Training | 2009.05.30
Westminster greedy pig fever is tearing up the media rulebook | Mark Lawson
These days of duck landlords and mortgage scams have put a serious strain on brave teachers of journalistic ethics
In this examination season, you have to feel sympathy for anyone teaching or studying media ethics. The epidemic of greedy pig fever at Westminster has challenged three widely held journalistic principles. The first of these is that chequebook journalism is always reprehensible. Though the Daily Telegraph refuses to admit to being out of pocket for the disc that showed what politicians pocketed, it is known that the data was offered elsewhere with a price tag. And 16 days ago it seemed possible that the presumed expense of the expenses story might let MPs off.
A solemn principle of higher journalism is that writing a cheque before writing a story devalues the information gained; defence counsel in libel cases often discredit witnesses by pointing out that they sold their evidence. And so parliamentarians and disgruntled journalistic rivals tried to direct attention to the money allegedly going out of the Telegraph rather than the cash spilling into constituencies.
Such bleats, however, are now silent because, even if it were to turn out that the paper got the documents by mugging a blind octogenarian nun, the import of the information would justify almost any way it came to light. Another potential grumble is that the facts were due to come out – officially and gratis – in July; but it seems clear that the most devastating entries would have been omitted, with the result that the mortgage scammers, duck landlords and moat cleaners would have been in the clear. The bought story was better than the free one would have been.
So, just as regulators tolerate secret surveillance if it is the only way of exposing serious wrongdoing, there will now be a wider acceptance that paying cash for facts is acceptable if the data has sufficient weight. The precedent may be dangerous – encouraging opportunistic editors and whistleblowers to buy and sell revelations that are less obviously in the public interest – but a significant shift in media morality has occurred.
Moreover, a seemingly lost newspaper convention has been restored: the ownership of a story by one title. The speed of modern media means that an exclusive barely survives one edition. Within minutes, rivals devour the information and pursue their own angles. If paper A claims that Wayne Rooney is moving to Bruges, publication B can plagiarise the information or find its own source in Wayne\'s world to say that he\'s staying in Manchester.
But in this instance such tactics were useless. The only way guilty MPs could "spoil" the next Telegraph revelation was to out themselves in advance and so face de-selection more quickly. One reason that the embarrassment of Speaker Michael Martin was covered so enthusiastically was that this was the first part of the saga to which all outlets had equal access.
A broadcasting shibboleth was also overturned with this Thursday\'s emergency Question Time on BBC1. For years, the gloomy talk in the corridors at the Edinburgh Television Festival has been that the appetite for political news is dying. The claimback scandals, though, have brought such audiences to Westminster-related telly that David Dimbleby\'s roundtable was promoted to 9pm, the slot for cop shows and nature docs. This has led some optimists to proclaim a renaissance of serious television, though celebrations may be premature. The newfound viewers have tuned in to watch the political equivalent of the death of Diana or 9/11. People who gawp at motorway pile-ups do not come back to watch the traffic flowing freely.
Today\'swarning from Nadine Dorries that politicians may be driven to suicide by the outing of their avarice touches on another moral aspect. Her comments are easy to dismiss as a diversionary tactic. But the concern she raises is reasonable: watching Michael Martin imploding in the Commons, it was human to hope that he has a good doctor and attentive friends.
The haughtier newspapers and broadcasters have long decried the pack-attack atmosphere of elimination TV shows such as Big Brother, while many articles have argued that the Blair government was more or less responsible for the death of Dr David Kelly by exposing him to cruel scrutiny. Yet this last fortnight has produced hundreds of Dr Kellys – anonymous figures suddenly squirming in the searchlights – and the mood of the Question Time audience resembled humiliation shows in the savage desperation to vote the House of Commons mates off their show.
Clearly, parliamentarians who see public office as an opportunity to better the accommodation of their ducks have done more to deserve hostility than either late weapons experts or witless twentysomethings in a TV house.
But in other cases – such as the reporting of suspected paedophiles or the investigation of murders – many sections of the media have accepted a duty to deflect as well as reflect the public mood. In future exams, media students may want to consider whether, in satisfying understandable national anger, the media risk stoking unstoppable flames beneath the structures of democracy. A story proving that the chequebook may sometimes be needed in the journalist\'s kitbag does not mean the entire rulebook can be thrown out.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]expenses-chequebook-journalism
