Nick Davies, the author of the excellent Flat Earth News, continues to provide excellent journalism on the unfolding MetGate affair.
He has now filed a detailed piece setting out the grounds for an independent inquiry. (It is also worth seeing his other articles on the same scandal.)
Also see the detailed and interesting article by Brian Cathcart at Index on Censorship.
As this blog pointed out last Thursday (almost alone of the political and legal blogs), the issues raised by the New York Times article are serious.
That is not to say that there is proof of wrongdoing; but there now is an array of witness and documentary evidence indicating that an independent and open inquiry should take place in the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and News International.
It is this relationship which is key to the whole matter.
The alleged interceptions and unauthorised access raise potentially significant legal issues under both the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Computer Misuse Act. Any possible offences should be investigated fully.
In all this, some Labour politicians are rightly focusing on the role of News International and Andy Coulson (they favour the hashtag #Hackgate on Twitter), whilst others are more concerned with what happened at New Scotland Yard (they favour #MetGate). I am one of the latter.
There is no doubt that Labour politicians are using this as a matter of party advantage.
However, that does not make their concerns illegitimate.
Many who generally support the Coalition (like me) are able to see that the concerns are serious, and to realise that the emerging evidence requires proper, fair and open consideration.
This is simply not a party matter; it is much more serious than that.
It is not good enough for Tories to try and close this down so as to protect Andy Coulson from criticism, or to save David Cameron from embarrassment.
As this Blog said last Thursday:
"Public confidence in the press and the police is crucial to a modern liberal and democratic society; any without an inquiry into these serious allegations, it is difficult to see how such confidence can exist."
And even partisan Tories should care about that.
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I regard this case as being primarily about the overweening power of certain sections of the British press. Andy Coulson's role in the matter is really little more than a sideshow.
This case seems to demonstrate that illegal hacking into personal communications was an accepted practice in Fleet Street. It is interesting that competing tabloid newspapers have largely been silent on the issue, where otherwise one might expect them to do all they could to expose the failings of the News of the World as their competitor. It is also bizarre that news outlets like the BBC and ITN were somewhat slow to even acknowledge the New York Times investigation, although both now seem to have awoken to the potential seriousness of the case.
It is worrying that the police appear to have been concerned that investigating hacking might damage relations with News International. Perhaps they also had in mind that if they pursued the case vigourously it might embroil other sections of the press too, for it seems doubtful that hacking was confined to the News of the World.
The involvement of the New York Times in this matter is unusual. They are not known for their interest in the workings of the British press. Many will argue their motive is commercial rivalry with News Corp, though it is difficult to imagine any news organisation that doesn't compete with the Murdoch empire. Hitherto the only UK media outlets that have pursued the hacking scandal to any extent have been the Guardian and Private Eye, with little success. Perhaps it is instructive that an overseas newspaper stepped into the breach.
Of course, the case also exposes the weakness of parliament's Culture Select Committee and the Press Complaints Commission. Witnesses before the Select Committee for News International seemed to suffer from collective amnesia, saying they didn't recall, weren't aware, etc., although they did seem to think the Goodman/Mulcaire case was an isolated incident.
The PCC is often regarded as a toothless organisation. The hacking scandal provided it with an opportunity to demonstrate its effectiveness as an industry regulator by enquiring more widely into the practices of tabloid journalists in obtaining personal communications. It failed completely and we now have the bizarre spectacle of the Chief of the PCC being threatened with a libel writ for denying the evidence of a Select Committee witness.
Press freedom is one of the important pillars of our society. However, it seems sometimes our press abuses that privilege. I certainly don't advocated statutory regulation but I do wonder whether it is time to look again at the effectiveness of the PCC as an industry self-regulator.
Kris, In Nick Davies Flat earth News he says ays that at one case linked to this
"The prosecution was just explaining how the ultimate paymasters for all this activity were journalists, how the prosecution hadtraced 19 seperate occasions on which this group of men had been paid to obtain police information by Fleet Street newspapers including the Sunday Mirror, the Mail on Sunday and the News of the World when the judge, John Samuels QC, interrupted and asked a highly relevant question. Where were the journalists? Everybody else was in the dock. Where were the paymasters, the people who had commissioned the illegal activity?
The Prosecutor could not explain."
So this type of activity was far from confined to the halls of News International.
I think it's quite revealing to note who did not ask searching questions at the time of the trial and who is not asking searching questions now.
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