Except for a few passing references the BBC programme Rupert Murdoch: Battle with Britain made no attempt to examine how over the last thirty years his two tabloid newspapers the Sun and the News of the World helped to establish what became a hidden underworld where journalists were encouraged to pay cash for private and often illicitly-gained information.
Steve Hewlett’s commentary as presenter reflected the positive impact of Murdoch’s success in transforming newspaper production and in developing his satellite television services like Sky News but the programme skated over the ethics of the Murdoch press and the potential long-term damage to British journalism.
Murdoch always had the deepest pockets when it came to buying up exclusive stories which for him became a winning formula as he demonstrated immediately after purchasing the News of the World in 1969 and paying £21,000 for the memoirs of Christine Keeler whose affair had forced the resignation of the cabinet minister John Profumo.
Hewlett said the Keeler story was a “classic Murdoch headline grabber”, selling an extra 150,000 copies, and it illustrated the way he shamelessly popularised news content and relied on a “no holds barred approach to eye-catching scoops.”
But except for a few short references to the phone hacking scandal which forced the closure of the News of the World and what the programme said was the existence of a “network of corrupt officials on the Sun’s payroll”, the programme (BBC 2, 28.4.2013) made no attempt to follow up the evidence to the Leveson Inquiry about the way “regular, frequent and sometimes significant” cash payments had been authorised at “a very senior level” within News International.
It was during the industrial confrontations of the early to mid 1980s – which culminated in Murdoch’s sacking of 5,000 print workers when he moved production of his newspapers to Wapping – that I first became aware of the ability of journalists working for the Murdoch press, and especially those on the Sun and the News of the World, to get information from the Police and other authorities which most reporters had found it impossible to obtain.
Suddenly all our efforts could be overtaken by sensational headlines, about Police investigations and arrests or perhaps the disclosure of private and personal data about trade union activists and so on, which we suspected had been secured by an ability to offer hard cash to reward contacts.
What became clear after evidence to the Leveson Inquiry by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers was that the culture of paying for illicitly-gained information had become deeply embedded in the Sun’s culture.
Indeed so deeply entrenched was the “cash payment process” that when the first arrests were made the Sun’s long-established political commentator Trevor Kavanagh leapt to the defence of his colleagues. He admitted straight away that money had often changed hands when the Sun covered stories based on leaked information and whistleblowers – it was he said, “standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed here and abroad.”
I immediately challenged his assertion and argued there were thousands upon thousands of British journalists who had never routinely paid for stories in the way he was suggesting – and that certainly went for the four generations of newspaper journalists in my family who I would maintain got their stories through hard work and endeavour.
Given the ability of Murdoch’s journalists to pay cash – and bearing in mind that the former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie also defended paying tip-off fees to Police officers and told Leveson that only “anything costing more than around £3,000” would have crossed his desk – it was no wonder that this process morphed a couple of decades later into paying cash to private investigators to hack into messages left on mobile phones.
Britain’s tabloids have become mired in a bidding war for sensationalism and the Murdoch press, perhaps more than any other group, should take the blame for having helped to foster an expectation on the part of the public that money can be made from the sale of private information, personal records, tip-offs, snatched mobile phone pictures and the like.
Journalists of my generation, who trained on evening and weekly newspapers, were not accustomed to being asked: “How much? What’s it worth?” whenever they sought interviews or photographs, a routine that is now said to be a commonplace experience for the local reporters of today.
A daily page two advertisement in the Sun continues to encourage readers to get “big money” for “a celebrity, a scandal, a human interest story, or any other great tip.”
Regular half-page advertisements in the News of the World under the editorship of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson gave explicit instructions: “We pay big money for sizzling shots of showbiz love-cheats doing what they shouldn’t ought to, A-listers looking the worse for wear or Premiership idols on the lash the night before a crucial game.” (News of the World, 24.10.2004)
Steve Hewlett’s only interviewee on Murdoch’s impact on the ethics of British journalism was the BBC political commentator and former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil:
“What Murdoch had created had come back to destroy him. He created a new, aggressive tabloid journalism, the kind of aggressive tabloid journalism which gave him the money to by The Times, the Sunday Times and establish TV networks. What created him, ended up by destroying him in this country.”
But Murdoch escaped any further scrutiny in Hewlett’s programme about the way his newspapers had monetised the trade in sensational and often illegally-gained information, an omission which had been so apparent during the two days Murdoch gave evidence before Lord Justice Leveson.
Hewlett’s blog for The Guardian had the title: “Why Britain has reason to be grateful to Rupert Murdoch – Far from being a malign influence, Rupert Murdoch has helped to transform Britain.” Hewlett’s pay off went further: “But is Britain really worse off for having had forty years of Rupert Murdoch?”
My answer is “Yes” in at least one important respect. His newspapers created a market place in which police and prison officers, defence officials and countless others guardians of private information were tempted to sell information to newspapers such as the Sun and the News of the World.
It is often said by her supporters that the most important lesson of Margaret Thatcher’s Premiership was that she taught the country to understand that there is a price for everything – and in Murdoch’s case he encouraged far too many journalists to think the same went for private and personal data.
I would put Hewlett’s question another way: “Did Rupert Murdoch poison the well of British journalism and our great tradition of investigative reporting?”
Illustrations: The Times 16.7.2011; News of the World, 24.10.2004.
Read more in Nicholas Jones’ contribution to The Phone Hacking Scandal: Journalism on Trial (Abramis, 2012) and his chapter: Great political theatre Mr Jay, shame about the questions: Why the Leveson public hearings were a missed opportunity.