Events | 2009.11.08
Telephone hacking: Cursory and complacent
Think of the opprobrium heaped by the press on the regulators who slept while the banks overheated and crashed. And then read the report of the industry\'s own "regulator" into the recent developments concerning phone-hacking by private detectives on behalf of newspapers and resist the instinct to laugh. After the most cursory of inquiries, the Press Complaints Commission has produced a complacent report which will give ammunition to every sceptic who has ever accused the body of being a toothless watchdog.
The PCC\'s "inquiry" resulted from this paper\'s story in July reporting that News Group newspapers had reached a confidential million pound settlement with three victims of illegal phone hacking by a private investigator working for the News of the World called Glenn Mulcaire. The victims included Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers\' Association. That story was true. Its significance was that the documents in the Taylor case included a NoW contract promising Mulcaire a £7,000 bonus for the Taylor story – implying some sort of official sanction of his work – and that the transcripts of his intercepted phone messages indicated that at least two other NoW staff had been involved – a junior reporter and whoever directed him. That contradicted earlier assurances to parliament and the PCC by senior Murdoch executives that only one NoW journalist, Clive Goodman (jailed for hacking royal phones), had ever used these methods. The PCC has decided it was not misled by the "rotten apple" defence. Despite the £1m settlement; despite the bonus contract; despite the phone transcript – written "for Neville" (the NoW\'s chief reporter) - it says it has not seen any evidence that any NoW journalist other than Goodman was involved in phone message tapping. This finding is extraordinary, since it flies in the face of direct evidence about at least two other journalists involved in the Taylor case which is not disputed, even by the NoW.
A secondary element of the Davies story was the claim by two police sources that they had uncovered "thousands" of instances of phone message hacking by the same private investigators employed by the NoW. That police sources were making such claims was confirmed by Taylor\'s solicitor, who told MPs that a named police sergeant had told him that 6,000 people may have had their phones hacked into. We also know from the DPP that prosecutors evaluating the evidence were faced with so many potential offences that they deliberately limited the number of charges to prevent the inquiry becoming "unmanageable". These may have involved newspapers other than the NoW, we don\'t know.
In reaching its conclusions, it appears the PCC did not interview a single witness or inspect a single document beyond those uncovered by police, the information commissioner or MPs. It did not question Andy Coulson, editor at the time (just as it failed to contact him at the time of Goodman). It did not make inquiries of five other NoW journalists or contractees who had direct knowledge of events – Thurlbeck, Greg Miskiw (who signed the contract), the junior reporter, Goodman or Mulcaire – or, indeed, any other NoW journalist employed at the time. It did not interrogate the bonus contract (News Group said it was confidential). It did not interview – though it said it tried – the detective sergeant or reconcile his remark with other police evidence. Indeed, the solitary successful serious inquiry the PCC itself appears to have made was an exchange of letters with the current NoW editor, Colin Myler, who was not at the paper at the time. Without the benefit of investigations made by outsiders – parliament, police, lawyers, the information commissioner and reporters – the PCC would have been forced to write a very short report. We now know that top people from the military, police, government and royal family have been warned by the police that their phone messages may have been intercepted by private detectives working for newspapers. The security services took this seriously enough to conduct a review. Who ordered the hacking? We don\'t know and the PCC won\'t ask.
The PCC performs a valuable function as a mediator. To call it a "regulator" increasingly looks misleading. Credible regulators have teeth. They have powers to investigate, to call for evidence and to impose sanctions. Since the information commissioner first reported on the widespread use of private investigators by journalists in 2006, the only bodies to have made a determined effort to find out what was going on have been the information commissioner, the police and parliament. The PCC has repeatedly declined to make its own detailed inquiries, pleading that it is beyond its remit. Most neutral observers would conclude from this pattern of behaviour that the only effective scrutiny and regulation of the press currently comes from outside, which is a dangerous state of affairs. The PCC has just announced a governance review. Unless it proposes serious reforms, the cause of effective self-regulation will be unsustainable. That would be very troubling. This newspaper has supported effective self-regulation, believing that any other form of control or limits on the press would be worse. We still believe that. But the form self-regulation currently takes is not very credible. The PCC has done its own cause – and therefore the press itself – no favours.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]cy-press-pcc-telephone-hacking
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