Michael Meacher MP

The most remarkable, and disturbing, aspect about the simultaneous release today of 92,000 internal records of US military actions in Afghanistan to the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times is how blind, complacent, negligent or sycophantic the US (and other Western) media have been over a 6-year period (Jan 2004-Dec 2009) in getting anywhere near the truth about the war in that country.   Or, putting it another way, how come the US establishment military and political have been able so comprehensively and for so long to conceal the truth?   That in itself, apart from the facts which are horrifying enough, deserves detailed investigation and a full-scale inquiry into news management in war situations.

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Vanessa Perroncell is a person I have never met and am very unlikely to.   But her story is surely the tipping point for action to bring a lawless, licentious and rampant press under control.   Freedom of the press is one thing, recklessly destroying lives without any regard for the facts is quite another.

After splitting up from the Premier League footballer Wayne Bridge, she allegedly had an affair with John Terry, the England captain.     Once a judge lifted an injunction banning revelation of Terry’s sex life, she was hounded mercilessly by a salacious press pack pouring out ever more fictitious gossip about her private life and prurient details about her family background.   #as she herself said, “They made out I,m some kind of prostitute.   That’s really what they’re saying.   And the stories are untrue.   The have gone mad”, adding (which is the crucial question) “who are they to do this?”

We urgently need effective regulation to curb a wanton and self-indulgent press which sees salacious insinuation as a commercial prize.   The utter ineffectiveness of the Press Complaints Commission is legendary.   Voluntary self-regulation has always been a failure, be it the banks, MPs, the police, the security services as well as the press.   Those with power always abuse it unless constrained by tight deterrent regulation.

Most obviously we need:

*  A right of reply, as already exists in several other countries, which would guarantee subject to a rapid tribunal ruling that the offended party was afforded the same amount of space on the same page within 3 days to mount a reply.

*  A privacy law, rather than at present a series of judge-made decisions protecting personal privacy in particular circumstances, which again as in other countries balances the right to privacy with a free press which can legitimately claim a public interest in publishing, subject to carefully prescribed criteria.

*  In the worst cases a legal right to impose on a grossly, or serially, offending newspaper a heavy deterrent fine and/or, as suggested recently by the Commons DCMS select committee, a legal right to stop publication of such a newspaper for a day or whatever period determined.

The Sun’s execrable bahaviour in exploiting for political purposes Jacqui Janes’ raw emotions over the death of her son in Afghanistan was true to form. This is the paper that fabricated an interview with the widow of a soldier killed in the Falklands for the same purpose. There is no human emotion which this paper would not stoop to manipulate in order to extract the dregs of political advantage by some twisted means. But that is, as we all know, par for the course with the Murdoch media. What is however remarkable is the obsequiousness accorded to Murdoch and his acolytes, whether by Blair, Brown and now Cameron, as though the Sun were a mighty political force in the land that could swing elections. It is nothing of the kind – if anything, the other way round. Murdoch only changes his political allegiances when the tide of opinion has already decisively swung. He is a follower, not a leader. So why are politicians so frightened of him? The media are in general enormously impressed with their own self-importance, and none more so than Murdoch, but the evidence simply does not bear out their own conceits.

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What with Al Megrahi, the Obama health care battle, ballooning budget deficits, Gary McKinnon, and the bankers’ stranglehold on the State, there’s so much to talk about. But it will now have to wait till 8 September when I return from holiday, refreshed and exasperated and eager for the fray.

Cleaning up Britain proceeds apace. First the bankers (though Alistair Darling’s feeble White Paper scarcely merits the title of a clean up – more a brush-down – see next blog on this site), then the MPs, and now the media, or rather the more seamy tabloid side of it. Today’s Guardian story is devastating, not only because it is so well documented and impeccably sourced, but because the political implications for the Murdoch press (the News of the World and the Sun) and for Cameron, who hired Andy Coulson the previous News of the World editor as his director of communications, are so serious. The evidence already indicates (1) Murdoch journalists hiring private investigators to illegally hack into the mobile phone messages of the Royal Family, Ministers and politicians, and sports and fashion celebrities, (2) the Metropolitan police failing to warn these public figures that their phones were being targeted, (3) the CPS failing to press charges against senior News Group executives, and (4) the Press Complaints Commission failing to find evidence of illegality though it is now exposed on a massive scale. A senior Met source revealed that private investigators used by News Group staff had hacked into ‘thousands’ of mobile phones. So what should now be done to clean up this Augean stable?

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Predictably attention has focused on the Digital Britain report’s proposal, not simply to extend existing broadband at 2Mb per second to everyone in the country by 2012 (at present 2 3/4 million homes, 11% 0f UK households, lack access to a connection at this speed), but also more controversially to levy a £6 a year broadband tax on every home and business with a phone line to raise £1.5 bn over 10 years to deliver by 2017 ‘final third’ next generation broadband, i.e. allowing consumers to download music in seconds and films in a minute. But this would mean the taxpayer is subsidisng private companies to extend their market access, but gets no return in the form of equity (unlike in the case of the banks). Nor is the content pumped down these broadband channels easily regulated. It amounts to an unrewarded transfer from citizens, including the poorest, to the big technology firms. That isn’t justified.

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Yesterday’s report, that the EU was demanding “clear consent” from internet users before their private data could be used to gather commercial information about their shopping habits, confirms yet again – almost every week – that secret surveillance has got completely out of hand in Britain. It appears that the UK-listed company Phorm has developed technology that allows internet service providers to track what their users are doing online – information that can then be sold to media companies and advertisers who can thus put more relevant advertisements on websites the users visit. This technology was recently tested on BT’s internet customers without their consent, which then provoked complaints from users and MEPs and, in the absence of any clampdown by the UK Government, triggered the EU intervention. Nor is this the first time that invasions of privacy have sparked resistance, which may finally generate the systematic law on privacy that is now so urgently needed.

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In all the kerfuffle over the gross lack of taste from Ross and Brand, one body has been invisible: the BBC Trust. What exactly is it for? For over a fortnight after the offending broadcast they have apparently not responded. Surely this is not simply a matter to be left to the Director General. It is widely agreed that if the BBC had reacted a lot faster, it would not have escalated into the major row it has now become. So where was the Trust when they were most needed?
It is all very well for the BBC to be promoting ‘edgy’ programmes in pursuit of wider metropolitan youth audiences, but this was predictably bound to raise sensitive questions about where to draw the line between comic send-ups and offensive breaches of taste. Even apart from the risqué role of Jonathan Ross as agent provocateur, the drift towards a more polarised and fragmented society in Britain readily prompted questions about how such developments could be reconciled with the BBC’s key public service broadcasting role. Where was the Trust in all this?
This episode raises again the important issue of the collapse of accountability in Britain today. The frameworks for supervision and holding account those responsible at high level are simply not working. This is not an isolated example. The exiting of top executives with huge pay-offs after dramatic failure, the shooting of Jean-Charles de Menezes at Stockwell, the repeated loss of vast amounts of sensitive personal data on lap-tops or CDs, the failure to carry out drains repairs at Pirbright which came within an ace of unleashing another disastrous foot and mouth outbreak, the torturing of Iraqi personnel in Basra, the winding up of the Serious Fraud Office inquiry into BAE, and the weakness of regulatory action in many spheres most notably in the lead-up to the current financial turmoil – all these recent cases illustrate in a whole variety of different ways the central point that those carrying the real responsibility have not been held to account.
One way to redress this would be for Parliamentary Select Committees to be much more proactive in exercising their prerogative to summon key top decision-makers, where appropriate, to appear before them in open session to explain and defend their policies and position where major public issues have arisen or seem likely to arise. Perhaps a start could be made with the BBC Trust and its chairman.