David Allen Green

A critical and liberal look at law and policy

A witch-hunt against the Sun?

Why those at the tabloid should be more concerned with News International than the police.

By David Allen Green Published 13 February 2012 13:23

The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh has described the weekend's arrests of journalists and others as a "witch-hunt". Some, who should know better, are nodding along to this. It is, of course, nothing of the kind, as the sensible Brian Cathcart has calmly explained. However, what is actually happening is a serious matter for those at the Sun and perhaps elsewhere at News International.

But first, a few words about "witch-hunts". It is a phrase often invoked when someone is faced with the sort of sustained and deliberate scrutiny required to overcome obstructions and evasions. In the case of the Sun it is because police officers, operating under the law, have arrested suspects as part of their enquiries. Those suspects are entitled to due process and could well not be charged. They are entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. This is not a "witch-hunt". It is just the normal approach of the police to those suspected of crimes.

The Metropolitan Police are doing something that those who work for a powerful media entity do not like. Instead of the cosy relationship where editors routinely had lunches with senior police officers and their press advisers, and where various reporters allegedly saw nothing wrong in paying public officials for information, there is the short sharp shock of practical law-enforcement. Journalists have turned out not to be above the law: all those tabloid demands for "law and order" were not only for other people.

Nonetheless, there is something deeply uncomfortable about journalists being arrested by the police. But there was also something uncomfortable about members of parliament being taken to police stations. In the latter case, this rightly did not stop democratically elected politicians being arrested, charged, and then convicted for criminal offences over fraudulent expense claims. The enforcement of the Rule of Law in respect of parliamentarians did not mean the undermining of a liberal and democratic society, just as now holding the media to account will not mean either anarchy or repression. In both cases, the fearless and impartial enforcement of the law of the land is a sign of a healthy democracy, not an alarming symptom of political decline.

However, those at the Sun are right to be nervous. News International, through its Management and Standards Committee, is now being ruthless and commercial in dealing with the alleged wrongdoings of all its British titles. In doing so, News International is showing no more sentimental attachment to its reporters than it did thirty years ago to its print workers. It is akin to when a despot withdraws his favour from certain underlings: they are not "thrown to the wolves" but they suddenly are treated like any other subjects, and they then have to account for their actions when they thought they could get away with it.

No sensible person wants another newspaper to close. Indeed, the only people who seem to think closing down newspapers is a solution to the current problems appear to be the senior management of News International. The demand is for better journalism, not for no journalism. There is -- and was -- simply no need for vibrant, mass-market newspapers to use the "dark arts" of blagging or hacking, or to make corrupt payments to public officials. Wise-heads in the industry realise this, and there is likely to be a firm distinction between pre- and post-Leveson journalism.

But in the meantime, whilst it may well seem a good tactic to cry "witch-hunt", all that many can hear are the tabloids crying wolf.

David Allen Green is legal correspondent of the New Statesman

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Tags: Leveson Inquiry The Sun

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33 comments

Mon, 2012-02-13 16:19 — DSoyte (not verified)

I completely agree with you about not wanting the Sun to shut down. What it needs is new un-corrupt management and honest journalists.

Sure, it's a vile newspaper with prejudices against benefit claimants and Muslims. But just because you vehemently disagree with them doesn't mean that they shouldn't have the right to publish it.

Demagogic newspapers are a consequence of a free press. I would much rather have papers like the Sun and Daily Mail exist, than have them banned because they are of poor quality.

Mon, 2012-02-13 16:24 — Stuart Robb (not verified)

The answer to this seems to me to be simple. A new press complaints commission needs to be established and all journalists are licensed. If a complaint against a journalist is upheld, he can be fined or as the ultimate sanction (for example, he makes a story completely up), his license can be revoked. There would be a bit of a shake-out period where all the current journalists would have to start researching their stories properly, rather than using "senior security sources said X", which is code for "I made this bit up", but in the long term we'd end up with better journalism and better newspapers.

In the end, if a journalist flouts the law, including bribery, he's going to be arrested and convicted. That's no different to now!

Tue, 2012-02-14 21:23 — Kosimba (not verified)

I want the sun to close. Rupert Murdoch would effectively move out of the UK print media if that happened (Times and sunday times lose money in big way) and that can only be good for democracy. Incidentally I think Journalists are far too inclined to think that more rather than less newspapers are almost always a good thing. Why? On the whole newspapers have been a negative, biased, ill-informed, unaccountable rightwing voice read by a minority but dragging the agenda of the more popular broadcast media to the right.

Mon, 2012-02-13 17:07 — LibertarianLou (not verified)

The myth of the free press is a bit like the myth of free markets.

We are told that because they are "not government" it doesn't matter how big they get, they are on our side, and their freedom is our freedom, even if they oppress our freedoms.

The interests of the corporate media will never be the same as ours just as the interests of any huge corporation will never be the same as ours. And moreover, government has been corporatised in many ways. We see in this phone hacking debacle itself how corporations can buy the police who are the arms of the state.

It is a lie and we need to keep exposing it as such. Anyone who says they care about freedom but only cares about the size of the state is lying to you, and it's a really dangerous lie.

Mon, 2012-02-13 17:16 — LibertarianLou (not verified)

Dsoyte

Well of course it shouldn't be banned. I don't think anyone is calling for this...

The laws we already have in place should be enforced, that's all.

Mon, 2012-02-13 17:32 — Melow Meldrew (not verified)

More witch hunts .... (And no hacking of my phone or computer if you please).

Mon, 2012-02-13 18:21 — kenny jenkins (not verified)

There is no sense in which the Sun can be described as a newspaper. It should be available to addicts with a prescription provided they're undergoing treatment for their addiction.

Mon, 2012-02-13 18:21 — gerry (not verified)

David - wrong! Every sensible person wants to see the Sun close down..it, and the rest of News Intl, is a blatantly and endemically criminal enterprise, and has been for decades...

This vile and hate-filled media organisation has harrased, bullied, intimidated, threatened, lied, corrupted, hacked and gained private information by criminal means...on a daily basis!

Kavanagh has given the game away, saying that payments to police was always part of the "game" at News International...even now, this disgusting man seems to think that it is OK to bribe public servants in the interests of a sensationalist news story!

So the Sun deserves to die (on that gorund alone), and no decent person should shed a tear for its hateful journalists if they get their P45s...they have been pitiless and merciless when it came to their enemies, as Max Mosley or Sally Dowler or Gordon Brown can attest: it is our duty to kick them when they are down, and hopefully, knock them out for good!

Wed, 2012-02-15 00:44 — Graeme Hancocks (not verified)

The Sun are mererly getting what they have been happy to dish out over the decades and they dont like it. No sympathy for them NI is an wicked, rottenorganisation.

Mon, 2012-02-13 20:28 — felix (not verified)

Listen again to Kavanagh almost incoherent on World at One today...summed up as the cops should be out catching real criminals than hounding up wonderful Sun journos, especially when there is a "potential for a mass suicide attack" this summer at the Olympics.
How dare the police not respect The Sun which chooses our Government every four or five years...

Wed, 2012-02-15 10:08 — crabstix (not verified)

F*** the Sun and f*** Kavanagh, Murdoch and the rest. Let them close and burn in the hell of their own creation. Good riddance to bad filth.

Wed, 2012-02-15 10:31 — Freeman2

Typical police way of doing things - first they're up News International's arse, then they're biting its bum. As an ex-copper once said to me, 'You don;t have to be very bright to stand out in the Met.'

Mon, 2012-02-13 21:42 — miles (not verified)

please don't shut down The Sun, just make it operate within the law - I still won't buy it but I respect the fact some people do and will and enjoy it.

Also, I am hoping that the Police are going to treat officers who took payments equally harshly - dawn raids by squads of 20 ....

Fri, 2012-03-09 18:28 — David Martin (not verified)

It was the Sun what hacked it!

Thu, 2012-02-16 17:37 — Tessa Hauke (not verified)

On the very same day Kavanagh was crying "Witch Hunt", the Sun was conducting a witch hunt of its own by asking members of the public to phone in or email its hotline and proffer up the identity of a trans man who had given birth a year or so earlier.

Hypocrites!

Wed, 2012-02-15 16:19 — Sensible Person (not verified)

As they say, no news is good news. Very much so, in this instance.

Tue, 2012-02-14 07:20 — McMac (not verified)

Stunning display from Kavanagh on The World At One.

Is he mentally I'll, stunningly stupid, incapable of rational thought?

These people pissed away press freedoms on their grubby stories and grubbier morals, of course we want to see them lose their jobs. We want to see them in prison too and we want to see their rags closed down.

Tue, 2012-02-14 11:09 — nomad (not verified)

So Kavanagh doesn't want criminals prosecuted or criminal wrong doing investigated because those being investigated work for the Sun?
You couldn't make it up !
His attitude seems to be "We are News International and therefor above the law"
Incredible !

Wed, 2012-02-15 17:37 — maxinemf

Whyis Rupert Murdoch so desparate to hang onto his UK newspaper empire.

Wed, 2012-02-15 18:03 — longqifei

( ==== http://www.vogue7.us/ ==== )

Wed, 2012-02-15 18:38 — Eddy S (not verified)

the medium term goal should be better oversight of the press and the methods they use to get access to 'stories'.

Wed, 2012-02-15 20:25 — north london geezer (not verified)

What if a foreign power or terrorist organisation had embedded itself within News International?

Wed, 2012-02-15 20:37 — Anon (not verified)

"karmar - I am a sensible person. I want the Sun newspaper to close."

I am a sensible person, I want Murdoch to close, but The Sun? That man has already destroyed a 168 year old trade mark to save his scrawny pitiful arse. What next?

Tue, 2012-02-14 16:29 — Union Steve

The Sun wants freedom to tell lies and ruin the lives of people who can not fight back. Thats freedom of the press in the UK....and we have a tosser defending it!!!

Wed, 2012-02-15 22:25 — Mrs Nobody

The demise of The Sun?

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Mon, 2012-02-13 13:55 — ACMJ

"Freedom Of The Press" does not justify journalistic corruption in the "gutter press" , which has been represented by the SUN for decades .

Mon, 2012-02-13 13:59 — Princess Peonie (not verified)

You're right nobody does want another newspaper to close. However there is some disagreement on whether the Sun meets the criteria for "newspaper" these days, since it is mostly full of editorialising, astrology, competitions, coupons, special offers, and "entertainment"&Lifestyle pieces. The news, if any, is tacked on as an after thought. So if it goes under we won't have lost a newspaper, just a trashmag that was printed daily instead of weekly and without the glossy paper, in short nothing of value will be lost. And it is something The Sun has done to itself over the years. They are no longer even a tabloid newspaper, and a very poor competitor to the glossy lifestyle and lads mags. They have lost sight of their market niche and deserve to fail because of it.

Thu, 2012-02-16 10:43 — Sensible Person (not verified)

With regards to tabloids such as The Sun, we need a more adequate regulatory system.

Restrictions which apply to the watershed, should also be applied to printed press. Journalists need to have some sort of legal training.

There should be sanctions for journalists that break the law and they need to be more accountable, and we need to see editors that are willing to remove pieces that are misleading/harmful.

It would also be encouraging to provide more support for complainants of the printed material.

There will be something that comes in the fill The Sun's place, so I would to see the above applied to whatever that may be. Until then, down with The Sun!

Down with MURDOCH:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_rupert_murdoch_3/

Mon, 2012-02-13 15:24 — Mike Barnes (not verified)

Robert Murat was victim of a witch hunt. Christopher Jefferies was victim of a witch hunt. What's happening to The Sun is justice, karma, whatever you want to call it, and it's very, very funny watching the likes Kavanagh throw his toys out of the pram.

Wed, 2012-02-22 17:16 — maxinemf

What is the difference between Middle eastern dictatorial regimes and Rupert Murdoch. Dictators share a common trait of having to be forced out of office. The same is true for Murdoch who still thinks he can ride out the Leverson storm. RM will not let go of his newspaper stable because he knows without this empire he can no longer hold any sway over British political life. To publish a newspaper at this time is part of the contempt for which RM holds the media (other than his own) and the general public. Memories of the sheer ugliness of what news international represents can never be erased.

Mon, 2012-02-13 15:29 — karmar

I am a sensible person. I want the Sun newspaper to close.

Mon, 2012-02-13 15:32 — Simon (not verified)

I note that Kavanagh no longer gets the "Highly respected" description he always used to receive.

He's toast.

Mon, 2012-02-13 16:07 — andy (not verified)

One of the main thrusts of Kavanaghs peice is that investigating the Sun is a waste of police resources, who after all could be out there catching real criminals.
What he fails to acknowledge is the simple solution that would free up the plod, there is nothing to stop Sun reporters volunteering information to the police? If Kav is so concerned that villains are becoming more villianous whilst this goes on, why doesnt he encourage NI staff to own up to any crimes?