Phone hacking scandal taps into the political world

It emerged this week that The News of the World had allegedly been tapping celebrities, politicians and public officials' phones.

The reaction of the UK media (generally) was one of shock, with John Prescott appearing on almost every TV channel and radio station, clearly outgraged that someone may have read his texts. It baffles me that Prescott always has to shout when he is speaking into a microphone.

Of course it is not a good thought that newspapers have been conducting surveillance on people but to many within the industry, this news will not have come as a complete surprise.

Murky practices

The paparazzi and tabloid journalists always seem to know where celebrities will be, that is how the magazine Heat survives. Just think, without Heat we would not know what Cheryl Cole looks like without make-up! Dark days indeed.

It could be suggested that the reason they know the whereabouts of celebrities, is because they have intercepted their calls. But wait, all journalists have complete integrity don't they?

As an aspiring journalist myself, I believe that most do but there are bound to be a few rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel and it is these apples that often get the juiciest stories. So the temptation to play fast and loose with ethics must be tempting.

Political

This 'scandal' also has a political side to it. The Guardian is a left leaning newspaper that would presumably not want the Conservatives to be elected. Andy Coulson, David Cameron's director of Communications, is the former News of the World editor who resigned following the jailing of one of his journalists for phone hacking.

It could be suggested that The Guardian is trying to damage Cameron's reputation by painting Coulson as a man with no morals. The paper would probably answer this, by saying that the story is in the public interest and Coulson needs to be made an example of.

The problem at the moment is that there appears to be no hard evidence linking the former editor with the hacking. If this evidence does come out then expect Cameron to fire Coulson pretty quickly, but until then it looks like his job is safe.

McBride comparison

The reason Cameron is loathed to get rid of Coulson, is because he is extremely good at his job. However, with an election less than a year away the Tories will not want their well cultivated public image to be damaged, so even a hint of something fishy could see Coulson face the axe.

On the Labour side MPs have been trying to compare Coulson with 'Mr. nasty', Damien McBride (http://wilson-whatsitallabout.blogspot.com/2009/04/damian-mcbride-gives-gordon-brown.html) who lost his government job after trying to smear top Conservatives via an email campaign.

At the moment though Coulson does not quite measure up to McBride. In McBride's case the evidence of wrong-doing was produced and he swiftly resigned. It is understandable for Labour to play this card, but it is not as yet a particularly strong argument.

Identification

Another strand to this saga is the decision so far by The Guardian not to identify the journalists involved in the hacking. MPs will find this hard to take, particularly as the newspapers had no quarms about identifying MPs who allegedly fiddled their expenses.

If the newspaper has names then there is no reason not to publish them. If journalists are hacking phones then arguably, they deserve to be exposed by the press.

It will be interesting to see whether celeberity scandals feature less in newspapers over the coming weeks.

Damian McBride gives Gordon Brown a headache

The news broke on Saturday, that one of Gordon Brown's closest aides had been sending vicious emails meant to 'smear' top Conservative figures. Shock, outrage, despair!

Of course though, one may say that these kinds of dirty tricks are nothing new in politics and that we should all move on and talk about something far more serious such as the worsening economy.

However, the fact that the Prime Minister allowed such an individual to work so closely with him is surely a worry. In these emails, McBride allegedly attacked the mental health of George Osborne's wife, which is surely below the belt.

There is indeed no room for this kind of 'smear' in politics but the Tories should be careful not to take too high a moral line when criticising McBride's actions. This may just come back to haunt them.

During the continued row on expenses both parties have resisted talking about allegations in the house of commons in too much detail, both in the knowledge that they probably have more skeletons lurking in the closet.

With someone like Peter Mandelson around, the Tories should be very weary indeed of appearing to openly attack Brown's government too veraciously.

Oleg Deripaska is a name that should be remembered, especially by Osborne. In this case Osborne tried to smear Mandelson but not surprisingly the shadow Chancellor came out worse.

Both parties of course have their failings but the Damian McBride issue is not really party political. Does it for example, highlight a worrying culture at the heart of government, where smearing has become acceptable, no matter what the truth acually is?

Certainly it is worrying that Gordon Brown kept McBride so close, but does this paint Brown as a bad judge of character or merely ignorant? Neither of these assumptions are probably true so why was McBride able to do what he did?

The answer may be that McBride did what he did, because he thought his boss wanted him to do it. This is worrying, because if true it suggests that Brown promoted a culture of 'smear' against his opponents.

This is perhaps too cynical and Brown if nothing else does at least appear to be a sincere politician. It was then to many people's astonishment that he refused to personally apologise for the emails.

True, the PM did not send the emails himself so he is not personally responsible, but in most organisations the buck stops with the man at the top and this issue could have had a line drawn under it far earlier had Brown apologised immediately.

Brown did send hand written letters to all of the top tories who had been smeared, expressing his "deep regret" but the word sorry was not included. This is no real surprise but a small sorry could perhaps have eased the pressure on number 10.

So here we are on Wednesday and the story is still in the news. Who knows, maybe it will distract people from their economic woes and they will go out and spend some money.

Every cloud.....