Why, I hear you ask, did the editors of the New Statesman and Independent do nothing
about Johann Hari? Private Eye and many others had been raising killer questions about his
journalism for years before the scandal broke, and yet they stood aside and let him be.
Why, to raise the obvious follow up question after the grotesque allegations about Milly Dowler, did Rupert Murdoch and successive editors of the News of the World not stop stories that could only have come from illegal surveillance?
Because the managers of the British media have a pimp’s morality. If a broadsheet columnist produces “facts” that thrill the clients, they pat him on the head and give him a pay rise rather than wondering if his routine is not too good to be true. If tabloid reporters are bringing in sensational stories that tickle the punters’ fancy, then they concentrate all their attention on counting the takings.
On the Today Programme this morning Paul Connew, former deputy editor of the paper in the 1990s, and Professor Stewart Purvis of City University, and Justin Webb of the BBC bent over backwards give Rebekah Brooks the benefit of the doubt, by declaring she “may” not have known what her reporters were doing just because she happened to be editing the News of the World at the time they were doing it. They prefered to trot out any excuse, however implausible, to saying that the buck stops at the top. As for the paper’s owner, the thought that he was anything other than an innocent victim was outrageous to one and all. “There’s no suggestion that Rupert Murdoch would have known,” said Webb, in an eager to please voice. “Indeed there’s every suggestion he’s pretty hopping mad right now!”
“Absolutely, absolutely, I’m sure that’s true!” chirruped a grateful Connew.
The New Statesman, the Independent, the News of the World and the Today Programme are always the first to demand that politicians must be held to account for the behaviour of their subordinates. But when it comes to putting their own bawdy houses in order they maintain that it is outrageous to suggest that the pimps and brothel keepers are in anyway responsible for what the girls get up to behind closed doors.
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