One of the most shocking revelations from the whole News of the World phone-hacking affair emerged, strangely, from Hugh Grant’s article for the New Statesman which provided a partial transcript of his (secretly taped) conversation with former NoW hack Paul McMullan.
Was it true, asked Grant – as a parliamentary committee had the previous week put to John Yates of the Metropolitan Police – that the NoW had been hacking the phones of the friends and family of the murdered girls Milly Dowler and the two Soham girls, Holly and Jessica? McMullan: “Yeah. Yeah. It’s more than likely. Yeah.... It was quite routine”.
We’re not talking here about corruption in high places, about journalism’s noble quest to hold the rich and powerful to account, but seedy, indefensible acts of brazen criminality to invade the privacy of bereaved parents. The question we have to ask is: what sort of corporate culture, run according to what sort of ethical standards, could possibly permit that sort of “routine” brutalisation of other people’s lives?
This matters because News International has finally admitted liability for widespread and systematic phone-hacking on the NoW; and because Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is about to decide on whether its parent company News Corp’s bid for a full takeover of BSkyB should be referred for a full inquiry to the Competition Commission.
Hunt’s department was quick to dismiss any idea that phone-hacking should have the slightest influence on his decision because it is “not seen as relevant to media plurality." This is nonsense. It should be quite clear to anyone who cares about media diversity that the phone hacking scandal, and the corporate culture which cultivates it, is right at the heart of media plurality. That was precisely why David Puttnam led a rebellion in the House of Lords in 2003 to ensure that a public interest test was included for all media mergers and acquisitions. It is that test which has forced this decision on Jeremy Hunt.
We will probably never know whether the then editor Andy Coulson had any knowledge of this widespread practice, let alone his predecessor and now News International executive Rebekah Brooks, nor her boss James Murdoch, nor his boss and father Rupert. But acts of criminality like the hacking of mobile phones – or the equally widespread practices of buying confidential information such as medical records, phone records, bank accounts, insurance claims etc – does not require active complicity from senior executives. It simply requires an implicit understanding throughout the company that these practices are acceptable, perhaps in some cases positively desirable.
Quite what defines the Murdoch “phenomenon” has been the subject of many accounts and biographies, but there is no question that a corporate culture exists which dictates the approach of all News Corp media outlets. It means that, once BSkyB becomes an integral part of the Murdoch stable, every aspect of its output will be driven by the same uncompromising culture as we have seen in the past from other members of the group.
That matters because BSkyB has an effective monopoly of pay TV in the UK and its annual revenues will soon exceed the combined income of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. The programmes which it buys and commissions – the drama, the comedy, the documentaries – will be imbued with the same values which produced Fox News in the United States and a news room which resorted to routine phone hacking in the UK.
Plurality is fundamental to British culture and democracy, and the phone hacking scandal has taught us that who owns the media really does make a difference. We desperately need more owners – not only of newspapers and television stations, but of radio stations, publishing houses, film studios, even online news aggregators. At the very least, Jeremy Hunt can make a small step by referring the News Corp bid to the competition authorities for a proper investigation.
