“You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, theres no occasion to.” – Humbert Wolfe
TO THE charge that journalism as a profession has been discredited by the hacking scandal there is a desperate defence that sounds uncannily like a Murdoch pleading – for the line “it was only one rogue reporter” read “it was only one rogue newspaper”. And it is no more convincing. Like it or not, the contagion has touched and implicated us all.
In truth, the demise of the News of the Worldhas done – and will do – nothing to reshape the culture of the British tabloid media, of sleaze, of obsession with celebrity and salacious gossip, of intrusion, rightly described as "Murdochisation", though others are also implicated. And which has also unfortunately crossed the Irish Sea. It's a culture fuelled by intense competition that remorselessly, and perhaps inevitably, pushed the hacks, egged on by newsdesks, first into unethical practices, then illegality.
But after an extraordinary week which saw two judicial inquiries established, a grilling by MPs of Murdochs père et fils, heads rolling in News International and the senior ranks of the police, and the scandal came yet closer to Prime Minister David Cameron, what will actually change? Certainly there will be a curbing of illegal practices and, almost inevitably, a new form of press regulation in Britain. Importantly, we will also see a new, proper distancing in the relationships between politicians and editors, and between the press and police.
Against that background, however, of enormous and understandable suspicion of all the media it behoves “quality” journalism again to make its case, its apologia pro vita sua, albeit with some humility. Yes, we’re in business, and to make a profit – and there may be easier ways to do that these days – but as the hacking scandal proves all too clearly, the function of shining a bright light on power, the state, politics, the police, and, yes, the media themselves, is an indispensible pillar of democracy. The price we pay for a free media to do precisely that is Murdoch and his ilk. But it is worth paying.
Nor is the battle to uphold journalistic values new. It's worth recalling the campaign by the New York Timesback in 1897 against the city's "yellow" press, notorious for never letting the truth get in the way of a good story. The paper's new motto then would serve us all well and tax a Murdoch title: "All The News Thats Fit To Print."