Thursday, November 13, 2014 

The downfall.


Ah, Mazher Mahmood.  Time was all we had to identify him were a couple of grainy photos filched from an Albanian newspaper website, obtained by them from who knows where and which also soon disappeared down the memory hole thanks to "Maz's" ever busy legal beavers.  It took a long damn time, but the collapse of the Tulisa Constovalos drug trial finally prompted a media organisation to challenge Mahmood's claims his life would be put in danger should his true countenance be widely publicised.  The last time Maz tried and failed to prevent the media publishing his fizzog, winning a temporary injunction against among others, this blog, only the Graun went ahead and did so anyway.

Panorama and John Sweeney are thankfully more indefatigable beasts.  Twice Mahmood's lawyers forced the BBC to postpone the broadcast, first with the renewed claim he couldn't possibly be unmasked lest those he exposed come after him, always a risible argument considering his victims know his face all too well, and then after that failed with a challenge over the evidence involving John Bryan's procuring, or rather non-procurement of prostitutes.  With this last desperate attempt rejected, BBC1 was at last able to show the documentary last night.

And while for those of us who've followed Mahmood's activities down the years there was little we didn't already know included, the exception being the claims of Mahmood's links to corrupt Met officers, you can more than understand why he and News UK tried everything to stop it from airing.  Apart from identifying Mahmood, his methods were laid bare, vignettes taken from the secret recordings made by his team which he and the News of the World never wanted you to see.  John Alford declaring himself teetotal, with Mahmood then urging him to drink anyway, page 3 model Emma Morgan given cocaine by the person she was then entrapped into "buying" it from to supply to Mahmood, Constovalos made to believe she was being considered for a role in a Hollywood film alongside Leonardo DiCaprio as she was the obvious choice to play a "bad girl"; whoever the source was for the material, and the guess would have to be it came from within News UK, it showed Mahmood in just about the worst possible light.

As contemptible as Mahmood is, this was never about just him.  Mahmood could only work as he did for so long with the support of first the News of the Screws, and then following its sad demise, the Sun on Sunday.  It should be stressed that on occasion, Mahmood's entrapment tactics produced important, genuinely in the public interest stories, such as the corruption he uncovered involving the Pakistani cricket team.  Those kind of targets didn't satisfy either him or his editors though, nor one could say did they NotW readers.  No, instead they had to stitch up foolish but otherwise decent people somewhat in the public eye, such as Emma Morgan, Johnnie Walker or the Earl of Hardwicke.  At his very worst, he and his team concocted entire fictional plots, whether it be the one to kidnap Victoria Beckham, with the trial of those accused collapsing when it become public Mahmood had paid the man who "informed" him of the nefarious deal, or the "red mercury" plot, with those entrapped thankfully found not guilty.

Yet despite these failures, both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service continued to work with him, going ahead with cases such as the one involving Constolvalos when it was an obvious example of entrapment.  They carried on doing so even after the Screws was put out of its misery, and as we now know, 3 further cases have been dropped as Mahmood was to be the key witness.  It's possible other previous cases could now be the subject of appeal, especially if Mahmood is charged with perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice over the collapse of the Constolvalos trial as many expect.

Indeed, as Roy Greenslade writes, this level of protection seems to be continuing, as the attorney general asked the BBC not to screen the docu.  Presumably on the basis it could make it more difficult for Mahmood to get a fair trial should he be charged, the real objection is more likely "Maz" and his editors still have friends in high places.  Why else would News UK still be providing Mahmood with their largesse for vexatious litigation when he is supposedly on suspension, unless they still have a glimmer of hope that he could still return?

Regardless of that wishful thinking, Mahmood is finished.  The real motivation behind his attempts to stop Panorama was not over his safety, but his ability to carry on as before.  His methods detailed, his visage shown, few will now make the mistake of being drawn in by the image and boasts of a serial offender.  And with him, hopefully, also ends another disgraceful period in British journalism.

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11/13/2014 10:59:00 pm | |

Monday, July 21, 2014 

Complicit in the lies of a serial offender.


Regular readers will know it takes a lot to stagger me.  Cynicism comes easily, because it is so easy.  Think the worst, and then you won't be let down come the inevitable.  There are no heroes only humans, and we are flawed flesh and bone, all with our own prejudices, failings and traits.

Sometimes though you still can't help but be blown away by just how unbelievably stupid supposedly intelligent people are.  In fact, in this instance stupid doesn't cover it.  The only word that even comes close to accurately describing the Crown Prosecution Service's original decision to prosecute Tulisa Contostavlos is fuckwitted.  A lawyer earning no doubt good money looked at the "investigation" carried out by this blog's favourite journalist, hopefully soon to be ex-journalist Mazher Mahmood, and felt, yeah, this isn't the most obvious example I've ever seen of entrapment, and told the CPS there was a realistic chance of conviction.  The CPS then reviewed his decision, and went along with it.  Then the judge, despite the defence making what has to be one of the most compelling applications for the case to be thrown out on the grounds Mahmood is a lying sack of shit, allowed it to proceed.

Only for Alistair McCreath to days later discharge the jury and find Contostavlos and her friend, Michael Coombs, who had already admitted supplying the cocaine after Mahmood asked Contostavlos to get some for him, not guilty.  Why?  Because Mahmood it seems put pressure on his driver, Alan Smith, to change his statement, having first told the police Contostavlos had spoken of her opposition to drugs as a family member was an addict as the pair talked in his car.  At the legal arguments pre-trial Mahmood denied he spoke to the Smith at all, only for Contostavlos's QC, Jeremy Dein, to winkle the truth out of Mahmood under cross-examination last week.  He had indeed discussed the statement with Smith, he just didn't have anything to do with him altering it.

Even now I can't begin to get my head round how Mahmood's latest and clearly for him most disastrous entrapping of a celebrity got to the point of being put before a jury.  Back in June last year the People, whether through speaking to Contostavlos and/or her management or a disgruntled source at the Sun wrote up an almost completely accurate blow-by-blow account of how the former X-Factor judge was enticed by Mahmood, although it didn't explicitly state her arrest and the "hoax" were connected.  They flew her to Las Vegas (either in first class or by private jet, according to whether you believe Mahmood or the People), telling her she was going to star in a Slumdog Millionaire-type film as a "bad girl" making the journey from London to India, possibly alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.  As in previous stings, Contostavlos was plied with alcohol, her defence going so far as to say her drink was spiked on one occasion, before Mahmood then sprang the trap.  Desperate to get the part, having been told Keira Knightley was also being considered for the role, she arranged for Coombs to supply Mahmood with his requested "white sweets".

Regardless of what you think about subterfuge by journalists, and the PCC code makes clear it can only be justified in the public interest, the person in this instance commissioning a crime is the hack, not the celebrity.  Not only that, unlike in other instances where those involved step back at the last minute, the evidence their target is willing to go along with their request acquired, Mahmood's drug stings have nearly always involved the actual supply of the banned substance.  By accepting such a level of skulduggery was permissible, despite the relatively slight nature of the offences committed, both the police and the CPS became complicit in Mahmood's abuse of power, not to forget lies.  Nor is this anything like the first time they've been embarrassed by Mahmood's mendacity and the Murdoch tabloid stable's hyperbolics: the Victoria Beckham "kidnap plot" trial collapsed after it emerged the key witness had been paid, while the "red mercury" case ended with all the defendants acquitted.

Indeed, yet again the court system gave in to Mahmood's bullshit, the myth of the man as tabloid investigator extraordinaire.  He gave his evidence from behind a screen, to both protect him from enemies and so as not to give away his identity to those he might yet seek to stitch up.  No matter that his visage has been available online for years now, or that, err, his victims know all too well what he looks like.  Also irrelevant is just how petty and cliche the drug dealer expose is; it's one thing to try and show corruption in sport, although Mahmood failed to do even that with John Higgins, it's another to get a pop star to show they know someone who can get drugs.  I mean, who knew they got up to such things?  It's not as though most of us have acquaintances whom dabble in illicit substances, and if tempted in the same way as Contostavlos was could just as easily find ourselves helping out a new VIP friend, clearly we're meant to regard this as a terrible indictment of the morals of our heroes.  What will the kids who look up to her think?  Nor do certain sections of the media encourage ambition and aspiration whatever the cost, oh no.

As well as being suspended by the Sun, Mahmood now faces the possibility of a perjury charge, another former News of the Screws hack accused of lying under oath.  This entire affair also gives the lie to the idea Leveson changed anything: still a Murdoch paper was prepared to do whatever it took just to catch out a jumped-up celeb.  How delicious then that someone like Tulisa (and admittedly her legal team) should be the one to finally pin the fake sheikh down.  This time, surely, there can be no way back for Mazher Mahmood.

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7/21/2014 04:54:00 pm | |

Wednesday, June 12, 2013 

The more things change.

Look who's back.

It's fair to say that I am not predisposed to like Tulisa Contostavlos.  If you want a handy summation of the musical apocalypse of the past decade, then listening to N-Dubz, Contostavlos's former group, will soon bring you up to speed. Naturally, once N-Dubz split up, Simon Cowell decided that Tulisa would the perfect addition to the X Factor judging panel, having previously given such duties to those other fountains of perpetual talent, Dannii Minogue and Sharon Osbourne.  Getting critiqued by Gary Barlow is one thing; being told that you need a bucket to carry a tune by Cowell and the others has always struck me as just a trifle rich.

Seeing as the X Factor has always been equal parts humiliating the gullible and hyperbolically praising fairly good karaoke singers only for them to be dropped from Cowell's record label a year later, some will have doubtless come to the conclusion that the entrapment of Contostavlos by the News of the World's, sorry, the Sun on Sunday's (®Roy Greenslade) Mazher Mahmood is something of a comeuppance.  This though would be the conclusion of a pretty heartless bastard, especially as it seems we now have something of an insight into just how far the Sun and Mahmood went to gain Contostavlos's trust before then performing the classic sting of asking if she could get some drugs for her new best friends.

Last Sunday's People (yes, I know) carried a report claiming that as well as being caught out in the drug sting, Contostavlos had also been fooled into believing that she was to play the leading role in a Bollywood film charting the journey of a young woman from England to India.  The hoax was so sophisticated that it had gone on for months, involving Contostavlos being flown by private jet to America, where she also met some of her supposed co-stars.  While the People doesn't explicitly say that the hoax and the sting are connected, it most certainly would explain just why it was that Contostavlos came to be so trusting of those who were secretly filming her, and also why she was so inclined to boast about her contacts.  And if it isn't connected, then either the story's horrendously inaccurate, or someone's got hell of a lot of money to burn on trolling a celebrity.

It would also fit in precisely with Mahmood's recent modus operandi.  Before the News of the Screws was sadly sacrificed so that Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton could stay in their jobs for another couple of weeks, Mahmood and his team had carried out a similarly elaborate sting in an effort to prove the snooker player John Higgins was prepared to fix matches.  As revealed by the Sporting Intelligence website, the Screws set up a professional looking website designed to fool Higgins' manager Pat Mooney, who had already been plied with liberal amounts of alcohol, before flying both Higgins and Mooney to Ukraine, where they were swept through customs apparently thanks to the influence of their hosts.  The only problem was that Higgins felt something was wrong, imagining he could have got mixed up with the Russian mafia, and so despite the Screws' best efforts was non-committal to the proposed arrangement, as the independent tribunal later ruled.

Clearly, to fool Contostavlos required even greater extravagance and promises of riches.  Even then she didn't do what Mahmood obviously wanted her to, which was get the drugs and hand them over herself.  Instead she introduced the Sun to a friend who did the deal instead.  Naturally, for this truly heinous offence Contostavlos was promptly arrested by the Met's finest, who have always had a friendly relationship with the reporter who claims to have helped secure the convictions of hundreds of crims thanks to his good works.  If you're thinking there's a certainly irony to how the Sun predicted and then covered the arrest, both with front pages, while it devotes little in the way of space to the court appearances of its own reporters, then clearly you hate our great tradition of press freedom.

If anyone had been under the illusion that things would change after Leveson, then hopefully this will have fully shattered such notions. Subterfuge was only ever deemed permissible under the old PCC code if the material could not be obtained through other means, while fishing expeditions were expressly prohibited. There is no other way to describe Mahmood's methods than as entrapment.

And for what? To boost circulation ever so slightly? To put the jumped up Tulisa back in her place? To show that this "role model" is as hypocritical as all the rest? Pop star in knowing someone who deals drugs shock! It is truly pathetic gotcha journalism that interests the easily amused and bitter for a day, then it's gone. Contostavlos meanwhile is said to be devastated, as you might expect, and hasn't tweeted since the 31st of May. Last year she was praised for the way she responded to the release of a video which showed her performing a sex act on an ex-boyfriend. Despite it making clear that he has a grotty little nob, it was Contostavlos who was widely mocked, including by other celebrities. Last week the Sun headlined a follow-up piece "TULISA BLOWS IT AGAIN". It won't be much of a comfort to her, but it's undoubtedly the case that Mahmood too will mess up again, and hopefully this time he won't be able to carry on just as before.

(The Sun incidentally has denied most of the People's story and said it was false to say it "had spent as much as £100,000" on the investigation. £99,000 then, probably.)

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6/12/2013 10:10:00 pm | |

Monday, December 12, 2011 

A very small carrot.

The Leveson inquiry today gave in to the age old Mazher Mahmood myth. Even though he has never presented an ounce of evidence that his life is in danger, an argument which was swiftly rejected when he sought an injunction to stop George Galloway from spreading the ancient photographs of himself, only his voice rather than his holy visage was today broadcast over the stream.

This is doubly helpful as it means we can't additionally judge his testimony through his body language, such as when he comes out with old time favourites like how his work has resulted in "261 convictions". The farrago of bullshit then duly commenced: he had never engaged in entrapment, even when a number of judges have come to the exact opposite conclusion, he had never worked with private investigators, he had never heard of phone hacking, and he had never "dangled huge carrots" in the form of rewards for breaking the law. Something else that dangles, in Mahmood's case alongside a very small carrot, is what his evidence can be summarised as: bollocks.

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12/12/2011 04:21:00 pm | |

Wednesday, September 08, 2010 

If this a victory, what would a defeat look like?

It must be an odd time to be working at the News of the World right now. By recent tabloid standards it's had something approaching a string of successes: earlier in the year it exposed John Terry's alleged affair with Veronica Perroncel (still denied by her), leading to his demotion from England captain, and over the last couple of weeks has not only uncovered apparent corruption in the Pakistani cricket team, but also bought the story of a really rather pleasant young lady who claims to have slept with Wayne Rooney in exchange for money. At the same time, it's never been under so much scrutiny: even if the phone-hacking scandal took place under the paper's previous editor and now top Tory spin-doctor Andy Coulson, the paper's antics from that period of time have come back (eventually) to haunt it. With further accounts of just how out of control the newsroom apparently was coming out, it would be difficult for there not to be a level of resentment at the paper at how their hard work is being overshadowed.

Unhelpful at best then must be the implication that some of their more recent journalistic work is coming apart at the seams. Back in May, on the Sunday of the snooker world championship final, the paper claimed that former winner John Higgins had shook hands on a "on a disgraceful deal to fix a string of high-profile matches after demanding a £300,000 kickback". In a classic entrapment sting, masterminded by perennial offender Mazher Mahmood, Higgins had been filmed making what even then looked like a lot of vague comments in response to leading questions. It soon became clear that to get the footage of Higgins, hastily and sloppily edited together, the paper had gone to extravagant lengths even by its standards: setting up a highly professional looking website to convince Pat Mooney, Higgins' manager, that Mahmood's phony company had both the money and the credentials to potentially host matches at which Higgins could have thrown frames, and then flying both out to Ukraine where the filming took place, where they were apparently fast-tracked through customs thanks to Mahmood's influence.

It was clear immediately that the paper's case for Higgins having already agreed to throw matches was on the shaky side: the video it posted on its website certainly didn't show when the matches were going to take place or how and when Higgins would be paid for throwing the frames. At best it showed him talking about how frames could conceivably be lost, about how much they could be paid for either playing such a match or for throwing them and then shaking hands on something, although quite possibly not what the NotW went on to allege. This was without the video being potentially misleading edited, with audio apparently added and the clips shifting rapidly without any context being provided. That was instead left to the article, which as usual presented everything as being completely beyond certainty.

Higgins at the time denied ever being involved in any variety of match-fixing, and instead admitted to naivety in trusting that Mooney was working "in the best interests of snooker and himself [Higgins]". He also said he played along with what was discussed in the filmed meeting both because he was intimidated by some of those present, worried they might have been from the Russian mafia, and also due to his non-confrontational nature, not least having had the possibility of fixing a match thrust upon him. His account, which didn't change, was accepted by the independent tribunal heard by Ian Mill QC, which also found that the first he knew of any possible mentioning of fixing matches was right before the meeting took place when Mooney mentioned it. While Mill criticises Higgins in his findings for not making clear that he would not take any part in bribery and also for not reporting the meeting to World Snooker's governing body at the first opportunity, it accepts that he only had a "relatively limited" time frame in which to do so (the meeting took place on the Friday and the report was published on the Sunday). His actions were "extremely foolish", but the two most serious charges against him were dropped, with Higgins pleading guilty to the two others. A six-month ban (back-dated to May) and a £75,000 fine were the sanctions decided upon.

All the blame is instead laid on Mooney. His best explanation as to why he acted as he did was to string along those he thought he was dealing with into organising the matches, without any actual rigging ever taking place. Mill regarded him as an "unsatisfactory" witness and that his account was "highly implausible", and banned him from taking any part in snooker again for life.

Whether, as Mahmood and the NotW claimed, Mooney had been putting it around that he was looking to fix matches, which was what lead to them to investigate, or it was instead a simple case of dangling a line and seeing whether anyone took the bait is impossible to know. It is however another example of the NotW further sexing up a story (ala Max Mosely and the "sick Nazi orgy") when it already had one which it could have quite easily gone with. It wasn't enough for the paper to show that someone on the board of World Snooker was prepared to potentially organise fixed matches; it also had to ensnare a player, even if it meant putting the entire veracity of the story at risk. While Higgins was stupid and didn't carry out his duties to the fullest, there was never anything approaching adequate evidence that he would have gone on to actually take part in the fixed matches. While a former world champion taking bribes was a front page story, a board member almost certainly wouldn't have been. Even then, there's little to suggest that Mooney would have ever considered fixing matches unless it had first been suggested to him, and the NotW has produced no evidence which proves otherwise. For subterfuge to be justified under the Press Complaints Commission's code, it has to be in the public interest and unobtainable using "normal" methods. Seeing as its main allegations have been shown to be unproven, that has to be in doubt.

Not that the paper itself has recognised that its report in the main has been shown to be at best wishful thinking. In a terse statement, which covers itself carefully, the paper said:

This result is a victory for News of the World investigative journalism.

John Higgins has been found guilty, suspended and fined.

Pat Mooney has been found guilty and banned for life.

Today's judgement is testament to the extraordinary work of our investigations editor Mazher Mahmood.

We hope that the exposure of Higgins and Mooney will act as a deterrent to any other cheats in sport and help restore the integrity of snooker.

It doesn't matter then that there wasn't much chance of Higgins not being found guilty when he, err, accepted the lesser charges against him with the more serious ones being dropped, this is still a "victory for News of the World investigative journalism (sic)". Anyone looking even slightly below the surface might reach an entirely different conclusion, and instead find further evidence of the News of the World acting like a rogue newspaper, indifferent to the potential consequences of its brand of "investigative journalism". After all, if this is a victory, what exactly would a defeat look like?

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9/08/2010 11:59:00 pm | |

Tuesday, June 01, 2010 

John Terry's father, drug stings, and an unreformable regulator.

Does anyone have any actual idea what John Terry did that so angered the News of the World into pursuing not just him, but other members of his family? Even before the paper exposed his alleged affair with Vanessa Peroncell, still denied by Peroncell herself, it had already uncovered him selling access to Chelsea's ground to businessmen. Today the trial of his father, Edward Terry, ended when he was given a suspended sentence of six months imprisonment, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and to pay £95 in costs, having pleaded guilty to supplying 3.5 grams of a Class A substance. Terry senior too had been targeted by the News of the World, which went to quite astonishing lengths to entrap the father of a famous footballer.

The trial heard that in order to set up the sting, the Screws journalist responsible, Dan Sanderson, had spent six weeks gaining the trust of Terry, posing as a chauffeur, meeting him repeatedly at a wine bar close to his home in Essex. In classic NotW style, he then asked Terry if he could procure cocaine for both his boss and a friend. Terry agreed, and for £160 handed over the drug, having contacted a friend or acquittance he knew could supply it. The Screws consequently claimed that Terry was a drug dealer, and naturally reported him to the police.

Unfortunately for the Screws, Judge Christopher Mitchell decided that there was absolutely no basis for such a claim. Having heard all the evidence, he accepted Terry's mitigation that this was a case of pure entrapment, and that the NotW had created the story in its entirety simply because of his relationship with his son.

As alluded to above, this kind of sting has been pulled off by the NotW on probably dozens of occasions. Most of the time the targets have been minor celebrities, John Alford (who sank into complete obscurity as a direct result) and Johnnie Walker among them. One of the less famous targets was Joe Yorke, the 10th Earl of Hardwicke, apparently chosen for exposure for no other reason than his title. The work of Mazher Mahmood, he went to Hardwicke's scooter business with an order which would have been worth around £100,000. Before the contract was signed, Hardwicke was invited to an evening at the Savoy, where Mahmood and friends asked whether he could get any cocaine for them, and like Terry, duly obliged, especially when his struggling business was going to be all but saved by this Arab businessman. At the resulting trial, Mahmood was interrogated by Hardwicke's QC, and like in the subsequent cases involving the Victoria Beckham kidnap plot that never was and the red mercury plot that never was, came unstuck, admitting that in such stings he claimed back the cost of the money spent on the cocaine on expenses. There is no provision under the Misuse of Drugs Act for such purchases, and clearly when the NotW enquires whether other people can supply the goods it is all but inciting the commission of a crime.

Hardwicke was given a similar sentence to Terry (two years suspended), after the jury spent 7 hours considering its verdict, and also made clear that if it could have considered the extreme provocation he was put under, their decision of guilty would have been different. If the exposure of Hardwicke was hardly in the public interest, then the sting involving Terry could only be less so. The Press Complaints Commission's code is also clear: subterfuge can only be justified when the end result is in the public interest, and only then when the material could not be obtained in any other circumstances. As third parties can't complain to the PCC, and Terry himself is unlikely to do so himself, Roy Greenslade has two questions for the press regulator:

Are you collectively happy that Britain's highest-selling national paper has been criticised by a judge for entrapping a man "solely to create a newspaper story"?

If your answer is yes, then you might as well pack your bags. If the answer is no, then what do you propose to do about it?


Just at the PCC did absolutely nothing in the aftermath of the Earl of Hardwicke case, it will also do nothing now. The PCC is fundamentally unreformable, and those newspapers and press organisations which object to the News of the World commissioning criminal offences simply to target nobodies like Edward Terry should protest in the only way they can: by withdrawing from the self-regulation structure and so end their funding of a body which stands back and watches as the British media sinks to ever new lows.

(Additional material for this post was sourced from Peter Burden's 'News of the World? Fake Sheikhs and Royal Trappings'.)

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6/01/2010 09:35:00 pm | |

Monday, May 24, 2010 

The return of entrapment.


Haven't used these in a while...

The last year has hardly been a vintage one for tabloid newspapers. They didn't just collectively miss the opportunity to get exclusive rights to arguably the biggest story of the last decade, the files which enabled the Telegraph to launch its series on MPs' expenses, they in some cases actively turned them down when they were offered. Circulation across the board has mostly continued to slump, with just the Star and Sun barely managing to maintain the levels of the year before, and then only through heavy discounting. Alongside the damage caused by the Guardian's investigation into the phone-hacking at the News of the World, and the concurrent investigation by the parliamentary media committee, of even more concern will have been how social media is increasingly allowing those who were previously shouted at and invariably not allowed to respond in kind to protest about the very worst of the tabloid media's excesses, never more epitomised than by the contempt focused on the Daily Mail following the publication of Jan Moir's now infamous comment piece on the death of Stephen Gately. The Press Complaints Commission may not have agreed, but no newspaper is now likely to be so unthinking before printing something similar.

True, there was something of a success earlier in the year when John Terry, having been targeted repeatedly by the News of the World was not only exposed as having an affair (although Vanessa Perroncel continues to deny having had a sexual relationship with Terry) but in the process also had his so-called "super injunction" stopping the media from even revealing that there was one in place thrown out. The injunction however stopped the News of the World from keeping its scoop exclusive, and the media flailed around in its occasional pseudo-moralist persona, justifying the story on the grounds that Terry as captain of England was in a position of influence, meant to set an example to children around the country both on and off the pitch; he had to go, and go he did.

Nonetheless, it's in part been the revelations concerning the tabloid media's previous addiction to phone hacking and the "dark arts" that have almost certainly led it back to another of those deeply dubious and ethically questionable but far more traditional journalistic tricks of the trade: entrapment. Certainly, it's no coincidence that the three big "scoops" of the last month, if they can really be described as such, have all involved stings of two distinctly different sorts.

Just to be awkward, we'll consider the one that came along second first. Here is one of those slightly rarer examples of a newspaper not doing the legwork itself. Instead, the enterprising Melissa Jacobs, having ingratiated herself with the FA chairman Lord Triesman, recorded an incredibly dull conversation that was only slightly enlivened by his indiscreet mentioning of a conspiracy theory involving Russia bribing referees at this year's World Cup in favour of Spain, with Spain then returning the favour by voting for Russia to host the 2018 tournament. Jacobs was operating the classic honeytrap form of a sting, the attractive young woman pretending to have an interest in the male target, gaining his trust only then to either get him to break the law for her, or in this case, taping him saying something vaguely controversial. Jacobs claims that the pair were having a sexual relationship, something denied by Triesman (as always, it's worth remembering the wisdom of Mandy Rice-Davis on such matters) and not entirely backed up by some friendly but hardly damning text messages between the two, only for Jacobs to suddenly have a fit of conscience involving having an affair with a married older man, and then almost two years later apparently decide to earn some money out of him by meeting up with him and recording their conversation with a view to flogging it to the gutter press.

Quite why the Mail on Sunday decided that the conversations were worth an apparent £75,000, or indeed how they justified to themselves that the story was in the public interest are things we will never know. Something we do know is that the News of the World had been offered the story, and apparently turned it down. Not presumably because it felt the story wasn't worth paying for, but because it had a rather more acute sense of the possible effects of putting the information into the public domain: the instant implications for England's own bid to host the 2018 World Cup. Luckily for the Mail on Sunday, the rest of the tabloid press decided yet again that dog doesn't eat dog and instead focused on "rescuing" the bid rather than criticising the paper for endangering it in the first place through such an unnecessary and non-revelatory report. The only casualty was Gary Lineker, who decided he could no longer "write" (in fairness, I don't know whether his column was ghosted or not, but the vast majority of those by former players are) his column for the paper as a result.

Worth remembering is the hypocrisy of the position of the Mail on Sunday in paying such a vast sum to Jacobs when so many other such stings are based around the premise of proving the target to be, not just necessarily as corrupt or otherwise, but also as greedy, which is just what the other two exposures by the News of the World in the past month have set out to do. Both of the victims were entrapped by none other than Mazher Mahmood, whom you might remember included this blog in the terms of an injunction which he took out after he had so comprehensively failed to do his usual work on gorgeous George Galloway, who then set about distributing two blurry photographs of Mahmood which his staff had taken from the pages of none other than this site (I'd located from them from an Albanian newspaper website's report on Mahmood's activities, which itself swiftly disappeared down the memory hole). Some thought after his run in with Galloway, as well as the failure to secure convictions in the Victoria Beckham kidnap plot that never was and in the red mercury plot that also never was that he'd be forced to take a back seat in such "investigations", and while that seemed to be the case for a while, he's now apparently back in charge.

He also seems to be using exactly the same underhand tactics and ploys which he always has. The apparent planning, subterfuge and indeed cost which went into entrapping the snooker player John Higgins and his manager Pat Mooney was staggering, as uncovered by the Sporting Intelligence website. This involved meetings prior to Higgins and Mooney being flown out to Ukraine, where the conversation about fixing frames in exhibition matches that Mahmood's fake company was to sponsor was filmed, the creation of a very professional looking website for this business, and liberal amounts of alcohol being offered at least on the first couple of occasions, presumably to loosen any concerns that Mooney might have had, Higgins not being involved until the meeting in Ukraine. According to Sporting Intelligence, Higgins and Mooney were even fast-tracked through customs in the Ukraine, further giving the impression of how much influence Mahmood's fake company had. It was only then that they revealed that as well as being involved in legitimate business, they also had a supposed role in a gambling syndicate and wanted Higgins to lose some of the frames. While some of the evidence provided by the NotW is elementary, including how Higgins would account for the money he might have been paid for fixing the matches, there are notable holes: such as where and when the frames were to be lost, how much money exactly would have changed hands, and when. Of further concern is that Sporting Intelligence believes the video itself of the discussion was choppily edited, and in some cases misleadingly subtitled, with even dialogue being added on later that doesn't seem to match with anyone in the room at the time.

This isn't to even begin to suggest that Higgins and Mooney are innocent. Indeed, the fact that they didn't immediately report the meeting to Barry Hearn, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association's chairman is undeniably incriminating, considering Higgins later issued a statement claiming that he and Mooney had only gone along with what was being discussed because they were scared that they might be dealing with the Russian mafia, especially after the sudden appearance of two men previously unknown to them, one of which was another reporter, named "Jaroslav", along with someone given the moniker "Nikail".

Unlike Roy Greenslade, I see far more of a public interest defence for the entrapment of Higgins, in order to expose corruption in snooker, than I do in yesterday's sting involving Sarah Ferguson. Fergie is hardly the most public or notable figure these days, and while her intention to "sell" access to her ex-husband in his role as a special representative for trade and investment, unpaid as it is, is of possible concern on ethical grounds, the ethics involved in the entrapment are again of no apparent concern. While there doesn't seem to have been as much effort put into the sting as there was in the Higgins case, the same methods were used, including an apparently large amount of alcohol. It's hardly a revelation that Ferguson has always been out for whatever she can get, having not exactly been remunerated extravagantly after her separation from Andrew (although that said, many other single mothers with two children would rip her arm off for £15,000 a year), and as has also already been pointed out, if someone wants to pay you simply for introducing them to a relative, especially when no other favours have been promised and it is not even clear that meeting alone would be achievable, how many wouldn't take the money and run?

Of most concern to me is that a pattern seems to be repeating itself. Mahmood gradually worked himself up originally from entrapping minor celebrities, most often with drugs, with John Alford and Johnnie Walker notable examples, to more ambitious schemes which caught out the Countess of Wessex. He then went even further, as the aforementioned Victoria Beckham kidnap plot that never was, and then the red mercury nonsense. Having been knocked somewhat off his pedestal, he's now on the up again. Despite his claims that his involvement in the "red mercury" investigation was part of his role as a police informant, he's clearly never had any qualms whatsoever about potentially ruining the lives of individuals that he imagines he can get a story out, as shown by his first ever act of grassing up friends of his parents for being involved in pirating videos. Even if the tabloid press is somewhat battered and bruised at the moment, it still only believes in one thing: making money. Everything else comes second to that, and the return of entrapment, and all the uncertainties surrounding it just goes to show that the same old lack of morals and ethics is still driving journalists just as it much as it ever did.

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5/24/2010 07:43:00 pm | |

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