Tuesday, June 16, 2009 

The exposure of NightJack and a potential disaster for blogging and journalism.

The decision by the Times to "out" NightJack, and Justice Eady's corresponding ruling that bloggers have no right to anonymity must rank as one of the most short-sighted and potentially damaging to journalism episodes in quite some time.

Quite why the Times took it upon itself to discover the true identity of the winner of this year's Orwell prize for blogging is itself a mystery. Its justifications, such as they are, that he revealed details about cases and gave tips on how to evade justice, are pitiful. NightJack had done nothing to attract attention to himself other than presumably putting himself forward for the Orwell prize, and the fact that he could write to such an ability that he pulled in readers who admired his ability to analyse both his job, the politics surrounding it and the social problems which he had to deal with. NightJack had actually stopped blogging shortly before he won the Orwell prize, and had put his sights on writing a novel, rather than bringing out a book of the best of the blog, for which he had presumably had numerous offers. He didn't even turn up to receive the prize, as someone wanting to remain anonymous would never have done, and had also undoubtedly not economically benefited from his writing.

It would be tempting to put down the reason for the Times exposing Nightjack as simple jealousy that they didn't have a writer of such calibre prepared to put pen to paper for them, yet the Times has been one of the few newspapers that have given space to reasonably well-known bloggers to write original pieces for it. Likewise, the smug neo-con Oliver Kamm was taken on by the paper and is now one of its leader writers as a direct result of his stultifying blogging and obsession with attacking Noam Chomsky. Quite rightly, others have remembered how the Sunday Times treated the Girl With a One Track Mind, the sex blogger who was outed in a fashion which would have shamed the tabloids. It isn't an exact comparison, as Zoe Margolis had just published a book of her blog and didn't write about anything as high-minded as Nightjack, preferring to detail her tedious sex life in a pseudo-intellectual style, but it seems to have been a portent of what was to come.

The main reason though for why this is such an ill wind for journalism as a whole is the implications it has for whistleblowing, which if the Times had stopped to consider for a second it would have surely noted. Eady has in effect ruled that anyone in the public services who wants to bring attention to something which they think is a cause for concern, but which by doing so they would breach "discipline regulations" has no right to protection. Arguably, Nightjack was not performing such a public service in his writing, but this surely still has a potentially chilling effect for those who do. In fact, what this ruling seems to do is ensure that those who do want to whistleblow will have to go to publications like the Times for protection; if they do it themselves through blogging then newspapers have a justification for uncovering their true identity.

Newspapers concerned with the protection of their sources will be deeply worried by this ruling. If Nightjack has no right to privacy, then just who does? According to the Times' analysis, Eady based part of his decision on the previous ruling concerning George Galloway's exposure of Mazher Mahmood, a battle which this blog was involved in. Ironically, it was then the Times' sister publication which was fighting against their top reporter having his cover blown, but the two cases are surely completely different. Mahmood was a journalist who had ruined people's lives and had arguably been involved in entrapping individuals to develop his stories. When he himself failed to entrap Galloway in a similar fashion, he reacted to the publication of two grainy, unclear photographs in a ridiculous fashion, claiming it put his life in danger, something which was treated with short shrift. Mahmood was a hypocrite; Nightjack is not, and was not exposing anyone.

Just how potentially damaging this ruling could be is illustrated by the current battle going on in Northern Ireland, where the Sunday Tribune journalist Suzanne Breen has been defending herself against attempts by the police service of the province to obtain the identity of her sources, who informed her that the Real IRA had claimed responsibility for the murder of two soldiers outside Massereene barracks in Antrim in March. Unlike Mahmood, Breen's life almost certainly would be threatened should her source be revealed, yet that hasn't stopped the police from treating her life with such apparent contempt. Less seriously, this surely also threatens journalists who write under pseudonyms, something which the Times has again also overlooked; why should they be protected when bloggers aren't?

Furthermore, isn't the current situation in Iran, where those trying to let the world know what is happen are having to resort to Twatter further evidence of how dangerous this ruling is? According to Eady, those doing so are indulging in public activity where they have no right to anonymity, the kind of idea that would delight totalitarian regimes everywhere. Similarly, newspapers would be outraged were the government to do what the Times has just done, demanding that they reveal the source for sensitive articles, claiming it would be a threat to press freedom. It turns out that all the Times and News International care about is their own self-interest, which rather undermines their repeated past criticisms of Eady and the Human Rights Act for establishing a privacy law by stealth. It seems that celebrities are protected, while everyone else is fair game. The Times may yet come to regret their supreme selfishness and lack of dedication to protecting sources bitterly.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009 

A night to dismember.

Billed as her first major speech in six years, or rather appearance, as the Sun's editor, Rebekah Wade, is notoriously shy of the limelight, the invitation for her to deliver this year's Hugh Cudlipp lecture was a curious one. Although the press is too coy to mention it, the real reason why Wade has not defended her newspaper in person when controversy has surrounded it, instead sending out Grahan Dudman to do it, is for fear that she'd embarrass herself, as she did when she rather unfortunately told the truth to a parliamentary committee by saying that her paper paid the police for information. Then there was of course her arrest and night spent in the cells for whacking her then husband, Ross Kemp, after a night on the booze. Again, interestingly, most of the media connived to cover up her split from Kemp, with Private Eye reporting that Les Hinton had phoned round the papers pleading with them not to report on it. For an editor whom in her speech defends vigorously the right to print whatever the hell she likes about those supposedly in the public eye, this strikes as rather hypocritical behaviour.

There is perhaps though another reason why Wade has not ventured into the public gaze for the past few years, which quickly becomes apparent when you read the actual content of her speech: she has nothing of any great interest to say. You don't need to be an intellectual to edit an newspaper, and Wade is probably excellent at what she does, but an orator or a debater she is obviously not. Compared to Paul Dacre, who likewise is supposedly shy of the limelight, his speeches, which included the very same lecture a couple of years back, are furious and infuriating by equal measure. He might be completely wrong, and arrogant and insulting with it, but he can argue his point well enough. Wade however lacks the courage or self-belief to adequately cover the contradictions throughout, leaving gaping holes in her material.

She might well have been then as Roy Greenslade suggests, charming in person, but none of that comes across in the somewhat disjointed full text offered by both the Guardian and the Press Gazette. Starting on somewhat surer ground, she illustrates that those cutting costs without reinvesting the savings back into journalism itself are the ones that are losing the most sales. Unsurprisingly, the Mirror and the Daily Star are the ones that have lost the most sales over the past year. Even this though leaves out some other much needed explanatory detail: Wade doesn't mention that her own paper has reignited the vicious price war, with the paper selling for just 20p across London and the south-east. As has been noted time and again, because of Murdoch's other vast interests, he can afford to do so; his competitors simply can't, and attempting to compete is beyond stupid. Naturally, Richard Desmond has therefore slashed the cost of the Star to... 20p. Although December is always a quiet month for newspapers sales, the Sun fell below 3 million last month, just as it did in 2007. Across the board though all of the tabloids are declining, and falling at far faster rates than their broadsheets rivals and sisters. It indicates the inevitable: that as the internet increasingly takes over as the main source for the celeb tittle-tattle, scandal-mongering and populist wittering which they specialise in, the tabloids are facing the end of their business models. The broadsheets, by contrast, although still giving away their content, can survive thanks to their quality and reader dedication, which simply isn't there among the red-tops and middle-market.

Wade's rallying cry then, that it will be "the quality of our journalism [that] makes or breaks our industry, not the recession", is one of those statements that makes you wonder if she really knows what she's saying. Just the recent Glen Jenvey incident, when the paper splashed on a complete untrue concocted story which accused completely innocent Muslims of being extremists, shows how much it cares about accuracy. It's no surprise to learn that a new poll found that only 19% of those questioned in this country had trust in newspapers. This is a direct consequence of the tabloids' often irresponsible and downright untrue journalism, which unfairly infects opinion of other newspapers and broadcasters, yet still editors like Dacre and Wade defend their "quality" despite its effects.

Wade's second theme, campaigning journalism, offers us her insight into both the recent Baby P affair and the more notorious "naming and shaming" of paedophiles she directed while editor of the News of the World, but first she mentions the paper's continuing support for the Help for Heroes charity, including her own trip to a base in Helmand. She describes a warm welcome and how everyone was wearing the wristbands, but this jars somewhat with the far more cynical views of the newspaper on the Army Reserve Rumour Service message board in response to the paper's Military Awards, which Wade also mentions, and which readers themselves also seemed less than overwhelmed with. She takes credit for the increasing support for the army and turnout at parades, without providing any evidence whatsoever that it was the Sun "wot did it". Similarly, while she calls for more reporting of the war in Afghanistan, she doesn't mention that her paper's own coverage of it never for so much of a second doubts that it's for a good cause or that the battle is being won. Whenever the topic is discussed in the paper's leader column, it inevitably turns to the argument that fighting the Taliban makes us safer, when again there is evidence to suggest the opposite is the case. Blind loyalty is all that it has to offer, when constructive criticism is always the best policy.

Moving on to Sarah's law, what becomes clear is Wade's utter refusal to take responsibility, both for her own actions, and also for the actions of those who read her newspaper and decide to take the law into their own hands. Illuminating firstly is that it came about after she arrived unannounced on Sara Payne's doorstep; not apparently concerned about whether either she or her husband were in a fit state to be interviewed, or to set in motion what became a crusade which if implemented would most likely have the opposite effect to that which is intended, Wade immediately had her witch-hunt. Her own contempt for the truth is also apparent when she castigates the other media for its reporting of what happened on one Portsmouth estate:

Parts of the media went on the attack with a blatant disregard for the facts of the campaign or more importantly their readers’ opinions on the matter.

After we published the first list, a group of mothers from an impoverished housing estate in Portsmouth took to the streets to protest. The BBC described them as ‘an angry lynch mob’.

What the BBC did not report was that the mothers had just discovered that Victor Burnett, a paedophile with 14 convictions for raping and abusing young boys between the ages of four and nine, had been rehoused amongst them unmonitored by the authorities.

Totally unaware of his background, the residents had complained for years about Burnett’s inappropriate behaviour towards their children but their voices, until then, had remained unheard.


How else should the media have described protests such as these, as reported by the Telegraph:

The torch paper was lit by the naming of Victor Burnett, a convicted serial child abuser, in the News of the World: he was a resident of Paulsgrove and was hounded from his home by a chanting mob. Events moved out of control: the rest of Britain looked on in horror and fascination as windows were smashed, cars burned, and angelic, banner-waving five-year-olds happily chanted words that sounded ugly falling from childish mouths. "Sex case, sex case. Hang 'em, hang 'em, hang 'em." Five families were moved from the estate: the police said that none had links with sex offences.

There was no evidence that Burnett had re-offended while on Paulsgrove, but at least he was correctly identified: others had their houses burgled, windows smashed and their cars set on fire. Wade calls the "naming and shaming" her responsibility, which it was. She however hides behind the readers themselves, critical of how others disregarded "readers' opinions", as if readers' opinions are always unimpeachable or always right. As Nick Davies pointed out in Flat Earth News, one of the rules of production is giving the readers what they want, but what
you think the readers want is not always the same thing. The key is that it's cheap, while challenging orthodoxy is expensive and unpredictable.

That Wade has no interest in the ultimate consequences of her own actions could not be more illustrated by the end result of the paper's Baby P campaign. Here's how she describes it:

Campaigns provide a unique connection to the public especially when the subject matter is of a serious nature.For me, nothing can illustrate this connection better than our recent Baby P campaign.

The public outcry was deafening. And we began our fight for justice with a determination to expose the lack of accountability and responsibility for Baby P’s brutal death.

We delivered 1.5 million signatures to Downing Street and the collective power worked.

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls was forced to use emergency legislation to ensure that those responsible were held to account. We received many many thousands of letters at The Sun about our Baby P coverage.

I’d like to read you one: ‘I have never been a huge fan of The Sun, however I thank you for the coverage of Baby P. I am so grateful for the campaign. This is not a modern day witch-hunt but a petition for justice. Please, please do not relent.'

In contrast, I’d like to quote from an article in... The Guardian.

“Full of fury and repellent hysteria, but isn’t that part of the game? This is less about the creation of public emotion and more about its manipulation."

This knee-jerk tabloid kicking reaction is just dull.

But total disregard and respect for public opinion never ceases to amaze me.

They demanded accountability.

And as a result of the campaign, some, just some, of those responsible were removed from office without compensation.

Or as this Sun reader wrote: ‘The tabloid press, which the arty-farty press like to look down on so much, has shown that it prides morality over political correctness.’


Again, there's the lack of evidence that Shoesmith and others wouldn't have been suspended or sacked if the Sun hadn't ran its campaign. Some sort of action was always going to be taken. Again, Wade hides behind supposed public opinion: it's what "they" want, not what she wants or what's good for Murdoch's bank balance. It's not about directing the blame onto other people because those actually responsible for Baby P's death couldn't be named and demonised themselves because the cogs of justice are still whirring in connected cases, it's about so-called justice, or even morality. The result? A new boss has been installed in Haringey, on double what Sharon Shoesmith was earning, while the borough is now so desperate for social workers that the head of the department made an appeal across London for some to be lent him. Children less safe, those who worked on the case who were already likely distraught had their lives ruined, and now the service, what's left of it, costs more. A more ringing endorsement of a Sun justice campaign could hardly be imagined, and yet still Wade feels fit to quote a reader who invokes morality. This so-called morality was presumably what lead the comment sections on the Sun's articles to be shut down, where previously already suicidal social workers had been encouraged to kill themselves. The only more immoral paper in this country is the Daily Mail.

Filled with such chutzpah, it's little wonder that Wade then goes on to make an even more outrageous statement, this time involving press freedom:

This country is full of regulators, lawyers and politicians eager to frame and implement legislation that would constrain freedoms hard won over centuries.

We are already losing those freedoms. Privacy legislation is being created by the drip, drip of case law in the High Court without any reference to parliament.


This from the editor of an newspaper which as the Heresiarch has already pointed out, has never so much as raised its voice once against this government's incessant attacks on civil liberties. In fact, on nearly every occasion it's supported them, whether it be ID cards, detention without trial or its constant bugbear, the Human Rights Act, which it opposed while the government introduced it. She's also completely wrong: parliament passed the HRA, which now so apparently threatens the tabloids' and their dying business model by potentially restricting the scandals they can report. This is also an issue on which public opinion is not necessarily on their side: few cared about Max Mosley, or even knew who he was until the News of the World exposed him while blackmailing the women who spanked him. The HRA doesn't affect real scandal, like the already monikered "Erminegate", which is why no one other than the tabloids and their editors care, and why the Guardian was completely right to print Mosley's own views on press freedom, which she criticises, no doubt intending to be humourous, as "self-flagellation". When she talks about quality, a old man being spanked by prostitutes is the sort of story she means.

Having regaled stories about how much the Sun listens to its readers, she concludes with a few questions which can be happily answered:

We need to ask ourselves: Can we unite to fight against a privacy law that has no place in a democracy?

Obviously not, as firstly there isn't one, isn't going to be one, and even if there was, it wouldn't be supported when it would only cover sex scandals involving celebrities. Next!

Can we agree that self-regulation is the best way to deal with the occasional excesses of a free press?

No, not when the regulator is completely toothless and cannot impose financial sanctions or front page apologies on newspapers when the "excesses" are serious enough, as they often are.

Can we have a press that has the courage and commitment to listen to and fight for its readers?

Not when no thought is put into whether the consequences of that courage and commitment will actually result in a positive outcome.

Can we survive this economic climate if we keep investment in journalism at the heart of what we do?

Not if what you call journalism is whatever's on the front page of tomorrow's Sun (Jade Goody and a footballer being interviewed about a rape).

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Tuesday, December 02, 2008 

Tracking tabloid hypocrisy.

The thing about arguing against the excesses of the gutter press is often that those they target are little more pleasant than the papers themselves. Even when you consider the utter hypocrisy of the tabloids attacking Paul Burrell for making money out of his relationship with Princess Diana, something they've been doing for over two decades, there's little doubt that going from the princess's rock to helming reality series' in the US and Australia and promoting "Royal Butler" wine is somewhat plumbing the depths. That doesn't however mean that you should be allowed to get away with printing such trash as "BURRELL: I HAD SEX WITH DIANA" by paying his brother-in-law to "remember" conversations they had 15 years ago, and then fail to allow the man himself to deny such scurrilous allegations.

Much the same is the case with another bastion of good taste, Simon Cowell. There's nothing quite like making a good amount of your yearly wage out of humiliating those who have the temerity to believe that they have something resembling a talent - which, after all, is conspicuous in its absence in Cowell himself. There has been at least one recent case of someone who auditioned in front of Cowell subsequently committing suicide, although the woman in that instance was apparently more "obsessed" with another female judge. Nonetheless, however much of an arrogant git Cowell might be, he has the right like everyone else to a private life. Hence the apparent revelation that a "tracking device" was attached to his car, in a letter sent around to media organisations by his lawyers Carter-Fuck, is another sign of the kind of desperation which is still afflicting the tabloids in the media environment.

Paul Dacre, of course, just a couple of weeks back told us that "[U]nder the auspices of PressBoF, we have produced a guidance note on DPA [Data Protection Act] that has been sent to every paper in Britain." Fat lot of good that obviously did. In the same speech Dacre boasted about how he, along with representatives from the Telegraph and News International had successfully lobbied the government to drop the threat of journalists being jailed for obtaining information via deception, i.e. using private detectives as almost all the press instutitions in this country had to get information from government databases. Tracking devices are just as illegal as getting the likes of Stephen Whittamore to break the law for you to track the activities of celebrities and their relatives. It would be nice for Paul Dacre to explain how the use of such a device would be in the public interest, and how and why the journalist responsible for attempting to spy on Cowell shouldn't lose his job as a result.

It is after all the same newspapers responsible for such intrusion into private lives that so rail against the state doing exactly that. The ones currently screaming blue murder over the arrest of Damian Green and how the arrest of an opposition politician means we are living in a police state, but who when not fulminating against the government think nothing of indulging in almost identical practices to that of the police and security services just to be able to be ahead of the game when it comes to the celebrity exclusives which in Dacre's terms now provide the press with the means to be able to report on politics at all. Take away the scandal, he more or less argued, and you can forget their contribution to our democracy entirely. Nick Davies in Flat Earth News (criticised by Dacre) argued that the Whittamore case had came very close to bringing down the entire edifice of the media's "dark arts", and that it was only continuing now under far more cover. Doubtless then the discovery of the "tracking device" on Cowell's car will probably give them further pause for thought, at least for a while. Then they'll be back to harassing celebrities for our amusement.

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Monday, November 10, 2008 

The Daily Mail in the flesh.

Andrew Neil once wrote that if you want to know what Rupert Murdoch thinks, you should read the Sun's editorials. Not the Times', the Sun's; Rupert doesn't really do subtlety. It's much the same with Paul Dacre. The Daily Mail after all couldn't really be a person writ large, could it? There's too many contradictions, too much foaming hatred, so much casual cynicism combined with values that went out with rationing. No one could be like that, could they?

Dacre's latest extended utterances prove drastically otherwise. Having previously, and somewhat hilariously, delivered the Cudlipp lecture, the late great editor that Dacre doesn't deserve to even lick the boots of, railing against the "subsidariat" and the BBC, he was given the lectern at the Society of Editors bash. Clocking in at just over 7,500 words, it covers more or less everything that Dacre and by extension the Daily Mail loathes. First though he goes through what originally inspired him:

Hugh Cudlipp’s “Publish and Be Damned”, and Arthur Christiansen’s “Headlines All My Life” were my much-thumbed bibles. All those glorious memoirs by James Cameron, that brilliant reporter, were my text books.

And yet you still turned into the man you are today.

Before we've even got anywhere, he's straight in with the out and out bullshit:

I am, however, delighted, over the years, to have made my own small contribution to the chattering classes’ dyspepsia with the Rothermere press – but then no day is too busy or too short not to find time to tweak the noses of the liberalocracy which effectively run Britain.



Ah yes, the "liberalocracy" which effectively runs Britain. Fact of the matter is, like with Murdoch, no government could ever be right-wing enough to satisfy Dacre or the Mail, just as there'll probably never be a government left-wing enough to satisfy me.

How Dacre became the man he is today:

At university, I edited the student newspaper. I’m afraid I took a product that looked like the then Times on Prozac and turned it into a raucous version of Cudlipp’s Mirror complete, I shudder to admit, with Page 3 girl students whom I dubbed “Leeds Lovelies”. 

We mounted an undercover investigation, complete with photographers, into seemingly respectable pubs that were putting on strip shows. Family entertainment it wasn’t.

His hypocrisy then was already fully in action. Leeds Lovelies on one page, investigation into strippers doing the same thing on the next. Brilliant!

Open sentimental twaddle about the old Sunday Express follows:

So what was the editorial formula identified originally by the brilliant Scottish editor John Gordon and followed with ruthless will by John Junor? Firstly, the paper never, ever, forgot who its readers were and what interested them and their families. Secondly, it told everything through the prism of people. 

Page 3 of the Sunday Express said it all. The lead article under the title “Meeting People” was an interview - not with the kind of half-baked trollop who passes as a celebrity these days, but with, say, the mother of a newly chosen British Nobel Prize winner.

 Next to it was a large cartoon by Giles whose genius for clean, gloriously warm family humour is matched today only by the Mail’s magnificent Mac. Why this genre of cartooning - which combines superb draftsmanship with a timeless universal humour that often contains great truths - is dying out is a subject for another speech. Anyway, underneath was the “You the Lawyer” column addressing the problems of every day life such as fencing disputes and dog bites. What paper today would have such a low-key, non-newsy page 3. Yet all human life was on that page.

All human life, as long as it was suitably middle class, obviously.

Skipping a whole load of nonsense about the good ol' days, how columnists these days don't know their born, how it's all the fault of the state and some justified poking at Richard Desmond, he gets to the start of his main points.

Donning my hat as Chairman of the PCC’s Editors’ Code Committee, I would like to talk to you a little about where we are on regulation and press freedom issues. 

About 18 months ago, I, Les Hinton of News International and Murdoch MacLennan of the Telegraph, had dinner with the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

How very cosy. Ignoring the first two concerns he raised, which were reasonably noble, it's his last two which are the interesting ones:

Thirdly, there were the very serious financial implications for newspapers of the Conditional Fee Arrangement, the no win, no fee legislation. Introduced as a well-intentioned measure to help the poor have access to the courts, it was being ruthlessly exploited by unscrupulous lawyers who were ramping up their costs in media cases. Publishers were being faced with huge bills, sometimes running into millions, to defend even the most simple, clear-cut cases.

 Costs in CFA cases, as many of you here know, can be almost infinite with lawyers entitled to “success fees” of up to 100% on top of their actual bills. This gives them a positive financial incentive to take relatively straight-forward cases, worth just a few thousand pounds, and run them as long as possible. Adding insult to injury, CFA claimants can take out very expensive ATE (after the event) insurance policies to protect themselves against costs. If they win, the paper has to pay the claimant’s premium, but if they lose - and this is the cynicism of it all – the insurer rarely enforces the charges because the claimant invariably cannot afford to pay. 



Let me give you an example: Martyn Jones, an utterly inconsequential MP, sued the Mail on Sunday over their claim that he had sworn at a Commons official. The Mail on Sunday believed it had rock-solid witnesses and decided to fight the case. In the event, they lost and were ordered to pay £5,000 in damages. The MP’s lawyers claimed costs of £388,000 – solicitor’s costs of £68,000, plus 100% success fees, barrister’s costs of £63,000, plus 100% success fees, VAT and libel insurance of £68,000. Associated’s costs were £136,000 making a total of £520,000 costs in a case that awarded damages of just £5,000 in a dispute over a simple matter of fact.

 Can it really be right for a QC in a libel case to be paid £7,000 for a day in court whilst the same QC, prosecuting or defending a serious case at the Old Bailey, may receive less than £600 a day – less than a tenth?

Perhaps predictably, Dacre leaves some crucial facts out of this recounting of the libel case involving Jones. The trial was held in front of a jury, although Justice Eady was the judge in charge, and it reached a majority verdict in favour of Jones. The Mail on Sunday claimed that he had told a House of Commons security guard to "fuck off"; Jones claimed that he had in fact said to the security guard that "I don't give a shit what you are, you should know who MPs are." The jury sided with Jones, and presumably also with the claim from Jones's lawyers that there were "at least a dozen untrue assertions" made which had been "cranked up, spiced up and sexed up" so that it became a "grotesque distortion" of what really happened. Perhaps if the MoS had settled it might not have had to pay such costs, hmm? In any event, what Dacre is describing is extraordinarily rare. As has been well documented, only the rich and famous can usually afford to bring libel cases, with there being very few law firms that will contest cases on a no-win no-fee basis. Jones was lucky; the MoS was not. Boo hoo, isn't the world awful?

The result is that today, newspapers – even wealthy ones like the Mail – think long and hard before contesting actions, even if they know they are in the right, for fear of the ruinous financial implications. For the provincial and local press, such actions are now out of the question. Instead, they stump up some cash, money they can’t afford, to settle as quickly as possible, to avoid court actions – which, if they were to lose, could, in some case, close them. Some justice!



Dacre wilfully exaggerates. Even costs of £520,000 to the Mail group are relative peanuts, and that was about as most extreme a case as you can imagine. The reality is that most who think they have been treated unfairly go to the Press Complaints Commission - where their treatment is often not much better.

The fourth issue we raised with Gordon Brown was a truly frightening amendment to the Data Protection Act, winding its way through Parliament, under which journalists faced being jailed for two years for illicitly obtaining personal information such as ex-directory telephone numbers or an individual’s gas bills or medical records. This legislation would have made Britain the only country in the free world to jail journalists and could have had a considerable chilling effect on good journalism.

 The Prime Minister – I don’t think it is breaking confidences to reveal – was hugely sympathetic to the industry’s case and promised to do what he could to help.

 Over the coming months and battles ahead, Mr Brown was totally true to his word. Whatever our individual newspapers’ views are of the Prime Minister – and the Mail is pretty tough on him - we should, as an industry, acknowledge that, to date, he has been a great friend of press freedom. 



Again, Dacre exaggerates completely. The amendment to the DPA was to stop the sale to journalists via private detectives of information obtained from companies' and sometimes government databases. This information was and is hardly ever, if ever, used to uncover genuine scandals, and even if it was, the journalists in those cases would be protected as usual under a public interest defence. What the DPA amendment would have helped put a lid on was the casual obtaining of information on anyone who crosses the media, almost always either celebrities or those accused of crimes outside the realm of the political sphere. At the trial of Stephen Whittamore, the prosecution alleged that some of the material they delivered to journalists was on two actresses then in EastEnders, the family of Ricky Tomlinson, and a former Big Brother contestant. Quite a chilling effect the amendment would have had on good journalism, I'm sure you'll agree.

In any event, the government quickly backed down, especially in the face of private lobbying by Dacre, Hinton and MacLennan, as Dacre goes on to boast:

Thirdly, there is to be action on the “scandalous” greed of CFA lawyers. That adjective is not mine, by the way, but Justice Minister’s Jack Straw’s in a recent speech on the subject. For following Number 10’s intervention all those months ago, there have been many constructive meetings between the industry and the Ministry of Justice on what to do about CFA.

A few weeks ago, I, Rebekah Wade and Murdoch MacLennan saw Jack Straw who assured us that, in the next few months, he is set to unveil proposals to reform CFA, including capping lawyers’ fees.

...

It was agreed that the Data Protection Act should be amended so that journalists would have the right to seek out protected information if they had a “reasonable belief” that their actions were in the public interest.

 And, more pertinently, the Act was amended so that the jailing clause cannot now be implemented unless the Secretary of State seeks approval from Parliament to activate it.



That they already had that "reasonable belief" obviously didn't matter. With the jailing clause unimplemented, the industry can carry on in exactly the way it was doing before.

So that is where we are. The industry has been warned. We must make sure our house in order. Under the auspices of PressBoF, we have produced a guidance note on DPA that has been sent to every paper in Britain. Now it is up to all of us to ensure that our journalists are complying with the Act. At Associated, we are holding seminars on the subject and have written compliance with the Act into our employment contracts. 

At the Editors Code Committee, we are considering whether the current provisions of the Code on data protection and our Guidance Notes, as well as the wording in the Editor’s Codebook, can be strengthened.

Why is it that I don't believe a single word of this? Probably because it was the Mail itself, without even including the MoS, that made the most use of Whittamore, with over 952 transactions. Dacre must have known and sanctioned every single one of them, and then he is one of those responsible for updating the current PCC code! The same newspaper which rages against misuse of government data and the loss of it broke the law in numerous instances and has got away with it. No wonder Dacre is so triumphant.

The parts on Justice Eady now come into view:

But there is one remaining threat to press freedom that I suspect may prove far more dangerous to our industry than all the issues I have just discussed.

 Put to one side the United Nations’ recent attack on Britain’s disgracefully repressive libel laws that have made London the libel capital of the world – something that should be a bitter source of shame for our judicial system. Concentrate instead on how inexorably, and insidiously, the British Press is having a privacy law imposed on it, which – apart from allowing the corrupt and the crooked to sleep easily in their beds – is, I would argue, undermining the ability of mass-circulation newspapers to sell newspapers in an ever more difficult market.



Here then is Dacre's thesis. He doesn't really care, when it comes down to it, about who he and his friends in the media expose in three-in-a-bed sex romps; what he cares about is that the exposing of the rich and the famous is in his view what makes people buy newspapers. Without it, the industry will be further damaged, and the state will have to step in. To suggest this is nonsense would be to give it too much respect: it is crap of the highest order. The Sunday tabloid press, which delivers the scandals and the sex in spades, is already falling of a cliff circulation wise. By contrast, the broadsheets, both daily and weekly are holding up fairly well. The tabloids have to face up to the fact that their readers are increasingly being lost to the internet, where no holes whatsoever are barred. The broadsheets on the other hand are doing OK because they rely on their quality: something which the tabloids simply do not provide, and that includes Dacre's paper, which most agree is the best tabloid regardless of the politics. Would a privacy law further heighten the drops? Probably, but it probably wouldn't make much difference.

In any event, we are not having a privacy law developed in front of our eyes - yet. That might depend on the verdict in the upcoming trial involving Sienna Miller and the Big Pictures photo agency. Just to emphasise how the tabloids don't learn, the Sun and News of the World today settled with her over the publication of nude photographs, awarding £35,000 plus costs, or a pittance as it is to News Corp. Miller has been serially offended against: the Star paid her £15,000 in September over similar photographs and the Sun and News of the World paid her £37,500 last December over, you guessed it, naked photographs. Some will hardly be predisposed to Miller because of her alleged behaviour, but surely the right not to be effectively stalked by paparazzi to the extent where you fear for your life, which is what Miller has been, is one which the law should recognise.

This law is not coming from Parliament – no, that would smack of democracy – but from the arrogant and amoral judgements – words I use very deliberately – of one man. 

I am referring, of course, to Justice David Eady who has, again and again, under the privacy clause of the Human Rights Act, found against newspapers and their age-old freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places. 



Two cases in particular underline this threat. 

Two years ago, Justice Eady ruled that a cuckolded husband couldn’t sell his story to the press about another married man – a wealthy sporting celebrity – who had seduced his wife. 

The judge was worried about the effect of the revelations on the celebrity’s wife. Now I agree that any distress caused to innocent parties is regrettable but exactly the same worries could be expressed about the relatives of any individual who transgressed which, if followed to its logical conclusion, would mean that nobody could be condemned for wrongdoing. 

But the judge – in an unashamed reversal of centuries of moral and social thinking – placed the rights of the adulterer above society’s age-old belief that adultery should be condemned.



Because Dacre cannot dispute Eady's rulings in a legal sense, he instead turns to morals to try to traduce him. The problem with this is obvious - the country has moved on. Unless hypocrisy is involved, or those involved are mega famous, no one really cares any more. We still disapprove of adultery, but we don't think those involved should be shamed just because they're famous. Dacre however thinks this is exactly the way it should be, that shame is what newspapers are meant to provide, but it isn't. They're supposed to inform, educate, and entertain. Shaming celebrities does none of those things.

The other problem is that the Mail is hypocrisy on stilts itself. The paper is wholly immoral - it thinks nothing of accusing innocent people of terrible crimes with no evidence, such as Robert Murat, who unsurprisingly doesn't warrant a mention in this speech, not to mention Colin Stagg. While it defended the McCanns to the hilt, because they were "its people", the second that Fiona MacKeown came to public attention in a similar plight she was smeared, her home broken into and pictures taken of her dead daughter's bedroom, and attacked by the same columnists who cried fake tears of sympathy for Kate McCann. It ran the most vicious and mendacious campaign possible against the MMR vaccine, now responsible for increased cases of measles up and down the country. It breaks the law with impunity, as we have seen. And then it imagines that it has the right to deliver lectures on what is and what is not moral, as Dacre goes on to do:

Recently, of course, the very same Justice Eady effectively ruled that it’s perfectly acceptable for the multi-millionaire head of a multi-billion sport that is followed by countless young people to pay five women £2,500 to take part in acts of unimaginable sexual depravity with him. 

The judge found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a “sick Nazi orgy” as the News of the World contested, though for the life of me that seems an almost surreally pedantic logic as some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform. Mosley was issuing commands in German while one prostitute pretended to pick lice from his hair, a second fellated him and a third caned his backside until blood was drawn. 



Now most people would consider such activities to be perverted, depraved, the very abrogation of civilised behaviour of which the law is supposed to be the safeguard. Not Justice Eady. To him such behaviour was merely “unconventional”. 

Nor in his mind was there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way. Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter? 

But what is most worrying about Justice Eady’s decisions is that he is ruling that - when it comes to morality - the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being “amoral".

Dacre then is the only one who can decide what is and what is not moral. The whole point of the Mosley case was that the News of the World claimed it was a Nazi orgy; it was not, as Eady painstakingly pointed out. If it had been a Nazi orgy, the News of the World would have had a public interest defence; it wasn't, so it didn't. Fact is, Dacre thinks that what goes on in other people's bedrooms is his business; it isn't, and it is no business of the government's either. If Dacre really thinks that some mild BSDM is "unimaginable sexual depravity" he has a very very poor imagination. As for his comments about the way Mosley "exploited" the women who were more than willing to take part and who subsequently testified for his defence, with him suggesting that Eady might have been more concerned if they had included a daughter or his wife, that says far more about Dacre's own insecurity than it does about anything else.

In the sporting celebrity case, he rejected the idea that adultery was a proper cause for public condemnation. 

Instead, he declared that because family breakdown was now commonplace, there was a strong argument for “not holding forth about adultery” or, in other words, attaching no greater inherent worth to marriage than to any other lifestyle choice. 

Thus no moral delineation was to be made between marriage and those who would destroy it, between victim and victimiser, between right and wrong.



We're talking about three people's private affairs here, not the breakdown of society as we know it. One person's infidelity is not about to bring this country down; Dacre's sophistry has to be seen to be believed.

In the Mosley case, the judge is ruling that there is no public interest in revealing a public figure’s involvement in acts of depravity.

 What the judge loftily calls the “new rights-based jurisprudence” of the Human Rights Act seems to be ruling out any such thing as public standards of morality and decency, and the right of newspapers to report on digressions from those standards.

Except Mosley was not a public figure. He was not a hypocrite. He was just someone who the News of the Screws could make money out of. They couldn't care about the morals involved, as you'd expect; that was the excuse, just as it is here with Dacre. Or perhaps it isn't; maybe he really cares about morals whilst being completely immoral himself.

But most worrying is that when it comes to suppressing media freedom, the good Justice Eady is seemingly ubiquitous.... 

It was he who was going to preside in Tesco’s libel case against the Guardian, which was, in the event, recently settled out of court. 

It was the same Justice Eady who, in Lord Browne versus the Mail on Sunday, ruled that BP’s shareholders had the right to know that Browne had lied to the court – but did not have the right to know details of his conversations with his boyfriend, despite the paper’s case that they had serious public-interest implications. 

Again, it was Eady who found in favour of a Canadian folk singer called Loreena McKennitt, who had objected to the publication of a book about her by a former adviser, Niema Ash. Ms McKennitt did not claim that the book was in any way untrue, merely that it infringed her right to privacy. Never mind Ms Ash’s right to freedom of expression.

Except Eady was more than fair to the Guardian, despite his reputation. Browne's case is difficult, but in the main he came down on the side of the media. In the case of McKennitt, Eady's original ruling was then backed by both the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. Hardly all the blame can be placed on his shoulders in that instance.

And it is Eady who, almost unnoticed here, has the distinction of having provoked the US Congress – in what’s dubbed the Libel Tourism Bill – to consider making English libel judgments unenforceable in America. This follows the judge’s decision to allow a Saudi banker to sue a New York author in the London courts even though she hadn’t published her book in Britain. Not for the first time, it seems that our colonial cousins can teach us a thing or two. 

But surely the greatest scandal is that while London boasts scores of eminent judges, one man is given a virtual monopoly of all cases against the media enabling him to bring in a privacy law by the back door.

Dacre makes about his only salient point here. This was a disgraceful decision by Eady, but is all about our libel laws, not the unwritten laws on privacy. The best course of action would be a re-writing of both: removing only the rich and famous from being able to sue for libel, whilst ensuring London cannot be used to silence critics worldwide, whilst protecting individual privacy against press intrusion. Neither though is about to happen, as, although newspapers complain about both, for the most part they are thoroughly happy with the situation. Their belief in freedom only extends as far as their wallets.

English Common Law is the collective wisdom of many different judges over the ages. The freedom of the press, I would argue, is far too important to be left to the somewhat desiccated values of a single judge who clearly has an animus against the popular press and the right of people to freedom of expression.

This is another fair enough point, but it's not as if Eady is purely making it up as he's going along: he's drawing extensively on past rulings and interpreting Articles 8 and 10 of the HRA; if he wasn't, he would be subject to far more criticism than just from those concerned with libel tourism and tabloid editors.

I personally would rather have never heard of Max Mosley and the squalid purgatory he inhabits. It is the others I care about: the crooks, the liars, the cheats, the rich and the corrupt sheltering behind a law of privacy being created by an unaccountable judge. 

If Gordon Brown wanted to force a privacy law, he would have to set out a bill, arguing his case in both Houses of Parliament, withstand public scrutiny and win a series of votes. Now, thanks to the wretched Human Rights Act, one Judge with a subjective and highly relativist moral sense can do the same with a stroke of his pen. 



All of those adjectives, apart from corrupt, could be applied to Dacre just as much as they could those he attacks. He describes what Gordon Brown would have to go through, but he doesn't mention another trial he'd have to pass: the opprobrium of the media, and that is not covered by public scrutiny. Put simply, the unaccountable media with all its power would not accept it, and they would ensure it would never pass, even though their actions have led to its effective creation. Here exposed then is why the likes of the Mail and Sun so hate the HRA; not because it's a criminals' or terrorists' charter, but because it directly affects their business models. They have to remember that the HRA was passed by parliament, that they had the opportunity to oppose it then and failed, and that it was the HRA that has helped to establish the Reynolds defence.

All this has huge implications for newspapers and, I would argue, for society. Since time immemorial public shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour, helping ensure that citizens – rich and poor – adhere to them for the good of the greater community. For hundreds of years, the press has played a role in that process. It has the freedom to identify those who have offended public standards of decency – the very standards its readers believe in – and hold the transgressors up to public condemnation. If their readers don’t agree with the defence of such values, they would not buy those papers in such huge numbers.



This may as well be Dacre's justification for the witch-hunt against Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand. It doesn't matter that the Mail has its own individual view of what public standards of decency are, as long as people keep buying the papers that justifies support. This is abject nonsense - people buy the newspaper they do for numerous reasons, not just for its political or moral outlook. This is simply the fig-leaf which those who think they have a right to decide what's right and what's wrong cover themselves with.

Put another way, if mass-circulation newspapers, which, of course, also devote considerable space to reporting and analysis of public affairs, don’t have the freedom to write about scandal, I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulations with the obvious worrying implications for the democratic process.



This is nothing more than blackmail covered with eye-watering cynicism. The same person who goes on to lionise the press and how wonderful it is is here suggesting that the gutter press needs scandal to survive. Nice little free press you've got here, be a shame if something was to happen to it. The proles need scandal, whilst we provide them with the finest news coverage in the world at the same time. What isn't there to like?!

Now some revile a moralising media. Others, such as myself, believe it is the duty of the media to take an ethical stand.

Did Paul Dacre just claim to have ethics? No, seriously, Dacre's taking an ethical stand? If he ever genuinely did, the ethics would snap beneath him in an instant. Not satisfied with descending into parody, Dacre then further suggests just how completely mad he is:

Why does not half an hour go by that the high priests of the subsidariat, the BBC, can’t resist a snide reference to the popular press, again blissfully oblivious that all too often they are following agendas set by those very popular newspapers whose readers pay their salaries.

Yes Paul, the BBC is always sneering at the "popular press". Please, keep taking the medicine.

He warms to this further theme by attacking Flat Earth News and Nick Davies without so much as mentioning the name of either:

Again, blissfully oblivious to the need for self-criticism of their own papers – the sine qua non of such pages is, by and large, that the liberal media can do little wrong while the large-circulation press is invariably scurrilous, malign and beyond all salvation. 

There was, of course, that recent book that savaged the behaviour of virtually every national newspaper. The book, which began with a presumption of guilt, was itself a pretty sloppy piece of journalism, full of half-truths, anonymous sources, gossip and urban myths presented as facts, and the very selective reporting that it accused papers of employing. And heaven forbid that its author should have observed the basic journalistic nicety of checking those facts with the parties concerned.

Could it possibly be because the liberal media is that which is also the least complained about, the least likely to have to settle damages out of court, and the least likely to be taken to court, and when it is, it's also more likely to win, as the Guardian did twice during the 90s? The tabloid press meanwhile continues to show itself invariably up as it is, as during the Mosley trial: unaccountable, lazy, disreputable, and downright nasty. It would be nice also if Dacre bothered to bring up examples of just where Davies was wrong in Flat Earth News, although I suspect it's because the book dedicated a whole chapter to the Mail, whilst the Mail itself has mentioned it twice, and that was prior to actual publication, even while the "liberal" press which he so disdains discussed and argued about its findings at some length. Half of this is because the tabloid press presents itself as infallible; the broadsheet media does not.



Fair enough. Newspapers should be constantly criticised. If you dish it, you should take it with bells on. The problem, I would argue tonight, is that this unrelenting and corrosive drip, drip, drip of criticism of the press does huge harm to our standing in the eyes of the politicians, the regulators, the judges, the public and, most pertinently, I suspect, to newspaper sales.

 In good times, such a poisoning of the well is unhelpful, to say the least. Today, with large parts of our industry fighting to stay alive, it is damnably, unforgivably and depressingly damaging. 

I am not a Jeremiah. I passionately believe that Britain has the best newspapers in the world and – indeed, our papers today are as good as they’ve ever been. Nostalgia be damned.

Gosh, anyone feel deja vu after Hazel Blears' similar rave last week? It couldn't be that the tabloid press gets everything it deserves could it, when it demands accountability at the BBC over authorised comedy pranks and then no one resigns when dozens of stories about Robert Murat result in huge payouts? In Dacre's eyes though there's nothing wrong with it, and after all, who are we to argue? He's the Daily Mail in the flesh, and the Daily Mail can never be wrong.

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Friday, July 25, 2008 

Woman E breaks cover.

Somewhat astonishingly, Woman E of the Max Mosley case has come out of the shadows to give an interview. Even more astonishingly, she's given it to Sky News. Potentially sensational is the fact that not more than two weeks after she was meant to give evidence in court, an appearance which she apparently cancelled as a result of being "mentally and emotionally unfit" to do so, is that although she is tearful during the interview, she seems more than happy to be setting the record straight as she sees it.

It's perplexing that Sky has snatched up the interview for the obvious reason of the links between the satellite broadcaster and the News of the Screws, all ostensibly controlled by Murdoch himself. Even more mystifying is that she deals a further hammer blow to the News of the World's story, making clear that there was never going to be a Nazi theme, but rather a German theme, as the original emails and contact between Neville Thurlbeck and Woman E's husband made clear. It's very rare indeed that the Murdoch media potentially attacks or undermines another section of it, although it is not entirely unprecedented.

There can only be one reason as to why it's decided to do so in this instance - damage limitation. Michelle (as she is now being referred to) has an explosive story, and if she were to take it to the BBC, or God forbid, one of Murdoch's main tabloid rivals, they could have absolutely gone to town. As it is, Sky, rather than Michelle, is the one in control. This can be seen in the way that Sky has given the News of the World ample room to defend itself against Michelle's charges, and Kay Burley does grill her rather intensley on what the differences are between a German prison scenario and a Nazi one, although without landing a blow.

Even so, the News of the World must still be furious. Perhaps it could be said that they're only reaping what they've sown, in first offering Michelle £20,000 and then only paying her £12,000. What's clear is that they've used her just as much as many other of their targets have been. What it most certainly also does is ask questions about why Michelle did really decline to give evidence: she may well have been "mentally and emotionally unfit" then, but was it an eventual fit of conscience on her behalf also, or the Screws' continued failure to "take care of her", as it were?

It will also reopen the conspiracy theories, as also mentioned is the fact that Michelle's husband was an MI5 surveillance officer. Was his offering of the story to the News of the World not his first involvement with the paper? Did MI5 really not know about Michelle's double life, as she claims? Or was his resignation over the fact that with his cover blown, they were likely to investigative whether he had also previously approached the newspaper as a source?

To see just how strange Sky's decision to get the interview is, even if as a damage limitation exercise, you only have to look at today's Sun to see what Murdoch's own response is. The article on the ruling is hilariously biased, hardly mentioning any of Eady's findings but focusing almost solely on his comments on how Mosley did to an extent bring the troubles on himself, and Myler's own response to the ruling. The Sun dedicates its entire leader column to it also, claiming laughably that the ruling will affect the Sun reader's right to know. It also disengenuously repeats the lie that this is an EU law interfering in British affairs - the European Convention on Human Rights was drawn up far before the Common Market even existed, in 1950, and was voted into British law by the Commons in 1998. It hoightly demands the right to print what it thinks is in the public interest, not what a "lofty and privileged" judge thinks is. This of couse completely ignores the fact the Sun is signed up to the Press Complaints Commission code, which also states that the sort of investigation that the Screws used are only valid when the public interest is being served. If Mosley had gone through the PCC and not the law courts, he would probably still have reached the same result, going by the evidence, although that isn't certain.

Michelle's decision to go public now also completely opens her up to potentially huge retaliation by the Screws on the Sunday. She still might regret going public, and while we have learned little more than we did yesterday, it does suggest that the Murdoch press are running terrified of the consequences of a story that it must have believed would only be a nice little earner.

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Thursday, July 24, 2008 

Eady lays down the law.

Some, when hearing that the privacy suit brought by Max Mosley against the News of the Screws was to be heard in front of Mr Justice Eady, were confident in predicting that Mosley would be the victor, purely on the grounds that Eady has been one of the judges at the forefront of creating a privacy law through the precedents set by various rulings, especially since the introduction of the Human Rights Act, with its right to a private life having to be balanced against the right to freedom of expression. It's certainly true that his rulings involving Khalid bin Mahfouz are deeply worrying, concerning as they do information which has in no real sense even been published here, leading to the introduction in the United States of the Free Speech Protection Act, so angered they have been by Eady's rulings that have prevented legitimate investigations into Mahfouz's links to terrorist funding from being published.

Ratbiter (who may or may not be Nick Cohen, if anyone knows for certain please drop a comment in) in yesterday's Private Eye opened his piece by mocking Eady's supposed impartiality. However deserving of criticism Eady is for some of his other work, reading in full his judgement today (PDF) ought to show that he had no option other than to rule in Mosley's favour.

It's indisputable, going through, to come to any other conclusion than one which involves the News of the Screws being deeply in the wrong and that their defence was a complete shambles from the get go. When first contacted by Woman E's husband, the prostitute who filmed the S&M session for the Screws, there was absolutely no mention made of any Nazi connotations. Simply, the husband had a story about Max Mosley. Neville Thurlbeck, rang the husband back later in the day without ever making a recording or notes of his meetings with either Woman E or her husband, which is undoubtedly bad journalistic practice to begin with. Woman E's husband regaled Thurlbeck with how Mosley had been involved with his wife, who was a dominatrix, for the best part of year. All of this is recalled from paragraphs 148 onwards, but this one (152) is worth quoting in full:

Mr Thurlbeck asked Woman E’s husband when she would be likely to be attending another of the S and M parties and whether she would be prepared to wear a hidden camera. The original intention was to expose in the News of the World the Claimant’s interest in sado-masochism and his use of prostitutes and dominatrices. There had up to that point been no mention of a Nazi or concentration camp theme. The husband enquired whether there would be “something in it for us” and Mr Thurlbeck indicated that the News of the World would make sure he was paid. No discussion of actual amounts took place at that stage.

It was only afterwards, in a second call, that Thurlbeck claims that Woman E's husband told him there was to be a Nazi theme at the next session with Mosley and the four other women. Again, he didn't make any note or recording of this, but his statement to the court ran like this:

“[The husband] said that this was fascinating because [his wife] had told him that the Claimant had ordered a German theme, that there would be a German-speaking dominatrix at the sex party (in addition to [his wife]) and that the dominatrices had been asked to wear military uniform. [His wife] had been told all of this by a woman whose name was [Woman A] who [the husband] told me was the senior prostitute/dominatrix. From speaking to [the husband], it was apparent that it was [Woman A] (rather than [Woman E]) who liaised directly with the Claimant regarding his instructions for the sex parties. [Woman A] then arranged the parties and their themes."

As Eady later notes:

It is perhaps curious that, at this stage, when giving his account of what he had been told previously, Mr Thurlbeck should omit any reference to a “Nazi theme”. Again, it rather suggests that “German” may have simply been glossed into “Nazi”.

Furthermore:

I am prepared to accept that Mr Thurlbeck and Mr Myler, on what they had seen, thought there was a Nazi element – not least because that is what they wanted to believe. Indeed, they needed to believe this in order to forge the somewhat tenuous link between the Claimant and his father’s notorious activities more than half a century ago and, secondly, to construct an arguable public interest defence. ... The belief was not arrived at, however, by rational analysis of the material before them. Rather, it was a precipitate conclusion that was reached “in the round”, as Mr Thurlbeck put it. The countervailing factors, in particular the absence of any specifically Nazi indicia, were not considered.

When Mr Myler was taken at length through dozens of photographs, some of which he had seen prior to publication, he had to admit in the witness box that there were no Nazi indicia and he could, of course, point to nothing which would justify the suggestion of “mocking”
concentration camp victims. That conclusion could, and should, have been reached before publication. I consider that this willingness to believe in the Nazi element and the mocking of Holocaust victims was not based on enquiries or analysis consistent with “responsible journalism”.

While disregarding that there was a public interest argument in Mosley being exposed for variously, the allegations of criminality, i.e. that the level of the S&M was such that Mosley himself was being assaulted, dealt with from paragraph 110 onwards and "depravity and adultery", from 124 onwards. He does however agree that if there had been a Nazi theme then it would most certainly have been in the public interest for Mosley to be exposed, which he sets out in 122 and 123.

In case you missed the Screws' original publishings of the allegations against Mosley, they're summarised from paragraphs 26 onwards. In the Screws' hyperbolic style, they don't pull any punches whatsoever, describing Mosley as a "sex pervert", and in the next week's paper as a "vain deviant with no sense of truth or honour."

Eady's decision might have been different had Woman E given evidence. She however, for the supposed reason that she was "mentally and emotionally unfit" to do so, did not appear. Neither, as a result, did her husband, who just happened to work for MI5, from which he has since resigned. If she had, she may well have contradicted to a believable extent the evidence given by all the other dominatrices involved, as well as Mosley himself. As Roy Greenslade argues, Eady may well have been justified in halting the hearing there and then, such was the weakness of the case and the evidence given by the Screws' editor Colin Myler, and the reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. Instead, piece by piece, and devastatingly, Eady picks apart the idea that there was a Nazi theme, beginning from paragraph 44 onwards. Some choice parts are:

There was a suggestion that some of the women were wearing Nazi clothing, but Mr Thurlbeck himself ultimately recognised in a memo, after publication, that what was worn was simply “foreign uniform and ordinary blazer”. He had been addressing in the same email the rather incongruous possibility of a “Nazi blazer”. As the Claimant himself pointed out, if there had been a desire to create a Nazi scenario it would have been easy to obtain Nazi uniforms online or from a costumier. The uniform jacket worn by Woman E had been in her possession before either the 8 or 28 March gatherings were organised and had not been obtained specifically for that purpose. It was there to be seen in a photograph on her website which Mr Thurlbeck inspected.

In the first scenario, when the Claimant was playing a submissive role, he underwent a medical inspection and had his head searched for lice. Again, although the “medical” had certain unusual features, there is nothing specific to the Nazi period or to the concentration camps about these matters. Moreover, no German was spoken at this stage – not least because Woman B appeared later, in time only for the second scenario.

Mr Thurlbeck also relied upon the fact that the Claimant was “shaved”. Concentration camp inmates were also shaved. Yet, as Mr Price pointed out, they had their heads shaved. The Claimant, for reasons best known to himself, enjoyed having his bottom shaved – apparently for its own sake rather than because of any supposed Nazi connotation. He explained to me that while this service was being performed he was (no doubt unwisely) “shaking with laughter”. I naturally could not check from the DVD, as it was not his face that was on display.


The first scenario begins with the words “Welcome to Chelsea” and the Claimant uses
the nom de guerre “Tim Barnes”. One of the “guards” is referred to as “Officer Smith”. These factors lend no support to the Nazi role-play allegation; indeed, they would appear to be inconsistent with it. Moreover, the use of the word “facility” is neutral. It is after all an English and/or American word and has no especially Nazi connotations.

In the second scenario, the young women “victims” wore horizontally striped pyjamas. That may loosely suggest a prison uniform but, yet again, there is nothing to identify the clothing as of the Nazi era. Photographs were introduced by Mr Price, for what they were worth, to show that the uniforms worn in concentration camps tended to have vertical stripes. Pictures were also produced to show a group of people running in the recent London Marathon wearing “prison” costumes. These too had horizontal stripes; yet no-one would imagine that they were in any way making reference to concentration camps or “mocking” their victims (as the News of the
World alleged of the Claimant). I was also referred to the invoice for those particular costumes which were obtained for £11.91 each from a “joke” supplier. I did not find any of this evidence especially helpful, since what matters is the simple fact that prison uniforms worn for S and M role-play do not in themselves echo concentration camps or involve “mocking” the victims.

The use of German on 28 March, in the second scenario when the Claimant was playing a dominant role and Woman B was also present, was said to be largely to please Woman D rather than at the Claimant’s request. Odd though it may seem to many people, as does much fetishist behaviour, I see no reason to disbelieve Woman D’s explanation. In any event, she had been interviewed on a weblog at the end of February when she made exactly the same point. So it was plainly not made up for this litigation. In any case, it is clear that the Claimant threw himself into his role with considerable enthusiasm.


Although Mr Thurlbeck thought the use of German highly significant as one of the Nazi indicia, it is noteworthy that neither he nor anyone else thought it appropriate to obtain a translation before evaluating the material for publication. It contained a certain amount of explicit sexual language about what the Claimant and Woman B were planning to do to those women in the submissive role, but nothing specifically Nazi, and certainly nothing to do with concentration camps.

There was, of course, plenty of spanking, and references to “judicial” penalties, but the only passage which is relevant for this purpose relates to an occasion when one of the women was lying face down on the sofa while being given intermittent and rather lack-lustre strokes with a strap. There seems to be some sort of game involving rivalry between blondes and brunettes. At one point, the dark-haired woman lying on the sofa raises her head and cries out “Brunettes rule!” Within a moment or two, a voice from off-camera can be heard (accepted to be that of Woman A, who is indeed blonde) gasping out words to the effect “We are the Aryan race – blondes”.

Not surprisingly, this has been fixed upon by the Defendant as being a reference to
Nazi racial policies. It is said that the reference to “Aryans” cannot bear any other interpretation.

When asked about this, the Claimant said that he had no recollection of any such
remark being made and, indeed, that it was perfectly possible that his hearing aids would not have picked this up in all the excitement. This naturally invites a certain degree of scepticism, although there is no doubt that the Claimant is a little deaf (as emerged during the course of his evidence) and does wear hearing aids.

What is clear, however, is that the remark was unscripted and that it occurred amid a
good deal of shouts and squeals (of delight or otherwise). One had to listen to the tape several times to pick out exactly what was going on and indeed nobody had spotted “Brunettes rule!” until the middle of the trial. It is also clear that there was nothing spoken by the Claimant on this occasion which reflected Nazi terminology or attitudes. There is no reason to suppose that it was other than a spontaneous squeal by Woman A in medias res.

It is probably appropriate at this point to address another remark from time to time used by Woman B. She uses the term “Schwarze” when she is acting out a dominant role in relation to one or more submissive females. The suggestion was that she was pretending that they were black and racially abusing them. She explained, however, that in German the word is used to refer to a dark-haired woman (or brunette) – such as herself. She said “I am a Schwarze”. It had no racial connotations, so far as she was concerned. Although Mr Warby invites me to reject this, since the German word could also refer to a black person, I see no reason to disbelieve her. It seems more natural to interpret her remark in context as referring to the woman’s dark hair (which she had) rather than to dark skin (which she did not). Mr Warby also submitted that
the references by the two women to blondes and brunettes are not connected. Since they occurred within seconds of each other, I believe that is unrealistic. In any event, it could hardly be suggested that the blondes were accorded any more respectful treatment (as “Aryans”) than the brunettes. One of them is abused as a “dumb ass blonde” (in German) and the spanking is indiscriminate in this respect.

All of this is of a piece with how we know the News of the World operates. Truthfulness and accuracy coming second to huge splashes. Just in the last few months the paper has paid out damages to Cherie Blair, Katie Price and Peter Andre and Robert Murat, all for inaccurate or completely untrue stories. For years it's given not just house room but the front page on numerous occasions to Mazher Mahmood, who has now also on numerous occasions been exposed as being a fantasist, who uses entrapment to snare his victims before ruining their lives. His splashes on the Victoria Beckham kidnap plot were of his own imaginings, while the same was true of the so-called "red mercury" plot, in which all of those on trial were acquitted.

As for Neville Thurlbeck, as yesterday's Private Eye (1215) made clear, his history is less than spotless also, having tricked Colin Stagg, having promised him £20,000 if he took a "truth drug" which showed he had not carried out the killing of Rachel Nickell, or lied on oath or to the police. He passed with flying colours for the reason he was completely innocent - but the NoW seized on a minor discrepancy, splashed with "I LIED ABOUT RACHEL" and denied Stagg a penny. He also completely made up a story about a naturist B&B being a brothel, claiming that the wife of the couple who owned it had offered him a "full sex session with me and my husband for £75". In fact, he offered them £75 to have sex while he watched, and seeing an easy way to get some extra cash out of a spotty moron, they accepted. Thurlbeck claimed in the subsequent story that he had declined the offer, when in actuality, as the couple's security tapes showed, he had not only watched them, but masturbated while doing so.


It comes as little surprise then to learn that Thurlbeck attempted to blackmail two of the other women involved. As Eady writes:

In order to firm up the story, therefore, Mr Thurlbeck decided that he would like to publish an interview with at least one of the participants and, if possible, contributions from all of them.

In pursuit of this objective, therefore, he sent a number of emails. On 2 April he sent identical emails to Women A and B in these terms:


“I hope you are well. I am Neville Thurlbeck, the chief reporter at the News of the World, the journalist who wrote the story about Max Mosley’s party with you and your girls on Friday.

Please take a breath before you get angry with me!

I did ensure that all your faces were blocked out to spare you any grief.


And soon, the story will become history as life and the news agenda move on very quickly.


There is a substantial sum of money available to you or any of the girls in return for an exclusive interview with us. The interview can be done anonymously and you[r] face can be
blacked out too. So it’s pretty straight forward.

Shall we meet/talk?”


He became more insistent the following day:

“I’m just about to send you a series of pictures which will form the basis of our article this week. We want to reveal the identities of the girls involved in the orgy with Max as this is the only follow up we have to our story.

Our preferred story however, would be you speaking to us directly about your dealings with Max. And for that we would be extremely grateful. In return for this, we would grant you
full anonimity [sic], pixilate your faces on all photographs and secure a substantial sum of money for you.

This puts you firmly in the driving seat and allows you much greater control as well as preserving your anonimities [sic] (your names won’t be used or your pictures).

Please don’t hesitate to call me … or email me with any thoughts.


Regards and hope to do business.


Neville Thurlbeck, chief reporter, News of the World”


This would appear to contain a clear threat to the women involved that unless they cooperated with Mr Thurlbeck (albeit in exchange for some money) their identities would be revealed on the following Sunday. He was as good as his word and attached photographs and also some extracts from their websites. This was obviously to bring home to them the scale of the threatened exposé.

The threat was then reinforced the same day with a further email to Women A and B:

“Ok girls, here’s the offer. It’s 8,000 pounds for an interview with one of you, with no name, no id and pixilated face. And we pixilate all the pics I send through to you this morning.

BUT time is running out for us and if you want to come on board, you need to start the ball rolling now. Call me … if you want to.

Best, Neville”

Perhaps to their credit, the two women concerned resisted these blandishments and
thus risked the further exposure he had threatened.

This is a pure example of how the journalism practised not just by the News of the World, but by the entire Murdoch stable works. You might recall that last year the sex blogger Girl with a one track mind was threatened in almost the exact same fashion by the Sunday Times, that supposed august organ, stooping to the same level as the red-top tabloids to expose her actual identity.

It's therefore completely impossible to have any sympathy for the News of the World whatsoever. They created this story from the get go, not with any great public expose in mind, but with the pure intention of making money out of someone else's private life. There can't even really be any defence provided by the fact that the women were prostitutes, because again, as Eady notes:

Another argument thought up by the Defendant, or rather its legal team, was that the Claimant had been keeping a brothel. This would not bear close scrutiny and is certainly not consistent with the evidence. By the time of closing speeches, this line of argument had been abandoned. It seems clear from the authorities that for premises to fall within the definition of a brothel it is necessary to show that more than one man resorts to them for whatever sexual services are on offer. The only man enjoying the activities in this case was the Claimant himself. He paid for the flat and Woman A arranged parties there with various dominatrices for his (and apparently also their) enjoyment. This was not a service offered to men in general. He was the only one paying, although I was told that it was a standing joke among some of the regulars that they had so much fun that they ought to be paying “Mike”. There was never any question of a business being carried on there or the Claimant taking a cut of the proceeds.

As it happens, some of the women were rather reluctant to accept the description “prostitute”. (For the purposes of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, the term is defined by reference to providing “sexual services” in return for payment: s.51(2) of the Act.) Several of them offer a variety of services on their website (usually spanking or being spanked in various guises) but expressly warn that they do not offer specifically sexual services. They apparently made an exception in “Mike’s” case and threw in a bit of sex, as it were, as an “extra” between friends. Indeed, sometimes they were not paid at all. As they liked the premises and found the atmosphere relaxing and congenial, things developed from there, Indeed, although the Claimant’s sexual
activity as revealed in the DVD material did not seem to amount to very much, some of the women stayed on after the party was over and indulged in same sex action purely for their own entertainment.

Indeed, quite apart from Mosley paying the women, what seems to have united them against Woman E is both that they thoroughly enjoyed what they did with him, and also that she had broken one of the unwritten rules of the S&M scene in which they were part: that no one talks about it to potentially disapproving ears, and they certainly do not sell their stories. Woman E has apparently been ostracised from the community since as a result.

The last remaining fig leaf some will bring up is the moral issue itself. After all, Mosley was cheating on his wife, and she apparently, despite the potential slight injuries he might have suffered as a result, never had an inkling that he enjoyed being spanked and dominated. Does the exposing of it to his wife, while not justifying it any means by law, justify it in a moral sense? Some will obviously come to different conclusions on that. That his wife has apparently accepted it, and is also apparently supporting him though seems to suggest that even she might secretly be devastated, she is not to such an extent that she is thinking of leaving him.

The reality is that this has been coming for a long time. For far too long the tabloids in this country have been allowed to get away with blatant intrusions into others' privacy where there is absolutely no public interest whatsoever. Again today Sienna Miller is launching an action against the Sun and News of the World for publishing naked photographs of her, despite last year winning damages after they published, you guessed it, naked photographs of her during filming for a movie yet to be released, presumably on what was a closed set. The implication is obvious: that they simply don't care about the consequences when it potentially boosts sales as a result, or in the new digital world, leads to more one handed online clicks to their website. The Mosley case is just one particular new egregious example. No one thought the Screws was going to win, but everyone tomorrow and already online is screaming that this means the end of investigative journalism as we know it.

It's nonsense of course. These are the last wounded cries of a few select hacks and partisan publishers that know that at long last the great game may be coming to an end. This is half the reason why the tabloids so loathe the Human Rights Act: it's not because it's a criminals or terrorist's charter, it's because it has the potential to damage their business model once and for all. The facts are that they have brought it all upon themselves. Eady himself denies that this case sets a new precedent or is landmark in any way:

It is perhaps worth adding that there is nothing “landmark” about this decision. It is simply the application to rather unusual facts of recently developed but established principles. Nor can it seriously be suggested that the case is likely to inhibit serious investigative journalism into crime or wrongdoing, where the public interest is more genuinely engaged.

Sir Smacks Mosley may not have been the figure we would have liked to have triumphed over the Screws in such a way. It is nonetheless a completely warranted and welcome victory.

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