The FishTank

It’s not been a pretty week. Alleged political shows have been filled with more fake emotion than the average film awards ceremony, with faded celebrities – desperate to boost their public images – all adopting the same line in indignation and egocentric paranoia.
The story, of course, is the alleged bombshell of News of the World phone tapping. A practice which has surprised nobody exposed through a story which hasn’t been news since 2007. The Guardian and the BBC, along with an entourage of ‘oh, I remember her’ type celebrities are raking over the ashes in the hope of sparking a political funeral pyre for Andy Coulson and, through him, David Cameron. Why? You may ask. Although the reasons are various, underlying them is one word: desperation.
For the Guardian and the BBC the desperation is financial. Both organisations realise they stand to lose money under a Conservative Government: the BBC through David Cameron’s root and branch review of quangos, the Guardian through the announcement that its revenue stream of highly lucrative government job adverts will be going elsewhere. Scenting the loss of so much money, editors and overpaid political hacks alike are desperately blowing on the embers of the story in the vain hope of a spark. The BBC is aided in this by Andrew Neil, former Sunday Times editor, who presents two of the politics programmes making capital out of the subject. Neil, who has pretended scruples by pointing out his former attachment to the Murdoch press, appears to be attempting to settle old scores by taking a hatchet to his former employer. An employer from whom – if Wikipedia is to be believed – he departed under something of a cloud.
And if the motives of the journalists are suspect, those of the celebrities are even more dubious. The launch of a belated class-action suit against News International speaks of a financial opportunism that makes the MPs look positively humble. After all, there seems little doubt that the six figure settlement alleged to have been given a few years back is what has led to the goldrush now, and no doubt specialist solicitors are thinking about how much of that might come to them. The trouble, of course, is that big out of court settlements are only given when a newspaper wants to avoid fighting a case in which they are unsure of their facts and want to avoid the publicity. With the publicity already garnered and the celebrities clearly not aware of any damage up until this point, there’s very little for them to gain.
The two trundled out on Andrew Neil’s political shows are cases in point: Selina Scott, formerly a journalist herself, seemed to be somewhat confused about what the allegations were. Her attack on the News of the World for allegedly fabricating a story about her was all very well, but what’s it got to do with phone tapping? Why would the press pay someone to tap a phone and then make the story up anyway?
Vaness Feltz, meanwhile, played a case study in narcissim. There’s no evidence that her phone has been tapped, but she seems firmly convinced that the Press are so interested in her every move that they must have. After all, how would they have known when her daughter was in hospital that she would visit her? Quite. After all, it’s not as if the fact the child was in hospital would have been a tip-off. Or that the media could, just could, have been there ambulance chasing. Ego clearly plays a large part in all of this.
And that’s why public sympathy simply isn’t with the celebrities. The Daily Mash, running a satirical piece on the subject, made the point that the public don’t care how the press get their stories as long as they get them. It’s probably not entirely accurate, but when you have celebrities who have, when it suited them, courted press attention, possibly even revealed salacious details of their lives themselves, you can be forgiven for being less than sympathetic when it backfires. One has only to recall the farrago of the Douglas/Zeta-Jones wedding photographs to remember just how pathetic some of these people are.
All of which isn’t to condone the actions of the journalists involved. After all, when faced with someone who simply wishes to pursue a career in entertainment, why should they then be expected to spend every minute in the public eye? Why can’t their private lives be private? For most celebrities it is, of course: newsworthiness is not an automatic product of fame. Some play the papers for their own gain: for some it backfires, for others it provides little more than a brief period of popularity. There’s also the argument of the public’s right to know: public figures who preach standards they couldn’t possibly be practicing, or who expend vast amounts of effort trying to keep their expenses secret should not be surprised when the media start digging. Sometimes it is arguable that the media cannot get to the truth without breaking the law, particularly in instances where the police are involved.
It’s hard to legislate public interest, of course. There is a distinction between things that the public should know and things they merely wish to and it is unlikely this could ever be robustly enshrined in law. After all, would John Major’s affair with Edwina Currie really have mattered politically? Did David Blunkett’s pecadillos mean anything before he started bending the rules to please his partner?
What we can say is that the press should not be allowed to print lies or to use illegal methods to gather information on those with no government function. Some of this is already illegal, which is why the journalists in the News of the World scandal were tried and convicted. Measures to ensure newspapers can’t use big money to defend against libel suits and to ensure that retractions are given the same prominence as the original stories would go some way to redressing the rest of the balance.
And there it should end. Because, at the end of the day, this is a story several years old. The Guardian itself admits there is no new evidence in their story. That’s why the CPS won’t reopen the case, no matter how many innuendoes the BBC makes about miscarriages of justice. For journalists, politicians and celebrities to continue to pursue the matter, whether for financial or political gain is little more than rank hypocrisy. After all, what difference is there between pursuing a closed case with no new evidence and following a celebrity home after the interview has ended?