No scandal is a scandal until the suffix “-gate” is applied to it, and on Thursday’s Newsnight, it was none other than Bob Woodward, half of the original Watergate reporting team, who christened the News of the World hacking story “Rupert-gate”. The closure of Britain’s highest-selling newspaper would never have happened without the tenacity of the Guardian. But, in truth, All the Proprietor’s Men was an astonishing role reversal in which politicians did for the press, as the press has so often done for them.
In this case, the equivalent of Woodward and his collaborator Carl Bernstein were Tom Watson, the Labour MP for West Bromwich East, and Chris Bryant, who represents Rhondda. In public perception, Andy Coulson is John Dean, the White House counsel who was the initial scapegoat. James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks are playing the parts of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Nixon’s closest aides. Was there a whistle-blower deep in the heart of Wapping? A Lunchtime O’Throat? And, of course, the cover-up, rather than the original alleged illegalities, is fast becoming the story. What did the police know and when? How did all this information come the way of journalists in the first place? Well, you know the answer: follow the money.
Thereafter, the analogy begins to falter. Watergate ended in Nixon’s fall and national disgrace. Rupert Murdoch, with characteristic determination, is flying in to London this weekend to get a grip on the crisis, and to ensure that those who say his time is past are proved wrong. This is not the first time the 80-year-old tycoon has faced such adversity, and those who despise him would do well not to confuse their longing for his downfall for its likelihood. This is not Murdoch’s first rodeo, and it won’t be his last.
The British people, as Macaulay famously observed, love their “periodical fits of morality” – and this one is a belter. It enabled Hugh Grant, who has campaigned against hacking, to act out for real on Question Time the scene in Love Actually in which he tells the bad-guy US President where to go – except in this case, of course, the bad guy was the press. The audience loved it. You just knew that the actor was going to be dancing around jauntily to the Pointer Sisters’ Jump as soon as the show was over. For that reason alone, this must never happen again.
But it is more than a collective moral outburst. In a sense, Murdoch is a victim of the very cultural revolution he helped to bring about. We are no longer a deferential nation and, aided by the information revolution, we insist on seeing the inner wiring of our institutions and professions. The bankers were first; then the political class, with the expenses scandal. Now it is the turn of the media. It’s not the morals of red-top journalists that have changed. It’s our collective desire for absolute transparency, to confront the warts on the body politic, to see the cloven hoof.
Although it is journalists who face the most immediate moral, commercial and investigatory pressures, the intensity of the moment is making huge demands of politicians. Ed Miliband had a good week. I disagree with some of the detail of what he said: I think, for instance, that Rebekah Brooks is staying in post as CEO of News International so she can see the whole ghastly thing through (and there is certainly more to come), rather than because she imagines she is above judgment. But there is no doubt that the Labour leader caught the collective mood first and best. This was his “Diana moment”, akin to Tony Blair’s public response to the death of the Princess in 1997.
In David Cameron’s defence, he was in Afghanistan and then flying home in a C-17 as the story was breaking: shades of Tony Blair learning of Dr David Kelly’s death in 2003 on the plane to Japan. Such are the cares of office, the price a Prime Minister pays for his necessary absences from the Westminster bearpit. Those around Cameron insist that he is now making the running and that – given the generally favourable press the PM enjoys – he has a lot more to lose than Miliband by proposing tougher regulation of the media.
The two inquiries he has launched must be seen to investigate fearlessly and comprehensively what happened, and to assess with rigour and fairness what should happen now. Public anger must be assuaged. At the same time, it would be hideous if the outcome of this scandal was a neutered press, no longer able to publish the stories that somebody, somewhere doesn’t want you to know. I’m with Jefferson: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Cameron would not go that far. But I doubt he wants to be remembered as the Prime Minister who regulated the best print media in the world into sullen irrelevance.
Second, and whatever the pressures, he must be scrupulously fair on the BSkyB deal. Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, is rightly obsessed with due process, as he must be as he ponders this quasi-judicial decision. Legally, he can only form a judgment on “plurality” – that is, the variety and diversity of the media. But he is also obliged to consider every submission sent to him in the consultation process, which will now, for obvious reasons, take many months. Quite distinct from the Government, the media regulator Ofcom is clearly straining at the leash to judge whether News Corp remains “fit and proper” to own BSkyB. The whole deal hangs in the balance, in all its complexities. Yet the blunt political truth is that, if the takeover goes through, Cameron will pay a heavy political price.
Third, the PM faces stern criticism this weekend and beyond over his decision to employ Mr Coulson. Does the hiring of the former News of the World editor show bad judgment? Some will say so: among them those who, in other contexts, are the most outspoken champions of “rehabilitation” and “second chances”. Mr Coulson has already had to resign twice, although by common consent he was a talented editor and a very capable director of communications in No 10. He has been arrested, but not, at the time of writing, charged; innocent, you may recall, until proven guilty.
This is indeed the PM’s greatest test to date, and one that will run and run. In the great political game, it is his very soul and personality that are on trial. Judgment matters, and it is inevitable that Cameron’s will be questioned. But let me be the one to say it: integrity and loyalty are important, too. And personally, I would rather have a Prime Minister who still calls his friend a friend when the going gets tough, than a craven leader who throws him to the wolves. In the ferocious days ahead, true leadership will be shown by those who can distinguish between morality and mob rule.
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