The phone-hacking scandal that has rocked the British establishment in the past week is not only bad news for Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and its parents NewsCorp and News International,
who have now had to sacrifice their main paper, it is bad news for the
politicians, the police and the capitalist class as a whole.
The phone-hacking scandal that has rocked the British establishment in the past week is not only bad news for Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and its parents NewsCorp and News International,
who have now had to sacrifice their main paper, it is bad news for the
politicians, the police and the capitalist class as a whole.
The scandal that has hit the headlines has had a somewhat muted response among the tabloid newspapers, which may indicate that NOTW
is just the tip of the iceberg. What has caused a wave of revulsion and
disgust in British society is the revelation that what has been an
ongoing scandal centred on the hacking into the mobile phone voicemails
of celebrities and members of the Royal family does not stop there, but
in fact goes much deeper. The hacking of the voicemails of murder
victims and their families (including those killed in the July 7th terrorist
attacks in London in 2005) and the families of soldiers killed serving
in Afghanistan and Iraq has hit a raw nerve within British society.
Not
since the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009 has there been such an
outpouring of public outrage. Along with the WikiLeaks revelations late
last year, the lid has been lifted ever so slightly on the machinations
taking place between the media, parliament and the state, giving the
British public just a glimpse of the thorough rottenness that exists
just beneath the surface of British capitalism.
Phone hacking
NOTW
journalists and hired private investigators hacking mobile phones is
not new. Public attention was first drawn to this in 2006, when
journalists Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire were arrested on charges of
hacking the voicemails of the Royal household. In 2007 both were
imprisoned.
The editor of NOTW at the time, Andy Coulson,
resigned his post two weeks prior to the sentencing of Goodman and
Mulcaire. Subsequently he became communications officer of the Tories.
Yet in January of this year he resigned, most likely forced out, after
being unable to shake off the stink of the phone-hacking scandal that
was engulfing the whole of 10 Downing Street.
In 2009, NOTW paid out over £2million in out-of-court settlements related to the phone-hacking scandal. Yet revelations in the Guardian
newspaper on July 4th have blown the situation wide-open. They allege
that Scotland Yard holds evidence that in 2002, at the time of the
search for the murdered 13-year old schoolgirl Milly Dowler, NOTW
investigator Glenn Mulcaire hacked into the schoolgirl’s phone to
listen to the voicemails left by family members, in order to scoop the
juiciest headlines. When the inbox became full, Mulcaire deleted voicemails in order to make room for more messages. Labour MP Tom Watson has accused NOTW
of "perverting the course of justice". However, this was not only an
illegal destruction of potentially valuable police evidence. It actually
raised the false hope among family members that Milly was still alive.
After
the imprisonment of Goodman and Mulcaire in 2007 the police closed the
investigation, citing lack of evidence. If the allegations made by the Guardian
are found to be correct it will show that the police have sat on
evidence in order to derail a serious investigation. Naturally the
question arises: in whose interest would the police shut down such an investigation?
Scapegoat
At
the time of the original investigation the fall-guys were Goodman and
Mulcaire, as well as Andy Coulson, who served as Deputy Editor of NOTW
from 2000-03 and Editor from 2003-07. In a desperate scramble to
contain the damage NewsCorp are again trying to make Coulson the
scapegoat, despite the fact that the editor of NOTW at the time
was Rebekah Brooks, current Chief Executive at News International,
NewsCorp’s British newspaper wing. To the chagrin of the Tories,
however, this can only serve to further implicate 10 Downing Street in
the scandal owing to Coulson’s past employment. The consequence may be
that Brooks does not receive the same invitation to Christmas dinner at
the Camerons’ house that she did in 2010.
Yet the rest of the press persistently points out that it was not Coulson but Brooks who presided over NOTW at
the time of the Milly Dowler man-hunt in 2002. This is rather
inconvenient for NewsCorp. They wish to explain away these events as
belonging to a past period which in no way reflects the attitude of the
paper today.
At least this was part of their manoeuvring until
they finally had to bend under an enormous public outcry and actually
close down the News of the World, as they announced this evening. Until
then it was clear that their only real concern was that this scandal
could affect sales.
In fact, in an attempt to divert attention
away from the present management of the paper, Colin Myler, current
editor, said earlier today in an email to staff:
"These
allegations about the News of the World are shocking, but it is not the
same newspaper that all of you, my colleagues, recognise today." (Metro, July 7th)
Even
worse, it was starting to affect corporate sponsorship… Huge
multinationals like Ford, Renault and O2 stated that they were
withdrawing advertising from NOTW, while a whole host of other
big companies were considering doing the same. This would have hit the
paper where it hurts – in the profit margins. Like many newspapers these days, NOTW‘s primary source of income was not
from sales but from advertising. It is a big problem when the likes of
Ford et al no longer want to be associated with a rag that has a
reputation for irresponsibly endangering the search for a missing child
and hacking into the private messages of the relatives of dead soldiers.
Bad for business
To
compound their bad luck, it is now expected that Culture Secretary
Jeremy Hunt will delay until September the government’s decision on
whether a bid by NewsCorp for majority control of British satellite
television provider BSkyB is to be approved. This is owing to the fact
that, with 24-hours to go until the deadline for submissions to the
government over the issue, submissions have jumped from 60,000 to
100,000 due to the scandal. It is estimated that this will take civil
servants the best part of two months to go through.
As a result
shares in BSkyB have fallen by 4 per cent in the past few days.
NewsCorps shares are down 3.6%, wiping out $1.7bn of its total share
value. This is bad news for employees at NewsCorp, who have already
responded with deep anxiety to warnings by Rebekah Brooks of the austere
times that lie ahead:
"’There are tough decisions
coming. Costs will need to be cut and savings made,’ Ms Brooks warned,
adding that one option may be ‘seven-day working’ across editorial
brands that have long been run as independent rivals." (Financial Times, July 7th)
So
the message is clear: if the company is going to take a hit to its
profit margins (a fact that will be exacerbated by the withdrawal of so
many corporate sponsors) it is the workers who will have to pick up the
tab. Does any of this sound familiar?
Corruption
The Milly
Dowler affair precipitated a whole range of similar allegations, such
as the hacking of phones of the parents of Jessica Chapman and Holly
Wells – the victims in the Soham murders. On Tuesday night Channel 4
news reported:
"When Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and
Jessica Chapman went missing nearly a decade ago, there was a national
outpouring of grief. But while the rest of the world mourned for the two
girls, it’s claimed that NOTW secretly and illegally arranged to hack
into their parents’ phones."
To add further to the stink emanating from NewsCorp, new allegations have been revealed that NOTW
was not only guilty of invasion of privacy, but also of gangster-like
methods, targeting detectives who were getting too close to the truth.
One such murder detective, Dave Cook, appeared on the BBC’s Crimewatch
in 2002 investigating the unsolved murder from 1987 of private
investigator Daniel Morgan, found in the car park of a South London pub
with an axe in his head. Within days of the Crimewatch broadcast Cook was told by colleagues that he was being targeted by NOTW. The Channel 4 News reporter on Tuesday July 5th said:
"What
is so disturbing about this allegation is the timing of the targeting
of Dave Cook, because in the murder investigation that he was leading,
suspects in the case were private investigators who, it’s alleged, had
close links to the NOTW".
Clearly the intention was
to intimidate and discredit Detective Cook. Channel 4 news went on to
report claims that a meeting was held in December 2002 at Scotland Yard
between the police and Rebekah Brooks, where the police are alleged to
have confronted her on this issue. Whatever the outcome of such a
meeting, the fact that this has only come to public attention almost 10
years later implies a cover-up.
Such an assertion could easily
fall into the realm of conspiracy theory. Yet this week News
International have, in a gracious bid to help the investigation, handed
over material to the police that shows cheques were made over the years
to the police, authorised by former Editor Andy Coulson. On top of that
Rebekah Brooks has admitted as much in a public enquiry: that NOTW
was in the business of paying police officers for information. In the
case of the 7/7 bombings, information that could only have been take
from official police records.
Detatched
all this reveals is the fact that Rupert Murdoch, Brooks, Coulson and NewsCorp act in the belief that they are above the law. For many years
another of Murdoch’s tabloids, The Sun, has cultivated the image
of "Kingmaker" in British politics, with Blairites and Tories alike
falling over themselves to gain patronage from the Murdoch cabal.
"Mr
Murdoch’s tolerance for invasions of privacy by his reporters – and the
belief that he would not be subject to sanctions by governments that
owed him political favours – gave his editors confidence. Ms Brooks
herself has formidable connections, being friendly with the Murdoch
family and David Cameron, prime minister.” (Financial Times, July 6th)
The
confidence that the FT talks about is the confidence to flout the law
as they believed that they were above it. By owning the most widely read
publications in the English language NewsCorp has, over decades, used
this position to entrench itself within the British political
establishment. In its ever more rapacious drive to out compete its
rivals and capture a larger share of the market, it carried out the most
audacious and despicable acts of law breaking, invasion of privacy,
corruption and perverting the course of justice in order to grab the
headline making stories. That they are so entrenched within the
political elite, with an army of muck-raking private detectives able to
destroy the reputations of policemen, politicians and businessmen alike,
ensured for them impunity.
The phone-hacking scandal is, however,
bad news for the ruling class. Like the MPs’ expenses scandal, the
rifts with the Church of England and the low standing of the Monarchy,
this once again has served to lower the credibility of the capitalist
system as a whole.
At this moment the "scales are falling from the
eyes” of many working people feeling the severe pinch of austerity. We
saw this on the June 30th strikes of 1 million teachers and civil
servants. Millions of working men and women who are beginning to
question what kind of an unjust world we are living in, where working
people are being made to pay for the crisis as bankers bonuses boom and
the rich get richer. The credibility of the bourgeois press as a whole
has taken a hit, therefore limiting the effect they have when they try
to encourage workers not to strike or that in these times of austerity
"we are all in this together”. This kind of scandal, which reveals very
sharply the stinking hypocrisy of the ruling class, will only reinforce
this new-found questioning of the system.
The law is a spider’s
web where the small get caught and the great tear it up. The so-called
neutral role of the state and incorruptible police is exposed for the
myth that it is, and in its place what is revealed is that there is one
law for the rich and one law for the poor.
Response
There
has been hand-wringing from the MP’s as various calls are made to "have a
serious moral re-think" and that the whole newspaper industry must be
subject to public enquiries, new rules and regulations, etc. But this
misses the point entirely. Weren’t such rules, regulations and laws put
in place in order to stop the likes of journalists and hired detectives
hacking mobile phones? Yet this week has demonstrated that when the
press is privately owned and competes in the market for private profit,
that is the bottom line. All principles, precedents, rules and
regulations, especially in the newspaper industry, go to the wall in the
name of private profit.
As MPs have made the call for a "public
inquiry", the response of NewsCorp has been that "we’ll investigate
ourselves" – an in-house investigation. This shows the utter contempt
that they have for the law, believing they are a law unto themselves. It
also shows a startling degree of unreality, when the logical question
has been put by commentators – how is Rebekah Brooks meant to
impartially "investigate" herself?
Labour MP Tom Watson has called
for the suspension of James Murdoch, son of Rupert and CEO of NewsCorp,
"from office". The point here is that James Murdoch wasn’t "elected".
As a private outfit, this is only a decision that can be made within
NewsCorp by the owners. To go any further than that, such as a
government decree, would involve encroaching on the rights of private
property, something this government will never do.
Furthermore,
how is a public enquiry to be set up and who is it to be led by? The
government has shown to have more than a vested interest, and the police
has been shown to have its hand firmly within the jam jar. At the same
time NOTW have been very obliging in handing over material that
implicates former editor Andy Coulson. Of course the voluntary nature of
this cooperation allows them to select which material to surrender. It
is also a desperate measure to show themselves to be "co-operating" once
they knew that the truth was going to get out anyway.
Now they
have gone one step further and have announced the closure of the News of
the World. Reading the speech that James Murdoch made to staff today,
it is very clear that this is a damage limitation operation. He said
that the good things the News of the World does [which good things we
may ask?], "have been sullied by behaviour that was wrong – indeed, if
recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our
company".
"The News of the World is in the business of holding others to account. But it failed when it came to itself."
He
added that, "Wrongdoers turned a good newsroom bad and this was not
fully understood or adequately pursued. As a result, the News of the
World and News International wrongly maintained that these issues were
confined to one reporter.
"We now have voluntarily
given evidence to the police that I believe will prove that this was
untrue and those who acted wrongly will have to face the consequences.
This was not the only fault."The paper made statements to Parliament without being in the full possession of the facts. This was wrong.
"The
company paid out-of-court settlements approved by me. I now know that I
did not have a complete picture when I did so. This was wrong and is a
matter of serious regret."
This is a blatant attempt
to pass the buck, to find yet more scapegoats onto whom the owners can
offload responsibility for the scandal. The idea is to bury the News of
the World, hoping that with time the scandal will blow over. In the
meantime they will set in motion the plans to publish under a new
masthead. Some more heads will have to fall, some may even end up in
prison, but these will be the sacrificial lambs who will be presented to
the public to cover for the many others who are seeking to escape
public retribution.
Nick
Robinson, the BBC’s Political editor, has commented on the cynicism of
the Murdochs: "My guess is that the Murdochs have sacrificed the News of
the World in order to salvage their television ambitions." This
highlights the fact that the concerns of the owners are more about
profit and not doing real justice. NOTW generated profits of about £10 million, BSkyB generates £1 billion, with a potential likehood of that figure rising to £2 billion within a few years. The fact that Rebekah Brooks is
keeping her job and was initially leading the investigation, overseeing it with the
police, underlines the lack of seriousness in really revealing all the
facts and punishing the perpetrators.She is seen as a buffer between the Murdoch clan and any serious hassle – of course, she also knows where the bodies are buried, to coin a phrase.
Former Deputy Prime
Minister, John Prescott – who appears to be a victim of the phone
hacking – has explained that, “This isn’t one rogue newspaper – there
are many more and the inquiry has got to flush them out," adding that
this is "a typical management stunt of Mr Murdoch.
All this is
true, but what is going to be done about it? How can an investigation
involving some of those we were responsible for running the News of the
World be impartial? How can anyone trust the police who will be
involved, considering that some of its officers have been implicated in
the scandal? Such an inquiry would not be sufficient.
The only way
that a real public enquiry will be able to get to the bottom of this
issue is by fully opening the books of NewsCorp to public scrutiny. In
order to do that NewsCorp must be taken out of private hands and
nationalised under the democratic control of the working class. That is
the only way a thorough investigation can be guaranteed. Furthermore,
what this scandal reveals is the way the bourgeois media functions. It
is not a source of "objective" news. It is owned by capitalists who have
a class interest to defend. It is sufficient to see how the media
covers strikes and protests against attacks on the working class,
against cuts in pensions, in healthcare and so on. It is the whole media
that must be put under public control if we are to rally have
"objective" news coverage.
The rest of the media are now hurriedly
trying to patch up the damage, by presenting this whole scandal as
being due to a few "rotten apples" when in reality it is the whole
system that is rotten. What the top strategists of capital are now
seriously concerned about is the cumulative effect of a series of
scandals, from the MPs’ expenses scandal – which exposed the very
institution of parliament – to the banking crisis and the huge bonuses
of the bankers, to this recent scandal, on the consciousness of millions
of ordinary working people at a time when they are being asked to bear
the brunt of the present economic crisis.
In the not too distant
future we will be looking back at this scandal as one more element in
the build up to a huge explosion of anger on the part of the working
people of this country. Millions of workers who normally do not go onto
the streets, do not strike, do not protest, who consider themselves
"moderates" and reasonable people will draw the conclusion that to
revolt is also reasonable.
