Phone hacking scandal should not blind us to the good that journalists do

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3: There was a great American TV series which ran from 1977 to 1982. It was called Lou Grant and was set in the fictional newspaper world of the Los Angeles Tribune.

Lou was the tough talking news editor with a strong moral compass. The series wasn’t afraid to examine the big ethical questions of the day including cheque book journalism, entrapment of sources and staged news photographs. Each episode featured an editorial dilemma and the younger reporters would turn to Lou for guidance.

So you can’t help wonder what good old Lou would have made of the newspaper phone hacking story that has made headlines in Britain and the United States over the past few weeks.

This is a story with more twists and turns than some of Bermuda’s trickiest roads. It all started in 2005 when London’s Metropolitan police service looked into allegations that one of Prince William’s aides had his phone hacked into by the UK’s biggest selling Sunday paper News Of The World .

This resulted in the jailing of the paper’s royal editor, Clive Goodman alongside a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.

Meantime another UK newspaper, The Guardian, decided that there was a lot more to this story. Over the intervening years it continued to dig deeper uncovering a catalogue of phone hacking abuses involving celebrities, politicians and other well known people. There were suggestions that people in high places were reluctant to go into battle with the mighty News Corp (and its spin off company News International) over these claims

But the story only really took off when it was revealed that the News Of The World had hacked into the cellphone of murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, while she was missing and deleted messages.The action had led her distraught parents to believe that she could still be alive.

This and other phone hacking claims led to the closure of the 168 year old News Of The World, followed by the departure of UK News International chief Rebekah Brooks.  David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, and other senior political figures are being put under the spotlight. Two of London’s police chiefs have also fallen on their swords. 

It now looks likely that News Corp’s head, Rupert Murdoch — who has already faced tough questions from the UK’s parliamentary inquiry committee — could be in for another grilling.

The wider implication is that ‘phone hacking isn’t just confined to the News of The World. New claims have emerged about similar practices at Trinity, another UK newspaper group. Meantime in the US, reporters at the New York Post have been told to preserve any documents that may relate to possible ‘phone hacking.

So what are we to make of this almighty row here in Bermuda?

For a start there are lessons to be learned and something positive could come out of it. The dubious practices of some tabloid newspapers have been put under public scrutiny and this is no bad thing.

Having said this, there will always be a role for ground breaking investigative journalism. Unsafe medicines have been banned, abusive institutions closed and tyrannical war lords exposed by brilliant campaigning journalists. Some of them have lost their lives trying to expose injustices around the world. But it requires people with the right skills, training and above all a strong sense of ethics. And make no bones about it, these requirements have to come from the top down.

 Dirty deeds

There is a lot of talk about the need for stronger press regulation. But there are real dangers here and we should be wary of over regulating the newspaper industry.

By all means stand up for better ethics and put this right at the heart of journalism training instead of at the edges where it is now. But as the great American journalist Ellen Goodman once said:

“In journalism there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.”

Could there be a better time for a remake of Lou Grant?