Journalism in the dock: Will investigative reporting evolve or dissolve?

When the News of the World Fake Sheikh asked me to record every conversation I had with the subjects of my stories for an investigation the paper did in India, I thought it was an unnecessary, additional work. But this very policy of the News of the World saved their journalist Bethany Usher when she was arrested for the hacking scandal under Operation Weeting.

Usher was arrested for ‘transcribing a voicemail message in an email’. "What saved me was the News of the World policy about taping everything," says Usher who had taped her interactions with the source who had had given her permission to use the voicemail for a story, which led to charges being dropped against her within eight days. “Tape everything” she advices journalism students at the ‘Journalism In The Dock’ panel discussion at City University yesterday. 

“Tape everything”
- Bethany Usher, former News of the World journalist turned journalism lecturer (arrested under Operation Weeting and later cleared)

While Usher has taken this experience in her stride and moved on to teaching journalism now, her colleague Neil Wallis, the former executive editor of the News of the World, also arrested for his alleged involvment in hacking scandal and only cleared recently seemed still agitated by the whole experience.

Wallis warned journalism students that Leveson is ‘destroying your future’. Speaking on press freedom, Neil added that ‘once it is taken away; you will never get it back.” The bitterness in Neil’s arguments reflected his experience as a suspect in Operation Weeting. Neil was on police bail for 21 months which he describes as ‘isolating’ and his arrest as ‘politically motivated’.

Neil described his friend’s experience who was taken to the police station in the wee hours of the morning while the police searched his house, while his “teenage daughters watched them rifle through their underwear drawers looking for alleged evidence.”

His angst against Leveson inquiry and police investigations sparked off a heated debate with Brian Cathcart, the editor of the Hacked Off blog, journalist and writer. Cathcart’s support to Leveson, smirked Wallis and a row continued on the fine print in the Leveson recommendation. Wallis believed that the politicians and police are using the low journalist credibility in public now for “payback” against Murdoch’s papers. He is currently pursuing Masters in Criminology.

All though the panel discussion Cathcart and Wallis were found taking pot-shots at each other. Did the hacking scandal create a “with us or against us” mentality in the journalist fraternity, I wondered.

A sombre argument came from Peter Preston, the former Guardian editor who warned that Britain was setting a dangerous example for the rest of the world. Preston who has travelled extensively around the world described media freedom (or lack of it) in other countries. “It’s become a norm to arrest journalists in UK”, said Preston, and added that now some countries justify the atrocities on journalists by citing UK as an example. He mentioned that at the International Press Institute, the Turkish Prime Minister defended locking up journalists or terrorism charges because “it happens all the time in Britain.”

Losing sources:

The most insightful comments on the state of investigative journalism today came from Brian Flynn, investigative editor of the Sun. “It feels we are being frogmarched into a police state,” he said which generated an agitated response from a professor in the audience that such a comment was “ludicrous” and a by product of tabloid mentality.

" It feels we are being frogmarched into a police state"  
- Brian Flynn, Investigations Editor, The Sun

Flynn argues that the fear of arrests and no public interest defence in the bribery law has led to journalists turning away stories that could be great investigations. “Sources are motivated by a number of reasons, for some its money,” he said adding an example of a worker in a care home asking for money to expose abuse which in the atmosphere of fear today “would not be published even though it was clearly in the public interest”.  

Flynn said there was a “crackdown” on journalists as now “journalists make unsympathetic victims”. Journalists are also losing important sources that are paramount for good investigative reporting as "officials are being arrested for speaking to journalists even where no money is involved." Police have stopped speaking to local papers after Leveson except on very official matters, he added. As an investigative reporter, I can understand the importance of police sources and gag orders like these do more harm than good to investigative reporting and are detrimental to public interests. 

Investigative journalism operates through grey areas, said Flynn adding, "After all remember the expense scandal was broken through stolen documents."

Hotline for whistleblowers

Another Leveson suggestion of a whistleblower hotline found no takers with Cathcart stating that “it was not a good idea” and Usher declaring that she would never use a hotline. “You have to trust your colleagues”, she stated. Preston said that the idea of a hotline was discussed 20 years ago when he was involved in setting up the Press Complaints Commission but “for real change of ethical standards, there has to be a consensus (among journalists) to make it work,” he said. 

The panel represented two distinct views – one that believed that Leveson would bring ethics back to journalism and another that thought Leveson would kill investigative reporting. Even among the five journalists present on the panel there was no consensus.

Walking down the halls of City University, almost a decade after I did my Masters in International Journalism, brought back good old memories but it was also a little melancholic now because journalism has changed so much.

Back then we mostly used tapes to record a lengthy interview if we didn’t want to scribble notes. Journalism was also respected. We were excited about entering a profession that strived to ‘make the world a better place’. On this, my old professor Colin Bickler who passed away in January this year would look at us in our conflict reporting class and remark that we were just romanticising journalism.

‘Journalism is a dangerous profession. There are many forces trying to stop journalists from doing their true job,” he said. In the ten years of my journalism career, I slowly understood what he actually meant- not all forces are external; sometimes these forces are just within journalism.

Murder on Fleet Street

Last month I was surprised to find money credited by News International into my bank account. I had not written for the News of the World (NoW) for two years and did not understand why I received any payments now. I thought it was a mistake. I wrote to NoW and was told that the auditors must have just discovered they underpaid me then and are making it up now. Little did I know then, that in less than a month the paper will be no more.

I told my husband who joked, ‘Perhaps they tapped my phone back then and were paying me compensation’. We laughed. NoW and the phone hacking scandal were synonymous. But as long as they tapped phones of celebrities and people in power, not many cared (apart from the celebs and the suits of course, who had the money and the means to take the paper to court and get large compensation!).

My association with NoW was very brief. The interviews I did for NoW were all recorded with the subject's consent and left no room for any sleeze or scandal. Yes, I am justifying myself simply because any association with NoW now puts your credibility as a journalist under the scanner. In fact I was asked why I want to even mention that I ever did anything for the paper. I was a freelancer, so I wasn't even within the vast periphery of the paper's gambit, imagine what the NoW staff would be feeling. Reporters who had absolutely no inkling about any hacking will also now be looked upon with suspicion.

The Guardian’s recent expose of how the NoW’s hired detective used subterfuge to hack onto phones of unsuspecting civilians including a murdered teenager Milly Dowler shocked everyone. It created a huge public outrage and not without reason.

Revelations that murdered teenagers’ or families of victims of terror attacks were also targeted in the paper’s quest to dig up sleaze is incorrigible. More than 4000 such victims, the cops said. What were they hoping to get? A distraught aging father cursing the transport secretary for not investing in bomb proof trains?  Or a wife telling her lover that with the husband dead now, they were free to elope? It’s pathetic!

And where is the public interest in whose name newspapers often indulge in subterfuge? Although not a strong advocate of subterfuge myself as a journalist, I understand that sometimes it is important to resort to it to dig up information and facts not easily available in public domain which are important for the public to know. There is a thin line and editorial ethics play an important role in where you draw the line. But there is no doubt that NoW crossed that line.

Peter Burden asked a very good question in his book, News of the World: Fake Sheikhs and Royal Trapping, “Are the tabloids' pious protestations of public interest really just a self-serving attempt to halt declining circulation?”

NoW boasts of the highest circulation of any newspaper on Sundays. Unfortunately this tarnished tabloid will print its final edition this Sunday, July 10, 2011. So a newspaper known for ground breaking stories, though not often devoid of controversy, has decided to pull down the shutters. Was it necessary? Will it only re emerge as the Sun on Sunday and print it's old grit again?

And its unfair to the 250 odd staff facing the threat of redundancy who could have not been privy to NoW phone hacking scandal that operated on a much higher level. Yet Rebekah Brooks stays and James Murdoch still wears an innocent face.

The paper has been brutally murdered by its bosses. And it's blood will leave a huge blot on Fleet Street. Although almost all newspaper offices have over the years moved to different locations, Fleet Street will always be synonymous with the press in London.

I don't think ceasing to publish NoW is a solution. What is required was a revamp of editorial standards, to repent and learn from its mistakes. NoW didn’t have to die. It could re-invent itself on principles of good journalism, change its editorial board to include people with character and ethics and more importantly scrutinize the sources and contents of its news reports. 

It’s not difficult to hack into people’s phones. Mumbai Mirror, a tabloid I also worked for in India, used a small time detective to hack into a prominent lawyer’s phone in less than 60 seconds. They could eavesdrop on every conversation the lawyer had and also read his text messages.  

Mumbai Mirror's expose on phone hacking

So how are they different? They first took the lawyer’s permission before they got the detective to hack into his phone without the detective’s knowledge of course. Then they published an expose on how easy it was to tap someone’s phone on their front page giving details of the entire operation. They exposed the hacker.

Instead of publishing an expose on phone tapping, Mirror could have used it themselves to eavesdrop on conversations of celebrities, politicians, police or even the victims of brutal murders or terror attacks - we have them all in Mumbai. It could have given some great sleaze and gossip for any tabloid. It could boost circulation many folds.

But the paper didn’t resort to such unethical sleaze. It did what any good journalist/editor would do. It exposed the wrong doings and alerted the public on how easy it was for some to tap into their phones, forcing the police to find the culprits and find ways of preventing such crime. No wonder, Mirror is the best tabloid in Mumbai for investigative reporting and has a high circulation.

Good ethical journalism is all about the choices we as journalists and editors make.