cosy with the tabloid press, the Press Complaints Commission for being toothless. But the public have to shoulder their part of the blame too, says Dominic Lawson in The Independent. If opinion polls are to be believed, the public are “outraged by the News of the World’s behaviour. Shocked. Scandalised. Appalled. Yet on Sunday no fewer than 4.5 million of them (that is to say, us) went out and bought a copy of the paper… the truth is the paper’s success was always based on the daring of its snooping and the more outrageously it snooped, the more it sold.”
When the Sunday People bugged the flat where Tory cabinet minister David Mellor was conducting his affair with Antonia de Sancha, “nobody would have listened if Mellor had complained about being bugged, because we were all too busy enjoying his humiliation”. The Royal Family has frequently had its phones tapped. In 1992 when The Sun tapped into a phone conversation between Prince Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, “millions rang a telephone line set up by the Sun, to hear the tape played on a continual loop”.
Newspapers are attuned to the “moods and prejudices” of their readers and the tabloids knew their readers would be more interested in eavesdropping on the Prince of Wales than concerned about how the snooping was carried out. Yes, the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voicemail was considerably more heinous and resulted in an outcry, but the public has to accept its own “complicity in the snooping of the red-top press”.
The habit of spying in the British press “is at least a century old”, says Matthew Parris in The Times. There are numerous examples of tabloids using dubious methods to get a story. For example, in 1973 the News of the World planted film equipment in the bedroom of minister Lord Lambton in order to capture him having an affair. They even placed one of their photographers in a wardrobe behind two-way glass to document the event. “Hacking into the phone messages of a missing girl was one grisly example of a species of espionage that has been commonplace.” Surely the general public knew before now that “police tip-offs are systematic in Britain”?
The problem now is that the collapse of the News of the World and the public outcry over phone hacking means the “enemies of free press are circling”, says Andrew Gilligan in The Daily Telegraph. “The paper’s demise certainly marks the end of a particular tabloid era and culture. But it may only have succeeded in triggering an earthquake that now threatens the entire British press.” Don’t forget that there are a lot of MPs who “nurture huge grievances” about the expenses scandal, which was only broken when The Daily Telegraph paid sources and made use of a stolen CD full of the expenses details. “The clear danger now is that they will see the public anger about phone hacking as their chance to push through a ‘new and different regulatory system’ making it harder to do such stories.”
Who will suffer most from the fallout?
After a “tumultuous” week for the media following the News of the World (NotW) phone-hacking scandal, “an unmistakable whiff of hypocrisy” has “swirled around the corpse of that 168-year-old, very British institution”, says the Daily Mail. When it comes to hypocrisy, politicians have been “in a class of their own”.
David Miliband denounced David Cameron for his “woeful absence of judgment” in becoming so close to News International (NI) and for appointing disgraced NotW editor Andy Coulson as his press officer. Is this the same Mr Miliband whose own spin doctor – ex-NI journalist Tom Baldwin – “allegedly commissioned a private detective to break into a bank account as part of a ruthless attack on former Tory treasurer Lord Ashcroft”? However, “top of the class for hypocrisy” is Mr Cameron. “In a desperate and cynical bid to deflect attention” from his closeness to the Murdoch empire, David Cameron “delivered a body blow to Britain’s free press” by saying that “some kind of statutory control would now be necessary”. It’s a “dark day for the Conservative Party”.
In fact, both Cameron and Miliband are trying to declare “a shift in political geology”, says Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.
“We all sinned, they say, but we repent and are purged. A new order is declared, in which everyone can be beastly towards newspapers.” They are seeking “inquiries, judges, commissions, regulators and statutes – beyond anything thought appropriate after the Iraq war or the credit crunch”.
But it won’t last, says Jenkins. “The problem is not so much with the press.” Indeed, it was another paper – The Guardian – that did for the NotW, not the police or parliament. “That is why press pluralism must be the overriding concern of any regulatory regime, and no organisation should have more than a 30% share of any definable media market.”
Stanley Baldwin once “dismissed newspapers as claiming ‘the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’. His response was not to regulate the harlotry but simply to ignore it.” Politicians should likewise find the courage to call the media’s bluff, “not make it subject to copious statute law”.
The scandal is certainly damaging for Cameron. But it’s good news for Miliband, reckons Rachel Sylvester in The Times. “After months of floundering”, at last he “has found his voice. He seems to have learnt the art of opposition” and “realised that it’s about making an impact as much through what you say as what you do”. For the first time, the Labour leader, with “a new confidence in his attitude”, is “setting the agenda”.
Yet Labour has “little to brag about in relation to the Murdoch press”, notes Richard Seymour, also in The Guardian. “Until very recently, its senior spokespeople were still wining and dining the old bruiser and his minions in a vain hope of winning the stable’s support.”
Indeed, the “subservient relationship with Murdoch’s empire was a defining feature of New Labour”. Many in the Labour leadership really seemed to believe that they couldn’t win an election without Murdoch’s support. But with Murdoch’s credibility now “shot to pieces”, Labour “will be less tempted to adjust every policy to win [his] approval”.
The leadership will find it tougher to discipline the grassroots and trade union affiliates “by invoking the bogey of The Sun”. And the Blairites will now be weakened, along with the corporate power of the press. “The result will be a little bit more space for democracy.”