I have spent the week absolutely fascinated by the News of the World scandal. Oddly, it started for me with a wimper not a bang, being out and about with such a low phone battery I did not keep up with events.
I'm not even sure why it suddenly exploded this week, when the whole issue has been bubbling under for years. Except that journalists from the popular - not just Murdoch-owned - Press either told us nothing or tried to pacify us that it was 'just' about celebrities who, being celebrities, deserve to hang from lampposts anyway.
Only a few weeks ago there was a massive storm about the so-called 'super'injunctions. There are a lot of subtleties and nuances in that story, but there are really strong direct and indirect connections between the two matters.
Most of the 'superinjunction' cases featured famous people whose private lives had been 'investigated' by a newspaper, be it Murdoch's Sun/News of the World, or the Daily and Sunday versions of the Mail or Mirror.
I say 'private' lives, but I actually their sex lives. Those individuals acted in a way that, I guess, most people would barely tolerate, if at all, from their own life partners. In other words, we are talking about marital (or equivalent) infidelity. Actions which are perfectly lawful. Actions which have no impact upon people not directly involved. Actions which are fairly common for people, famous or not.
I don't know how the newspapers came upon these 'facts'. I imagine it's pretty easy to pick up rumours and gossip. The difficult bit is finding sufficient reliable evidence to make the story robust, and to avoid being sued for libel.
As we can see from the revelations of this week, the tabloid press appear to have few scruples about breaking the law to get their evidence. And even where they don't break the law, I don't think their tactics can withstand any sort of moral or ethical scrutiny.
Two points of view annoyed me greatly during the 'Superinjunction' furore.
One was, if these men can't keep their dicks in their trousers they deserve to be exposed. A moral judgement. Made by people who appeared not to stop and think about the genesis of a story.
Yeah, I know that adultery is naughty, or a sin, or whatever. So are lots of other things, that they don't take such a moral highground about. Actually, there are lots of things that are held by some, many or most people to be naughty or 'sins' that are (generally) not illegal and are committed frequently by numerous people - lying, losing one's temper, slagging people off, slacking at work, selfishness etc.I have always held the view that there is no public interest served by 'exposing' the lawful sexual behaviour of people who have not specifically moralised or legislated on matters of sexual morality.
I regard someone like Nadine Dorries as fair game, because she is actively pursuing legislation on Sexual and Relationship Education whilst conducting an affair that began as adulterous, whereas I don't regard Ryan Giggs to be so - even though people have pretended that he has earned a fortune from marketing his clean-cut image, a tenuous argument at best, seeing as though his marketing is for sports gear and sports-related products stemming from his exceptional sporting talent, competitive success and excellent conduct on the field of play.
Does anyone seriously expect any public figures or models, or writers or photographers, working in advertising to lead lives that are beyond criticism? If you are that naive, you kind of deserved to be suckered.
The other issue regarded Freedom of the Press, driven by a strong but uninformed libertarian agenda. Some aspects of libertarianism are superficially attractive. Ask anyone if they want the state to interfere in their lives, and I think we would all say 'no'. But ideological libertarianisms are little different from anarchists, wanting no governemnt all (except for waging war abroad).
Ask most people whether they welcome some amount of collective action, carefully balanced, to protect them from bullying or violent people or entities, I think most of us would say 'yes'. Of course the fun starts in defining 'some', 'collective action' and 'carefully balanced'.
It's really easy to sloganise about 'freedom of the Press' or 'free speech' or any other freedom, without thinking too deeply about what it actually means.
Does it actually mean, in a democracy, newspapers should be above the criminal law. I'm not sure even the most extreme libertarian would agree that 'freedom of the Press' allows for breaking and entering to look at someone's handwritten diaries or private accounts.Or holding someone at knife-point til they 'fess up.
Some people might argue, sophomorically, that law is only what politicians want, rejecting the notion that an imperfectly elected legislature can ever be representative of 'the people'. I'm tempted to say that when the Murdoch press break a law passed by a Parliament beholden to the Murdoch Press, it looks, walks and talks like a duck, and it's reasonable to conclude that the Murdoch Press is in deep doodoo.
I have found it annoying to read people who only a few weeks ago were praising and glorifying News International (amongst others) for their tenacity and campaigning spirit in revealing that rich successful men sleep around, and are now having the vapours, because SHOCK! HORROR!, not all these stories were obtained by clever questioning over lunch and two bottles at Chinawhite. Instead they were based on methods which may have been illegal and were almost certainly deceitful and probably harrassment.
I am trying to say that there are usually two sides to every story, and in areas that really matters - I believe this matters a great deal - fools rush to snap conclusions that happilly fulfill their own 'moral', prudish or prurient prejudices.
I suppose if you are anti-sex, and believe that anyone who has sex deserves to be shamed, it's pretty easy to argue against privacy, against individual rights and freedoms, against enforcement of the criminal law.
I actually think it's funny that, taken to it's logical conclusions, those who decided to take a moral stand against lawful adultery by someone they don't know or actually care about, have turned out to be the ones who condone and sanction, and by implication, demand, the phone hacking, other illegal covert surveillance, deceitful 'blagging' of information (in some cases criminal, in others - perhaps technically so but difficult to pin down), and harrassment such as 'doorstepping' and other intrusions.
I think it's about time we grew up collectively about sex. It's a remarkably unremarkable subject, and on closer inspection, much of the tabloid tittle-tattle isn't about any sexual act as such but about the petty lies and trivial deceits on which most adulterous affairs depend. I'm not suggesting that such behaviour is to be condoned, and I do understand that it can be devastating for the betrayed partner, the kids, the in-laws, the friends who end up feeling obliged to take sides or keep their lips sealed. Yes, it's all messy, and most of us have been there however vicariously or indirectly. Whilst we - collectively - avariciously consume these stories of 'who's shagging who', we are allowing the so-called free press to ignore the abuses and incompetencies, often the corruption, that exists in so many organisations that are supposed to provide public or commercial goods and services to us. There have recently been excellent investigative TV programmes into abuse in care homes and the private rented sector, but these are rare and ignored on the whole by the supposedly noble, morally-led and tenacious 'investigative' journalists in the down-market Press (and the highbrows, too, largely)
