[Blog/Commentary] [UK] "A Rogue Hack..."
Stephanie Stevens
Feb 13 2012
"A Rogue Hack..."
The journalists of the Sun have started to fight back
<http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4124870/The-Suns-Trevor-Kavanagh-Witch-hunt-puts-us-behind-ex-Soviet-states-on-Press-freedom.html>
against police action against corruption in their media organisation,
News International. The discovery of more illegally-obtained material
connected to Sun journalists is putting pressure on the Murdoch media
as never before.
When it all hit the fan a few months ago and phone hacking was exposed
at the News of the World, Newscorp was insistent that this was the
work of one "rogue journalist". Of course they were wrong; it turned
out that these kind of illegal and imoral practices were endemic, if
not systemic in the practices of Newscorp/News International media in
the UK. Now the police, by quiet but systematic and meticulous
detective work, are starting to uncover the real extent of these
practices. If Murdoch had hoped that, by sacrificing the News of the
World he would somehow protect the rest of his media empire, he was
wrong.
The wolf cries of those journalists remaining at the Sun as they worry
about their colleagues will kiss and tell to the police, are just
that; crying wolf. The claim that the UK has fallen down the freedom
of speech league table behind some ex-Soviet bloc countries because of
the police investigation into the Sun are deliberately disingenuous...
They are disingenuous firstly because they are clearly intended to put
pressure on the police not to continue their investigation into News
International newspapers, methinks there are likely to be more arrests
on the way, this article is therefore a desperate attempt to forestall
the inevitable. Judging by recent performance, the current police
investigation will plod on regardless. I suspect they were expecting
this sort of thing from the Murdoch media as they start to get closer
to the real culprits. If I were working on this investigation I would
be very much heartened by the Sun's front page. Indeed I would have
been expecting it, as a sign that the investigation is proceeding on
the right lines.
They are disingenous secondly because the reason the UK has been
slipping down the freedom of speech league table is because of
organisations such as the Murdoch media. They have such power to set
the agenda, to influence politicians, to influence some groups of
voters, that their power and domination of the media almopst certainly
represents the biggest single threat to freedom of speech in this
country.
The bullying tactics used by the media, and in particular the Murdoch
media were exposed brilliantly last week by the courageous work of
Trans Media Watch <http://www.transmediawatch.org/> at the Leveson
Inquiry. The harrassment, intimidation, publication of personal
medical information and yes, what can only be described as outright
transphobic hate-crime on the part of journalists in the tabloid press
was laid bare for all to see.
The wolf-cries of journalists, complaints of witch-hunts are all just
pathetic squeals of bullies who are being brought bang to rights. They
didn't think about the witch-hunts they were pursuing against trans
people, they didn't think about the families with trans children who
were forced from their homes and into a kind of lock-down hiding as a
result of Murdoch (and others, like the Daily Mail) Journalists
bullying tactics.
The Longest Witch-Hunt
However yesterday, there was another reminder that it isn't just
groups like trans people who are regularly witch-hunted by the press.
Will Hutton's apalling article
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/12/will-hutton-education-schools-reform>
in the Guardian banging on about "bad teachers" and telling teachers
to be "less defensive" was, depressingly, typical of the majority of
press output about teachers for the last quarter of a century.
Journalists are squealing "Witch-hunt" after their dodgy practices are
put under the spotlight for just a few months. They have been putting
teachers through that sort of witch hunt since the mid 1980s. The Will
Hutton article was notable not in terms of its content, it could have
been published in almost any right-wing newspaper since 1985, it even
followed a pretty much set pattern of similar articles one might find
in the Sun, Mail, Telegraph etc. The Hutton article was notable
because it was written by a journmalist who normally uses his talent
to write expose about subjects in the spotlight but from a different
point of view, revealing the complexities and nuances and hidden
facets not normally revealed by the press. Instead of doing this
Hutton decided to simply follow the pack.
Clearly witch-hunt journalism is not going away any time soon. It is
depressing that a journalist I once respected has sold out to the pack
and produced this politically-motivated drivel, the like of which one
would have expected from a much lower-rated hack. If he had chosen to
look behind the routine cries of "bad teachers" coming from the usual
suspects (cries which tend to intensify when the government wants to
do something really crappy to schools) Hutton would have found a real
story there to expose, a story of systemic problems associated with
the mechanisms of controlling schools including Ofsted, the system of
academies and "free" schools, hidden centralisation and Stalinism at
the DfE, and a school system which is becoming increasingly
dysfnctional and harming the interests of pupils.
Pity Hutton chose the easy option, he is now descended to being little
more than a has-been gutter press hack like the others now. I hear
there are vacancies coming up at the Sun Will, you will need a course
in computer/phone hacking first though...
Posted by Natacha