Proper Gander: Hacked off (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

For some journalists, the ‘freedom of the press’ has meant the ‘freedom’ to get information for a scoop by any unscrupulous method, especially tapping phones. ITV’s documentary Tabloids On Trial was a reminder that the ‘phone hacking scandal’ is still being played out in the courts, over eighteen years since it first became public. Much of the programme is taken up with ITV News’s Rebecca Barry interviewing people involved, such as ex-journalists and celebrities. Footballer Paul Gascoigne, now looking older than his years, talks about the damage done by newspaper exposés of his personal life and how reporters learned the details. Actor Hugh Grant alleges that The Sun used information about him gathered through microphones in window boxes, medical records ‘blagged’ from the NHS and burglary. Singer Charlotte Church tells of how she was targeted by the press from when she was a teenager, and says they became an ‘inescapable abuser’. Ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown says that when his phone was hacked, this risked the leak of state secrets to the press. Even Prince Harry is interviewed, telling us that the surveillance and mistrust it led to ‘sucks’. When he won his civil court case against Mirror Group Newspapers in December 2023, the judge ruled that phone hacking and illegal information gathering was ‘habitual and widespread’ in the company.

The spare heir isn’t the only royal to have been affected. In 2005, the royal family (or their staff) noticed that some of the details in News of the World articles about them could only have come from voicemails, so they contacted the police. A reporter and private investigator were subsequently convicted of phone hacking, and the investigation closed after a few months with the Metropolitan Police claiming there was ‘insufficient evidence’ of any other wrongdoing at the newspaper. As Nick Davies, an investigative journalist who uncovered the scandal, says in the documentary, they ‘very very nearly got away with that’. Then, in 2011, it was revealed that News of the World journalists had also hacked into the phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler while she was missing. The resulting backlash led to the newspaper closing down.

The Leveson Inquiry began the same year, collating reports from thousands of people who had information about them gained surreptitiously by journalists and contracted private investigators. At the hearings, senior newspaper staff and reporters all denied knowledge of phone hacking, except James Hipwell, who said that it happened daily on The Mirror’s showbiz desk, then overseen by Piers Morgan. Interviewed for the documentary is Paul McMullan, previously of the News of the World, who admits that phone hacking was commonplace and accepted, opining that privacy was something that people may want, but don’t need.

Many of the celebrities and others have won damages in court, and civil cases are ongoing, including that raised by Prince Harry. Cases have been or will be against behemoths Mirror Group Newspapers, News UK Newspapers (part of News Corp, which owns The Sun and now-defunct News of the World) and Associated Newspapers, which includes The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. As pointed out by ex-broadsheet editor Baroness Wheatcroft, considering that this is an industry-wide crime with thousands of victims, there have been few criminal convictions. Only eight journalists or private investigators and one senior figure (News of the World editor Andy Coulson) were found guilty of hacking-related crimes. An explanation for this low number suggested by the documentary is that the police were reluctant to investigate because of their connections with the press, described by ex-newspaper editor Paul Connew as ‘almost a mutual backscratching relationship’. Hugh Grant remarks that the police were ‘as dangerous as the reporters’ because they would tip off journalists. An undercover police officer working at a private investigator firm says that what he reported back to the Met was ignored because their senior staff were friendly with those at The Sun. The Tories dropped the Leveson Inquiry before any links between the police and the papers were investigated. The documentary is careful not to go too far here, raising more questions about how close those links between parts of the establishment have been.

The suggestion that phone hacking is part of a bigger issue in a more fundamental way is made by Prince Harry, of all people, in calling the claimants including himself the ‘Davids’ to the Goliath of the ‘vast media enterprise’. He seemingly recognises that even his own status and wealth is dwarfed by the clout of the media industry, with its central role in the capitalist economy. The phone hacking scandal is notable in that it has wronged some of those at the top of capitalism’s hierarchy, also including Gordon Brown. The capitalist class and its representatives benefit from how the system – including the media industry – exploits people, but because they are newsworthy, they’re subject to being exploited by the media themselves. And it appears to be only the very richest victims – like the prince and the ex-PM – who can afford what’s called justice. Even Hugh Grant hasn’t got the money to cover the £10 million in legal fees which a victory in court would cost him, hence him agreeing an out-of-court settlement with The Sun.

Of all those interviewed for the documentary, investigative journalist Nick Davies has the widest and clearest view of the scandal. As he explains, the ‘ruthless determination’ for profits has driven tactics such as phone hacking, ‘blagging’ and stealing, regardless of the welfare of their targets. If these tactics provide information for salacious stories which sell more newspapers, creating more profit, then those tactics will be used. As Paul McMullan states, the illegality of phone hacking didn’t prevent journalists using it as ‘almost an industry standard technique’. Now that this practice has been exposed, the backlash against it has made it no longer feasible, and therefore no longer profitable.

The media industry has changed since the years when phone hacking was widespread. Then, printed newspapers weren’t as seriously threatened by the proliferation of online news providers as they are now. Changes in how we consume news have eroded the prominence which newspapers once had, and the disgrace of the phone hacking scandal has helped speed up their decline. What hasn’t changed, though, is the ‘ruthless determination’ for profits which drives the media industry and those who work within.

Mike Foster

The labour army wants YOU! (2023)

From the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

An 1890 poem by Rudyard Kipling, Tommy, (from the slang for a soldier, Tommy Atkins), tells of the contempt held toward the working class member of the Army by the civilian population. Until that is, they were required to go off and fight some war on behalf of British capitalism. It’s reasonable to assume that economic circumstances drove a lot of Tommies into the armed forces.

Herbert Kitchener was the Secretary of State for War during the 1914-1918 one (he drowned in 1916). Initially, the armed forces were able to swell their numbers with volunteers, but as time passed and large numbers of young working-class men were being led like lambs to the slaughter on the battlefields of France and beyond it was necessary to introduce conscription in 1916. Probably Kitchener is most well known for the recruiting poster in which he stares out whilst pointing at the viewer: Kitchener Wants You!

The present Conservative Member of Parliament for Chingford and Woodford Green appears to fancy himself as another Kitchener. Iain Duncan Smith’s not exhorting the working class via a poster. He’s aiming at the industrial reserve army of labour, more specifically, those who through disabilities and sickness of various kinds are physically unable to be waged/salaried wage slaves. Smith used an Op-ed in The Sun headlined, ‘We must get thousands of people on long term sickness back into work for the sake of the economy – here’s how’.

Data from the Department of Work and Pensions analysed by the Centre for Social Justice suggests there are some 1.6 million more claimants since 2020, costing the state around £13 billion more in welfare benefits. Reducing this number by getting more people back into work will help the government find the room it needs to invest in public services and reduce the tax burden (tinyurl.com/3etumu43). What Smith wants is to lessen the tax burden for capitalists.

Smith’s predecessor in that constituency, also a Conservative, was a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government. Norman Tebbit was, in a similar vein, fond of bashing the unemployed. Tebbit said the unemployed should get on their bikes and go look for work and get a job as his father had in the thirties.

Writing in Liverpool’s favourite tabloid, and in a very similar vein, Piers Morgan targeted ‘work-shy wastrels’: ‘Official UK unemployment numbers are at a near-record low of just under 4%. Yet staggeringly, a quarter of the people of working age – that’s over 10 million – don’t currently have a paid job. That includes students and carers, but it also includes vast numbers of people claiming to be sick and disabled and living off government handouts, or who’ve just taken early retirement. Add the enormous number of people on some form of benefits – estimated at over 5 million, many of whom are clearly gaming the easy life system – and Britain’s become a nation of shamefully unhealthy, entitled, couch potatoes. No wonder a recent poll had the UK being No1 in the world for having citizens who would most want to quit their jobs and do nothing if money was no issue.’

Note the ‘gaming’ and its inference that they are perpetuating a fraud of some kind. Has Morgan ever tried living off unemployment pay, or a basic state pension?

‘How the hell has it come to this? We’ve always been a country of ambitious and industrious grafters who’ve taken pride in putting a shift in’ (tinyurl.com/bdwdxsfu). Ha, the delusions of the well-heeled!

And there’s more! In a Bloomberg podcast, on 19 May, with Guy Hands, the billionaire chairman of a large private equity company, said, ‘I look at the UK and see that, in 2030, Poland will be wealthier than we are. In 2040, we will be the poor man in Europe’.

He opines, ‘the UK should not have left the EU, as the country needs rule of law and consistency, but not a single politician is talking about going back.’ He lamented that ‘Brexit has essentially thrown the country back 50 years, to the 1970s, a decade that is widely remembered as a time of crisis, with skyrocketing inflation, high unemployment, strikes and power cuts.’

‘Since the UK left the European Union, it has been competing on the world stage, but the country’s current laws are not suitable for the new environment.’

Now that the UK is out of the EU, the British government could take a radical approach and change some of its laws, Hands said, citing the country’s ‘extraordinarily complex’ labour laws that are a ‘nightmare’ compared to other European countries.

Nightmare labour laws! Perhaps capitalists would prefer a throwback to nineteenth century industrial relations?

We, the majority, would prefer socialism.

Dave Coggan

Voice From The Back: What fun! (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What fun!

The newspapers are always reminding us that the US expeditions to Afghanistan and Iraq were carried out for humanitarian reasons, so it is good to be reminded from time to time of the mind-set of some of the combatants in those conflicts. “‘Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.’ Lieut. General James Mattis, who commanded U.S. Marine expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq, in comments during a panel discussion for which he was later reprimanded” Time (14 February).

Mind the gap

The gap between the rhetoric of politicians and the economic realities of capitalism is a very large one. Here is a recent example. “As Tony Blair argued that a precautionary approach to greenhouse gas emission was vital to prevent environmental disaster, the European Commission threatened legal action because the UK wanted to raise the amount of carbon that industry is allowed to pump out under the European emission trading scheme. The government was accused of caving in to business led by the Confederation of British Industry” The Observer (20 February). They are messing up our world, how do you feel about that? Pass the inhaler we feel a little sick.

Useless toil

One of the most attractive features about a future socialist society is that it will do away with a lot of dangerous, dirty and nasty occupations. Think of a society without arms manufacture, armies, policemen, jailers, prostitutes, bankers, insurance men and debt collectors. One of the multi-billion dollar industries that will disappear is the advertising and marketing con game. How big an industry is revealed in the following figures of some of the big global advertising spenders. “Procter & Gamble $5.6 bn, Unilever $3.54 bn, General Motors $3.4 bn.” The Observer (27 February). It is reckoned that $60 billion will be spent this year telling you what kind of toothpaste to use, clothes to wear, food to eat and what kind of credit card is “in” this year. What a madhouse.

Nice for some

In January we reported that according to the International Labour Organisation 1.4 billion, the highest number ever, were living on less than $2 a day and 550 million were living on less than $1 a day. So it is only proper that we report the other side of the coin as reported by the 2005 Forbes dollar billionaire list. “Topping the list for the 11th year running is the Microsoft boss Bill Gates, worth £24.1 billion. The 19th annual list shows the world’s rich getting ever richer, with a total of 691 billionaires. Lakshmi Mittal, the steel magnate who has backed the Labour Party, increased his net worth by £9.7 billion to £13 billion” The Times (11 March).

Riding the tiger

Piers Morgan was made editor of the News of the World when he was only 28 years of age. Within two years he was editor of the Daily Mirror, a job he held for nine years until his “exclusive” of fake pictures of British guards abusing Iraqi prisoners was exposed. He has now published his memoirs The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade. It is the usual mix of celebrity-spotting and anecdotes that such memoirs tend to be. Here is an extract from a book review that reveals the high-minded thinking of our leaders. “Before the 1997 general election Morgan suggested to Blair that he shouldn’t forget his friends at the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror in his cosying up to Murdoch to win the “vote” of the The Sun. ‘Piers, I had to court him‘, said Blair. ‘It is better to be riding the tiger’s back than let it rip your throat out. Look at what Murdoch did to Kinnock‘” The Times (12 March).

Read it and weep

Jeffrey D. Sachs, head of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and special adviser to UNO chief Kofi Annan has just written a book called The End of Poverty. Being by a reformer who thinks that capitalism can solve the problem of world hunger, the book has limited value, but what cannot be denied is the mass of information that Sachs has gathered on the state of world hunger today. It makes for awful reading. “Currently more than 8 million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive.” Every morning our newspapers could report “More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.” How? The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack anti-malarial bed nets, in homes that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public concern. Sadly such statistics rarely get written” Time (14 March).

 

Greasy Pole: Blair bites the hand that fed him (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

"It must have taken a considerable effort of amnesia for Blair to attack the very media he has courted and manipulated"

Among the associated discomforts of the event, the process of dying is said - by some who have yet to experience it - to activate a flash review of the more guilt-worthy episodes in one's life. So was it that Tony Blair, as he clung on in the dying days of his prime ministership, became moved to look back on the style of, and his government's relationship with, the media. Astonishing though this was it was made more so by the distortion which Blair applied to his recall of certain events and his disregard of others.

About a fortnight before he was due to hand over to Gordon Brown Blair revealed to the waiting world the fruits of his meditation about the media. They were not those of a satisfied, reassured man:

"The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out . . .  the media has become dangerous because of its desire for stories with "impact" that will allow it to stand apart from the rest of the media. This comes second to accuracy."

Morgan
The use of the word "feral" is interesting in that it does not chime in with the usual vocabulary of Blair's oratory. More often it is a word resorted to in panic-inducing media reports of offences by youth gangs in the frenzied centres or hopeless estates of the cities. Used in that way it encourages a concept of crime as a social ailment more susceptible to cure by harsh, confining penalties - behaviour to be tough on - rather than as a doomed response to conditioned alienation - a cause to be tough on. It recalls the time when Blair was eagerly grasping for power, showing a budding skill in using the very media he now condemns to stimulate the kind of impulsive, ill-considered response to a social problem he judged would yield him the support he needed to realise his ambition.

Among those under the lash of Blair's criticism there was one who cheerfully admitted to being a "feral beast". Piers Morgan, during a long, and not always reputable, media career, was editor of the Daily Mirror for about nine years until May 2004. At that time he was sacked after the Mirror had published photographs, on its front page as well as inside, which seemed to be of British soldiers assaulting and humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war. The Mirror hailed this as a world exclusive and there was an appropriate response, from the Chief of the General Staff ("…appalling conduct…contravenes the British Army's high standards of conduct"); Downing Street ("We expect the highest standards of conduct from our forces in Iraq"); and the then Defence Minister ("…behaviour clearly unacceptable"). Rival newspapers were sourly envious while much of the world media clamoured to be allowed to publish the pictures. Without a doubt, this was a story with what Blair later called "impact", designed to drive up circulation and thereby inflate profits. The problem - for Morgan and for the Mirror - was that the pictures had been faked. And a problem for Blair was that the Mirror and its embarrassing editor were Labour supporters; in the midst of the crisis over the photos, Blair sent a handwritten note to Morgan: "Thank you for the Mirror's renewed support, it's come at a good time". Although the "renewed" support did not include backing the Iraq invasion, which Morgan described as "a senseless, illegal war".

Marr
A media rival of Morgan, also thrown off an editor's chair, is Andrew Marr, whose amiable, interesting face has recently invaded our homes with his TV series The History of Modern Britain (in which some of his conclusions are open to debate). One of the upward steps in Marr's journalistic career saw him, in 1996, editor of the Independent, a newspaper apparently well-suited to his reputation as a centre left commentator on the seamy world of British politics. His design for the Independent was for it to be tough and serious, read by about 200,000 tough, serious people. Not, in other words, at all like Morgan's Mirror. This promised to be hard going in the ruthless broadsheet circulation war in which the victor was likely to be, not the best written, most courageous, widest informing, newspaper but the one able to compete for sales through cutting its price or with promotions like give-away CDs. Most to be feared in this struggle was The Times which, backed by Murdoch's riches, was able to sell below its market price.

At the time the Independent was almost half owned by the Mirror Group, which put it under the influence of the odious David Montgomery, who was himself struggling to resuscitate his employable appeal to newspaper proprietors after being fired by Murdoch in response to a disastrous launching of Today. Montgomery's vision of the Independent was very different from that of Marr; he saw it as a kind of yuppie version of the Daily Mirror, appealing to Rolex-wearing, Porsche-driving, "aspirational" (another word in present favour with New Labour) people. This style was supposed to raise productivity through savage budget cuts and sacking a host of people, especially those whose function was to report the news as distinct from composing a column about those "interesting" people. Marr did not see this as the way out for the Independent which was why he had to go, although he did have the consolation of the staff giving him a send-off which included the honour of "banging out" – an old ritual involving the wielding of printers' hammers. In fact, soon after being sacked Marr was enticed back but it was not long before he finally left.

Sucking Up
Like Morgan, Marr is no blind supporter of Blair and his party. In his book My Trade he comments on Labour's "sophisticated, endless media strategy" and its "ruthless discipline on its main figures". Tony Blair, he writes was "adept at telling people what they wanted to hear…Tough on crime with the Daily Mail; tough on the causes of crime with the Guardian" . And this was before New Labour had got into power. One of Marr's conclusions is that the party's "relationship with rich, and sometimes dodgy, characters was no purer than the Tories' had been in the bad old days of 'sleaze' ". Clearly, it must have taken a considerable effort of amnesia for Blair to attack the very media he has courted and manipulated, sucking up to Murdoch and his rags, playing on the neuroses of Daily Mail addicts. The media reflects the society it operates in, poisoned by the reality that its first regard must be for sales and profits, a society where feral beasts roam because only the most savage survive.

Ivan