SO THE News of the Worldis to close, including its Irish edition. It would be wonderful to believe that it's as a result of "people power", writes BREDA O'BRIEN
The revelation that journalists had sunk so low as to hack into a missing child’s phone and remove messages, thereby causing her family to nurse hopes that she was still alive, rightly caused outrage. The decision of companies to pull advertising from the newspaper was certainly influenced by public revulsion.
However, the decision to close the News of the Worldis widely recognised to have been caused by the same crass commercialism that spawned practices like phone-hacking, police-bribing and rubbish bin trawling in the first place.
In other words, securing the BSkyB deal is far more important to News International than the fortunes of any one newspaper. This is a calculated risk, designed to cut off criticism and protect the possibility of acquiring BSkyB. It is the same ruthless imperative that spawned the kind of intrusive journalism that now characterises many British newspapers.
Newspapers survive on advertising revenue, and in a time when the market for quality papers seems to be constantly shrinking, there is still an apparently infinite appetite for salacious details about so-called celebrities.
Most people seem to accept that hacking celebrities’ phones is of a different order from listening to the voicemails of murder or bombing victims, or of their families. Yet if we accept one as legitimate, we dilute the underlying principle of a right to privacy.
However, deciding when the public interest trumps privacy is difficult. Different cultures vary in their approaches. In general, French and Irish media tend to ignore politicians’ affairs or sexual indiscretions, whereas the same activities would destroy a British politician.
Yet did that same discretion allow Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s attitude to women to continue unchallenged? (While his accuser in the alleged rape case may lack credibility, the other women who emerged to tell their stories as a result of her claims hardly do.)
When is breaking a story justified by public interest? Even more importantly, when, if ever, are tactics such as phone-hacking justified? Arguably, Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s attitude to women made him unfit for the vital posts that he held, and aspired to hold.
Would that have justified tapping into his voicemail messages, or sending a woman journalist undercover to entrap him? I don’t believe so.
However, what about paying £110,000 for data on MPs' expenses, as the Daily Telegraphdid? Chequebook journalism for stolen data, or public service?
We live in a voyeuristic society, where the concept of privacy is under attack from every direction, including from Facebook. However, people who post every detail of their lives on social media do so voluntarily, even if they lack common sense.
The people damaged by the News of the World's intrusion had no such choice. Milly Dowler's family not only had to endure the months of torture until her body was discovered, but also her father being treated as a suspect in her murder.
Successive British politicians of every stripe have played a cynical game of courting Rupert Murdoch. It is very damaging for David Cameron that he employed Andy Coulson, a former News of the Worldeditor, as his communications director, after Coulson was accused of sanctioning other phone-hacks.
Cameron's personal judgment has to be called into question, particularly because of his close association with what Daily Telegraphcolumnist Peter Oborne scathingly referred to this week as the Chipping Norton set, "an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners." They include Rebekah Brooks, formerly Rebekah Wade, whose campaign against paedophiles when editor of the News of the Worldbecame associated with inciting violent action against innocent people.
Murdoch’s domination of the media is unhealthy, and has contributed to a lowering of standards, as newspapers compete for readers and advertisers. Young journalists entering the profession come under increasing pressure to cut ethical corners.
British media in particular have resisted outside regulation. However, the media's ferocious attachment to self-regulation might have more credibility if it worked. Yet among the contradictions is that the patient work of some journalists, like Nick Davies of the Guardian, meant that the Murdoch empire was not able to keep brushing transgressions under the carpet.
The lowering of standards is not confined to right-wing media. Johann Hari, a left-liberal gay activist, recently apologised for adding quotes from previously published material to his interviews, while passing them off as something said directly to him.
Such questionable practices merely contribute to public cynicism about journalists in general. And yet we have never needed hard-hitting but ethical journalism more. The closure of the News of the Worlddoes not solve the problem. It illustrates how deep the problem is.