The humblest day of my life
Paper Boy – the irreverent insider
After the scale of the famine in Somalia, the atrocities in Norway and Amy Winehouse’s premature death, the news agenda (both print and broadcast) is led once again by the phone hacking saga.
Fresh revelations yesterday that Sara Payne, a friend of the News of the World (always seemed like a contradiction to me!), was the latest victim of phone hacking to be uncovered.
Lots of prime editorial space is being devoted to these new revelations. However, the sense that Rebekah Brooks knew about this one looks extremely odd. If she wanted to know anything from the Paynes she would have simply phoned them – they were that close.
The culpability is with the culture created and the cultural legacy left behind when she moved from the News of the World to The Sun. The rivalry between all newspapers continues – equally to those who share the same publisher and operate under the same roof.
Remember the story of Brooks (Wade as it was at the time) disguising herself as a cleaner so that she could hide in the toilets of the News International print hall and obtain a first edition copy of The Sunday Times, which was closely guarding a scoop. Brooks managed to get what she was sent for and ‘lift’ the story so it appeared in the second edition of the News of the World. The editor of The Sunday Times John Witherow (then and still is now) labelled the act ‘theft’ rather than mischievous and subsequently sparked a huge internal row.
When a newspaper editor has a scoop their aim is to guard the first two editions, as once the second edition has started to roll off the presses it is too late for a rival to copy or spoil it – without it looking meagre and with little impact likely on sale.
A classic example was the The Times buy-up of Edwina Currie’s book, which revealed the news of her affair with John Major. The Times held the secret among a number of executives for a couple of weeks (no mean feat as journalists leak like sieves) and then on the night of publication chose not to run the story in the first edition. Instead they led with a different front page story and on the inside pages where the story was to play out, Robert Thomson, the editor asked the advertising department for a double page spread “filler” ad. With no knowledge of the impending news event, the advertisement manager offered up Currys as a brand – the irony was not lost and oh what fun it was to work in newspapers!
The point is that the fiercely competitive market for newspaper readers meant that when Brooks went from the News of the World to edit The Sun those rivalries were probably exacerbated. Not between Brooks and the new News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, but between the staff that worked for them and wanted to impress each one accordingly. The fact that Brooks had the relationship with Sara Payne meant that the News of the World probably found it difficult to utilise. You can see why they might have added Sara Payne to their illegal surveillance list, albeit through Glenn Mulcaire (the private investigator at the centre of the row, who recently told The Guardian – “working for the News of the World was never easy. There was relentless pressure. There was a constant demand for results. I knew what we did pushed the limits ethically”.)
So where will this saga end? Who will be the next victim to be announced? Has Mulcaire got old Rupe’s personal details on file too? More and more people are being dragged into the debacle, from victims to perpetrators, from private detectives to the top brass at the Met, to media moguls to the Prime Minister.
Even a friend of mine (ex News International) who did not work in editorial was rung on Saturday by an Independent on Sunday journalist. The basis of the enquiry was that Matt Driscoll, a football reporter on the News of the World who was sacked unfairly and won compensation of almost £800,000, claimed to the Independent on Sunday that he had alerted News International executives to illegal practices back in 2007 in his submission to an internal appeal to two independent non-editorial directors (if you can be independent taking the Murdoch shilling!).
Quite a sobering episode for a past colleague – someone who would have been a 5,000-1 shot to be pulled into ‘Hackgate’. Although he honestly says he has no recollection of the claim from Driscoll, there is a level of humility in terms of the reminder about how toothless the internal procedures were at News International.
So has Rupert had his humblest day yet? James has managed to hold on to the BSkyB chairmanship when all our pension scheme and fund managers could have taken the once in a lifetime opportunity to really insist on decent corporate governance for one of our largest companies.
And for me, well the Green team won our company sports day – for which we (mainly me) were booed when collecting our medals…