First it was injunctions, now it is hacking. I did not take hacking seriously at first, for after all, as one who spends hours on trains, there seems to be no regard for privacy in the use by the owner of his or her mobile phone. But it has been revealed to have a darker side, which, if true, has interfered with the course of justice and the legal rights of those whose communications have been interfered with. In the case of injunctions, the issues of morality and public interest were squarely addressed by the courts. It may well be in the public interest that we are told that, for example, a politician who has a leading role in shaping legislation about our lives, has not behaved well towards his own family, and ought not to be talking about morality. It may be that it is in the public interest to know that a banker may have had his mind on other things when he was charged with safeguarding the financial affairs of millions of members of the public. That is a marginal one. It is certainly wrong to tamper with the phones of people whose legal concerns are ongoing. Hacking reflects on the bid by Murdoch to extend his empire (question debated in the Lords this morning). And the debate is coloured by the wounds suffered by MPs and Lords whose expenses were investigated by the Telegraph and who no doubt are glad to see the spotlight turned on the methods of the press. It may even be that some newspapers are anxious to expose the moral failings of others.
There is a host of other confusing privacy issues that I cannot explore fully here. Why was the Wikileaks exposure by Julian Assange hailed as adding to the public’s “right to know”, while other underhand ways of getting at the truth are condemned? I felt that diplomats should be able to report on the countries to which they are accredited without fearing that their communications will be exposed, so I did not approve of Wikileaks. Freedom of information applications are regarded as a good thing, but exposes of hospital failings by nurses are apparently not. Data protection is good for individual privacy, but it has meant inter alia that academic references about candidates for university admission may be seen by the student, with the result that references have become bland and useless for distinguishing one candidate from another. The old style frank reference, warts and all, probably helped candidates from less privileged backgrounds towards more success. To my mind the boundaries between what should be public and what should be private are not clearly defined and not based on settled principles.
I was therefore disappointed to read that Lord (Chris) Patten, the new chairman of the BBC, in his lecture to the Royal Television Society on 6 July, appears to have dismissed the proposal that complaints about the BBC should in the last resort be heard by a body outside of the BBC. This was a recommendation made by the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, on which I sit, in its report on BBC governance, issued a couple of weeks ago. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201012/ldselect/ldcomuni/166/16602.htm. Lord Patten seemed to agree with other recommendations made by our committee but did not address the very important issue of having an external check on the accuracy and impartiality of BBC reports if such a complaint is pursued all the way. The Select Committee proposed that such complaints be resolved by OFCOM or by an ombudsman – my preferred solution. This would not in any way interfere with the independence of the BBC, admired around the world and which must be defended, but an external check would reassure the public that the BBC is, indeed, the best broadcaster in the world. Public opinion of the media is probably at an all time low and this would be a good gesture of confidence to make. The BBC has on several occasions itself commissioned an inquiry into the quality of its coverage of key areas of news, in order to reassure itself that all is well. My admiration for the BBC output is boundless and it would have nothing to fear from an occasional outside check on accuracy and impartiality, where they are seriously challenged by a listener or viewer.
Hacking politicians’ phones could just about be classed as “getting the truth” that may be of relevance to be public. Hacking phones belonging to celebrities is a breach of privacy that may result in some juicy stories for the tabloids. But what possible justification can there be for listening to messages on the phone of a murder victim, or the families of servicemen and women who have been killed in action? That’s simply sick and voyeuristic. Comparing this scandal to Wikileaks is just wrong as the hacking goes way beyond uncovering hidden government agendas and other subjects that of of legitimate public interest.
I also don’t agree with you about secrecy of references. It’s only right that people are able to see what is being said about them. In the past, a bad reference could ruin someone’s career, yet they may never know why they are turned down for one position after another. A previous employer or academic tutor may have given a bad reference as a result of not getting along with the candidate – maybe due to a personality clash, or opposing political or religious beliefs that have no relevance. It’s only right that candidates can see what is being written and have the chance to challenge it. Of course, if the candidate is useless and lazy, the tutor should say so. If it’s true, there are no grounds for challenging it. Could it be that some academics simply don’t have the balls to write something bad about someone unless they are certain that person won’t ever see it?
So has the Government. It’s just admitted to wiretapping, email interception of well over 100 people, all without a warrant.
MPs are quite. Lords are quite. Nope, its newspapers that are the target. The reason is that they don’t want papers investigating what they are up to, and will use the NoTW
As for the BBC, take climate change.
The BBC is categorical. They are biased.
So you ask the trust why are they breaking the law. They state, a group of scientist told us to do this.
OK, which scientists were these?
It’s a secret. We aren’t allowed to know.
The BBC is rampantly biased.
Again, we have to look at what you’ve left out.
Namely the police selling information to the press.
Just like Peers selling changes in the law for cash.
Blagger:Namely the police selling information to the press.
No need to sell it at the point of news, since radio messages are intercepted at all times by
the high street Stringer Agencies, and published within seconds.
Well Coulson has been arrested for corruption and intercepting messages.
It is certainly wrong to tamper with the phones of people whose legal concerns are ongoing. Thinking about the early life of our champion tennis player, Andy Murray,I looked up to discover that there have now been
three massacres, the one being Dunblane.
I have no doubt that, if the Hungerford massacreer had a mobile phone he would have been persuaded by anarchist journalists to persevere with the killings on face book via his mobile phone.
If you use mobiles for news, you can hardly expect news agencies NOT to use you as fodder
for their own diet, and not to have a very easy entree in to your personal life.
My own mobile is registered with the local police on account of living alone in a rural area, with a certain number of nutters on the loose. Bent as nearly all coppers are, I actually value the possibility of assistance at short notice. If they wanted to they could very easily go through my saved txt messages, without my knowing. That gives me no trouble.
I can not say the same about the press, whom I vigourously exclude from such nasty but necessary gadgetry.
The real problem here is phone technology. If the encryption level is too high security services around the world would discourage it because they like to listen to lots of things including mobile phone calls. Legislate to prevent low encryption snooping would also create problems for security and police forces because of the bureaucracy involved. Nobody is going to allow a frequency hopping highly encrypted mobile phone to be widely used? This has happened, it will happen again and passing a law will serve no purpose – it is all very unfortunate; use a POTS line if you want ‘complete’ privacy otherwise regard your mobile phone conversation as public domain.
Senex, the so-called “hacking” is rather less sophisticated than you imply. It has nothing to do with encryption or intercepted calls, but it simply a case of people not changing the default PIN for their voicemail, or choosing something easy to guess:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14044499
Yes, one shouldn’t ever use the phone to transmit sensitive information (credit card details, state secrets, etc.) in case they fall into the hands of criminals. But this is a different issue, one of privacy and the integrity of a supposedly respectable media corporation. These is simply something wrong in the head of someone who listens to messages of bereaved relatives of a murder victim or service personnel lost in action – and indeed wrong in the head of those who hope to read the resulting stories in a tabloid.
What is a public meeting, if you can “synch” with 150 other people instantly on your mobile?
The Arabs and Iranians seem to have found out.
Hacking into personal personal calls should be outlawed, period. No one should have the right to intrude or listen in on private conversations. And this is where the ‘human right’ to privacy should step in. These hackers should be sanctioned in some way that will hurt them personally. And, Murdoch has done this by shutting down his number one selling newspaper. Although I am sure he did that in pursuit of his interests regarding BSkyB and not for reasons approaching any sense of morality.
I understand it to be common practice that Murdoch intervened in every aspect of his newspaper ethic. And to that end was a real pain. He is unlikely to not have been in the loop regarding the way his journalists found their story’s. Interferon’s are relentless by nature and he is one of those, according to reports in the national press.
If the entire staff was sacked, then what is so unusual about that? People in the real world are sacked every day, often told on a Friday not to come in on Monday. It is the way or our greed obsessed Western lifestyle. The ‘Happy Days’ of the 1950’s have long gone and as a result, this is what we have learned to expect, and sadly, to accept. Along with working for less money than 30 years ago, whilst doing twice the hours, paying more for every necessity and having two ‘bread winners’ rather than one. Oh, we have come a long way in this ‘brave new world’ we walked into with our eyes wide shut. Murdoch and his ruthless empire is the way we are now led to believe is in our best interests. So, what he did must be considered to be in our saving grace, isn’t it? I am surprised to read of the ‘distress’ this modern fact has been able to elicit amongst those who lead us. As they are the instigators of this new way backward. Journalists of all people in Murdoch’s organisation understand the premise of ‘Greed is Good.’ They sell it to us daily without remorse……
Wikileaks: I think this organisation is not the perpetrators of removing hidden documents from their natural home, but, are the depository for those who have felt driven to expose what they morally cannot keep secret.
Wikileaks ethos is not to extract but to expose. And not to censor what is given to them by those who could not live with the knowledge they possessed.
This organization then could not come under the hacking umbrella or any other similar activity.
Wikileaks is the forerunner to freedom of the Internet. Akin to John Lock’s idea of tolerance, government by consent, free speech as a natural right not given up when society formed.
This is the back drop of the wikileaks objective. So to further taint this organisation and through it, Julian Assange, with this slur, is not only inappropriate it is down right mischievous.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec10/wiki_07-26.html
http://www.journalismethics.info/media_law/history_of_free_press.htm
‘A patriot must always be willing to defend his country against his government.’ Edward Abbey
It seems the PBS report added to my previous post has developed a difficulty. So, here it is again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoeIdZmow54
The inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning is something kept very quiet indeed. Now I wonder why that is? We hear on a regular basis of those held in China, North Korea or Iran, but pretty much silence on those held by the USA in conditions considered to be torturous by European standards.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/08/opinion/main20077841.shtml
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/bradley-manning-jailed-naked/
Lets have all the NoTW info that they have gathered on wikileaks.
Meanwhile I see the Guardian had a cop access the national database over Coulson.
I can’t find all or any the info the NoTW had on wikileaks.
But here is something you may like to see!
http://worldbadnews.com/world-bad-news/http:/worldbadnews.com/2011/01/18/wikileaks-exposing-tax-cheats/news/bad-news/insurance/ipad/iphone/
Perhaps we should be grateful that Murdoch does not want to be Prime minister or he would have rather more than a 45 year old redhead for a lover.
@Twm:
I doubt she’s his lover. She’s his facilitator, much more useful and therefore, irreplaceable.
grateful that Murdoch does not want to be Prime minister or he would have rather more than a 45 year old redhead for a lover.
I doubt she’s his lover. She’s his facilitator, much more useful and therefore, irreplaceable.
I was thinking of the Berlusconi media empire.
My wit falls on deaf ears.
On the secrecy issue.
I had a FOI rejected last week on “National Security” grounds.
However, when I asked for the minister who signed the certificate and when, an appeal was offered in seconds.
Sometime’s people make it up.
Don’t you think that if Britain is to be an improving democracy, the responsibility for information and governancial-discussion and decision-making needs to be firstly proliferated ‘downwards’, such that every individual-citizen becomes a multi-way channel of proactive participation, an ‘individual-medium’ ?
and secondly that the capability and willingness levels of all levels and of each individual need to be steadily increased, in information-sharing, discussion, and skills of thinking, scrutiny, and constructive-formal-argumentation & moral-reasoning ?
How else break the oligarchic and dynastial one-way top-down misinformation, mind-stultification, personal-fitness-&-efficiency-wasting, and Earthlife-destructive
Tower-of-Babel syndrome* that has become every civilisation’s hallmark, not just that of the English-Speaking world ?
Self-promoting E-Sites such as this Lords of the Blog are also “Media” and need to be made both response-able and responsible, remember.
Baroness Deech has suppressed my previous constructive submission (080711) to this particular, but partly-misnamed, topic “Media Morality”;
but any democratically-responsible or concerned person may read its content via my non-profit, voluntary-democratic-citizen’s website http://www.lifefresh.co.uk dated 090711 at the top of the Welcome! page.
Let’s see if both LOTB and Baroness Deech are honest-to-God about wanting both a better participative democracy and an unbiased non-suppressive media-standard; please.
0923Sn1007
I prefer intelligible comments to the point, so as not to put off commentators with something relevant to say.
http://www.owbky.com/uganda/index.html
I was rather proud of one gentleman of Kentucky
who actually attended a school for Waifs and Orphans in West Sussex, and took his schooling to heart after he has collected his pension, 50 years later
He spends it charitably and directly.
He met a Ugandan woman on a chat board who said her village needed help with their water bores.
There are so many utterly and completely FAKE charities in the UK that it beggars belief.
Pompous and sanctimonious comments about TNotW sound exactly that compared with the exceptional work that this Gentleman of Kentucky, a US citizen, has been doing in Kibaire Uganda, only a few hundred miles from the Somalia/Kenya border where there are half a million starving and thirsty people.
He does charitable work; we live in a Globalist world.
There must be considerable historical research
on the evolution of the 17thC broadsheet alongside parliamentary democracy, and how the one has influenced the other.
What used to be called the estates of the realm; Media, the fourth? Parliament, the third?