The Fleet Street Hackers – Kenneth’s Blog

The Fleet Street Hackers

 

The day after day reactions to the scandal of the British tabloids – mainly The News of the World but indirectly many others —  has one surprise. It overlooks the British culture from which it all emerged and which, in my view, must share responsibility. The reporters and editors who behaved so avaricously, stealing private messages from cell phones, paying sources, and maybe worse to come, didn’t drop out of the proverbial sky. They’re sons and daughters of British families, students of British schools, probably graduates of British universities. Their ethics were influenced if not created by values and principles acquired in formative years through family, education and early years in journalism.

This is made more important by the nature of journalism, which I’ve been involved in, more or less, for a half century. Journalism isn’t subject to formal professional standards, including conduct, in, say, the way medicine, accountancy, engineering and law are. They have overseeing “boards” with regulations, standards and enforcement. (I sat on one of them board and know how very seriously credible charges of misconduct are taken.)  But journalism isn’t a profession, its more a craft. Anyone with a computer can try journalism just as anyone with a camera can try photography, especially today with “social media.” (I know Press Councils have value, but lack the authority of professional conduct boards which can suspend or cancel licenses, sometimes then calling in the police.) In journalism, ethical standards inevitably depend for enforcement by the editor-in-chief backed by the publisher. In London’s tabloid world, the latter would be Rupert Murdoch and too many others who think like him. Lawrence Martin, the Globe & Mail’s engaging columnist put it vividly by quoting Pete Hamill who said that under Murdoch’s guidance the paper became like “an unwanted guest who threw up at your dinner party.” Probably well put. So when such a man washes his hands of what his papers did, where’s the assurance?

Still, his journalists, too many of them, followed a tempting adage: “The best way to get along is to go along.” So they relied heavily on an old practice common in North American papers: the anonymous source. It may well be time for serious journalism to examine this custom, maybe forbid it, since it’s easily used for mischievous purpose by a “source” that’s a liar trying to use journalists for his own mischievous ends. (One interim step is to insist that the name of the source be shared by the reporter with two editors senior to him or her.)

That said, I have to stress that the tabloiders didn’t act without lack of influence.  They are sons and daughters of families, students of schools, graduates of universities that shaped (or failed to shape) their values. So words from a seer of ancient days – Sri Guru Granth Sahib – are still apt: “If the parent is a drunkard, a gambler and a cheat, no amount of textbook ethics can cure the young….. the fault lies on the shoulders of the elders, the parents and leaders, who shaped the norms which they imbibe.” It’s likely true of the hacking journalists. So as the politicians – including the current Prime Minister who breathtakingly hired a former editor of News of the World as his press advisor — denounce Murdoch and his minions, they might consider the wisdom of that very old line. Then, painful though it is, they might look in the mirror. —- Kenneth Bagnell. July 30, 2011.

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