Cabbages & Kings: Movers & Hackers

“Prophet: Your children are not your children!
Bachchoo: I’ll certainly have a word with my wife, my liege!
Prophet: The Moon is not the Moon!
Bachchoo: How cheesy, my liege!
Prophet: Your leg is not your leg!
Bachchoo: Pull the other one, mate!”
From The Dialogues of Kahlil Gibberish

Andy Coulson, the former director of communications to No. 10 Downing Street — or in other words British Prime Minister David Cameron’s press agent and spin doctor — was found this week, guilty of criminal activity in his previous job as editor of the now defunct Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper News of the World (NoTW).

In a trial at the Old Bailey which lasted nine months, the publication was exposed as having run stories which it obtained by illegal means, specifically by hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians and people in the news, by bribing police officers to hand over confidential information and by obtaining the private diaries and address books of members of the extended Royal Family by bribing their staff.

The “News of the Screws” as the scandal sheet was popularly known was not the only one to use these methods to get hold of scandalous material, but it was the paper that blew it when its hired phone hackers were exposed as having accessed the phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl, who in March 2002 was reported missing.

Later her body was found buried in woodland. The police subsequently caught her murderer who was convicted and jailed for life. Eight years later the Guardian (not owned by Murdoch) reported that Scotland Yard had discovered during the investigation that Dowler’s voicemail had been accessed by journalists working for NoTW and the newspaper’s freelance private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. The Guardian also reported that these journalists had deleted messages on Dowler’s phone to make room for more messages of distress from her family which they could then feature in the paper. The allegation amounted to tampering with potentially crucial evidence. It was proved later that Mulcaire and the NoTW had hacked into Dowler’s phone but that her messages had been deleted automatically by the network and not by the hackers.

In January 2012, it was revealed that Surrey police, and other police forces, were aware soon after Dowler’s death that NoTW staff had accessed her mobile phone messages, but did nothing about it apart from a senior Surrey officer inviting the journalists to a meeting to discuss the case.

The Guardian’s revelations were greeted by public outrage. The Murdoch empire offered two million pounds to the Dowler family in compensation. The outrage forced the government into instituting an enquiry, led by Justice Leveson, into press freedom. All those celebrities and members of the public who felt they had been unfairly treated by the NoTW instituted legal action or sued for damages. Murdoch closed down the NoTW.

At the time Coulson, who had been its editor had quit the job and been appointed by Mr Cameron to be his press officer, a position which gave him access to the workings of government and responsibility for representing its achievements and failures in the best light. Now that Coulson has been convicted of serious criminal charges, the Opposition parties and some within his own Tory Party are questioning Mr Cameron’s judgment in appointing an ex-NoTW editor after the newspaper had come under suspicion for illegal activities.

Mr Cameron apologised to Parliament for what he says was a mistake but justified the appointment of Coulson saying he had given him “insurances” (sic) that he was not involved in any way in phone hacking or bribery. Mr Cameron says he believed him. Why would he not? He was desperate to get as close to the newspaper empire of Murdoch as he could and adopting one of the favourite sons of that empire as his director of communications would establish and constantly refresh the relationship.

Mr Cameron is not alone in wanting the ear or favour of Murdoch who owns several newspapers and whose empire includes TV stations and Internet outlets for news and opinion-making. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair formed close relationships with Murdoch and, it now emerges, even closer relations with Wendi Deng Murdoch, his ex-wife.

Politicians obviously think that the press controls public opinion. It certainly informs public opinion and that information may be vital to the formation of opinion, but does that really amount to controlling the way people vote? Perhaps in repressive regimes where the press is entirely controlled by the party, faction or person in power and the words “free” and “press” are never seen together, this may be the case. The Egyptian junta, which displaced the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi has this week jailed three Al Jazeera journalists for their alleged defiance and “dissemination of terrorist views”. No wonder the junta got 111 per cent of the vote in the last Egyptian election.

The sine qua non of press freedom anywhere in the world is that politicians should have no control whatsoever over the press. In the UK, while this condition obtains and politicians can’t even tell the state-owned BBC what to say or how to represent them, the way Mr Blair and Mr Cameron chose to influence the press was by cosying up to its owners and editors.

Does this work? It is clear that Murdoch who owns an international media empire personally favours one or other politicians and his newspapers toe his line. When he backed John Major for PM and the Tory Party won, the most widely-read Murdoch paper the Sun reported the victory with the headline “It’s the Sun wot won it”.

But do newspapers win elections? Did the Indian newspapers, the English, Hindi or regional language press, support Narendra Modi? Or did they impartially report the “Modi wave” and assist it to turn into a tsunami? Or is the truth that this electoral tsunami was caused by deep shifts in the tectonic layers of public opinion: anti-corruption, anti-dynastic feeling and development-consciousness overruling caste loyalties?