Media: News Corporation

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Friday 15th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I believe that Hackgate was described by Emile Zola in the 19th century:

“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way”.

Perhaps this is why politicians are struggling to keep the issue reined in. It is not simply to do with legality. I am just a newspaper reader, thankfully not a victim, and like most readers I have few answers but many questions. Here are just three. How widespread was the collapse of leadership within the press? Why were there, seemingly, so few Deep Throat-type characters in our newsrooms revealing these practices? Have other institutions had similar troubles?

First, how widespread was the collapse? The best evidence I can find comes from the Guardian column called Media Monkey. On 1 May 2002, Media Monkey wrote a report on the Guardian's website on the newspaper industry's Princess Margaret awards. These awards are colloquially called the Shaftas, as they are for the worst journalistic mistakes that year. The 2002 awards were sponsored by Vodafone. The evening was attended by Piers Morgan and the Sun newpaper’s then showbiz editor Dominic Mohan, who is now the paper’s editor. Media Monkey said:

“Ring, a ring a story. How appropriate that the most glamorous event in the showbusiness calendar should be sponsored by a phone company. Mohan went on to thank ‘Vodafone's lack of security’ for the Mirror's showbusiness exclusives. Whatever does he mean?”.

I am afraid that this was to an industry audience, which unfortunately leads to the inevitable conclusion that there was widespread collapse in the leadership within the press. However, did Vodafone take any action as the sponsor of the awards? With so much of our lives moving on to smartphones, the lack of proper security systems for mobile phones must not be lost in this debate. Also, if you were a member of the audience, who do you report this to? Do we need a kind of Crimestoppers for whistleblowers?

Secondly, there is the lack of a Deep Throat. It is a shame that the UK has adopted the word “gate”, from Watergate, for our scandals but, seemingly, does not have whistleblowers of the Deep Throat kind or more investigative journalists in the Woodward and Bernstein mould. I believe that deeply embedded in the nation's psyche is the idea that you do not snitch. Along with institutional cultures of fear if you speak out, that makes a toxic mix. We need more whistleblowers, not leakers. Whistleblowers speak out in the public interest. I hope that through this inquiry, we will rediscover what is genuinely in the public interest—not what is interesting to the public or to the political advantage of some.

Gordon Brown was right to question the public interest in revealing his son's condition but that is precisely why it could have been stopped, as it was a clear breach of the Press Complaints Commission’s code. The idea of the media wielding such power over leading politicians that they do not use the code is quite chilling. Although one can understand that a father with a son who has cystic fibrosis wants to have the condition's profile raised, his knowledge of Fraser Brown’s condition was not his news to tell. I hope that he was not paid for such information and I am encouraged that he estimates that approximately 100 people would also have known—and everyone else respected the Brown family's privacy. Sources of information, including celebrities who sell intimate details of their private lives, and readers such as me are all responsible. However, for the Sun to be asserting that it is fine to find out the private information about the children of public figures, as long as it is done by legal means, is not evidence of the new ethics the public want to see in the media.

The public interest also does not equate to political advantage, so for politicians it is about limiting leaks while preserving whistleblowing. Christopher Galley was sacked from the Home Office for leaking information to politicians. Politicians need to be very circumspect about documents that are leaked by civil servants because they supposedly contain information in the public interest. Governments need to be able to trust civil servants, and politicians and the media should not provide incentives for conduct by civil servants that may not be illegal but amounts to professional misconduct.

Unfortunately, the culture of silence in newsrooms has been found in other institutions: the Catholic Church; the BBC and ITV over telephone voting scams; HBOS, which made the whistleblower Paul Moore redundant after he warned of reckless lending practices; and Bristol hospital, when consultant anaesthetist Dr Stephen Bolsin broke ranks to expose high death rates among heart surgery patients who were children. Interestingly, Dr Bolsin said why he broke the silence:

“In the end I just couldn't go on putting those children to sleep, with their parents present in the anaesthetic room, knowing that it was almost certain to be the last time they would see their sons or daughters alive”.

He could not do what he knew in his conscience was wrong. How do you legislate for or regulate that? You cannot. Regulation alone is not the answer.

Along with the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, I believe that the public feel that there is a crisis of leadership in our public institutions and are wondering who to trust. Alas, the Anglican Church owns $6 million worth of shares in News Corporation, so I doubt that the archbishops are able to step into the gap. Despite this leadership vacuum, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a modern-day separation of powers between the press, politicians and the police, to rediscover the meaning of the public interest and to find out how profits, readership and popularity came to matter more than honesty and integrity.

I believe that eventually the truth will out. America looked back on Watergate and saw the truth come out as the result of the door to an office being left inches open so that a security officer realised that someone had been in there. This nation will look back at “Hackgate” and see that the truth came out because Prince William and his contact were not available to speak directly so left voicemail messages. The royal household also had the discretion to know who holds what personal information, and inadvertently that discretion will have served the nation oh so well.

I thank my noble friend Lord Fowler for the opportunity to speak on today’s Motion. I do not envy the task before Lord Justice Leveson and his panel, but I wish them well.