Save Me…… from the profession I once loved

A storm is brewing. The dark clouds of corruption, criminality and cover-up are growing day by day. It is a story of huge magnitude, a thriller that is sure to have seismic repercussions for years to come. The spotlight is focusing, and those with something to hide are deeply, deeply worried. It’s a story that the British tabloid media could splash on its front page week after week.

Except, this time, they are the ones who are at the centre of the shit storm.

Let me explain.

For 17 years, before moving to Spain, I worked both in and with newspapers, radio and television and gained a perspective of it from both sides of the fence – ten years as a journalist and seven years as a PR spokesman for a company with a very, very public face.

Since moving to Spain, I’ve taken a different direction. But the industry that I spent so many years in, still fascinates me. Which is why I have been so glued to the growing storm that has been engulfing the British tabloid media in recent months. It’s a storm which, in this writer’s humble opinion, is long, long overdue.

It’s complicated. But in a nutshell, in 2007 a reporter for the News of the World newspaper was jailed for illegally intercepting phone messages involving members of the British Royal family. He was portrayed at the time as a “rogue” reporter, a one-off who shamed the newspaper. But since then it has emerged that this was far from the truth. Arrests, sackings and resignations have followed at parent company News International. The News of the World – the biggest selling paper in the UK - has been shut down, a parliamentary inquiry, a public inquiry overseen by a judge and a police investigation are all ongoing. A spotlight has well and truly been turned on not just News International – which also owns The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times and which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which also owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal – but on the whole British tabloid media and its ethos. Bombshell after bombshell – the hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s mobile phone, illegal payments to police for information, the use of private detectives to follow Members of Parliament and others – has exploded into the public domain in recent months. And it is far from over.

It is the UK’s very own Watergate. The shit, as it were, has finally hit the fan.

So why should what I think be of any interest? Well, during my 10 years as a journalist, I briefly did shifts at News International and during my time in PR I dealt with all the tabloid media at both regional and national level. I found the tabloids to be aggressive, arrogant, fearless, bullying and not always that interested in getting the facts right.

That arrogance naturally seeped through to regional journalism, where, in the decade I was in it, there was a general attitude that somehow we were the crushers of corruption, the gladiators of truth, the juggernauts of morality and anyone who got in our way had something to hide.

But most of the time it was bullshit. Stories were often “flammed” up – written so that they were more exciting, bigger, better, than the reality really was. And all because we felt we had a right to, we had a duty to, a need to beat the opposition, to go one better. The more I saw of it, the more disillusioned I got with it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, regional dailies, where I spent the majority of my career, were not in the same league as the nationals when it came to “bigging up” stories. But the attitude was the same. We almost felt like we were untouchable.

I can say for a fact that when mistakes were made, the last thing the paper wanted to do was to offer an apology. Normally, a “right of reply” would be suggested first – this would be along the lines of “Do you want to write a letter and we’ll carry it in the letters’ page?”. I always thought this was a cheap get-out. Even if that wasn’t sufficient and an article was required to correct the facts, it wasn’t written as a correction, it was written as a “follow-up”, as though new information had just come to light. Again, it was bullshit. And all because the general attitude was that it was bad or weak to admit a mistake had been made. If a correction or apology was finally needed it was virtually never given the same prominence as the original offending story. More often than not it was tucked away far back in the paper in a corner.

I experienced the full force of the national tabloids when, after ten years, I took the job in public relations. It was for a very large company, which employed a lot of people and was never far from the headlines. I talk in past tense, but it’s still there, of course. I’ve just moved on to pastures new having spent seven years there.

The aggression, the arrogance, the spin, the ignoring of facts that didn’t fit a given agenda, were all regular fare when it came to some in the tabloid media. The irony was that PR was seen as something seedy by the journalists. But the fact was that those with the biggest agenda, the most aggressive spin, were the tabloids themselves.

And the thing I found hardest to accept - as my former boss would no doubt attest to - was that there was little point in challenging them. The feeling was that to do so would cause more trouble than it was worth. The beast was too big to battle.  

In recent weeks in the public inquiry, we’ve seen the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler talk about how they felt when the News of the World hacked into the voicemail of their daughter, giving them false hope she was still alive, and the parents of missing little girl Madeline McCann reveal their horror at the bullying and downright lies of several tabloids.

We’ve even seen some defend these actions – one former News of the World reporter told the inquiry “privacy is for peadoes” and said that he didn’t see anything wrong in hacking phones. What sort of scumbag is this man that he actually thinks like that? Is his sense of decency so warped that he doesn’t know right from wrong anymore?

It’s not as if people haven’t been complaining about this sort of thing for years. Of course they have. But it’s just that society has reluctantly accepted it as the sacrifice for a “free press”. Any voices of descent have been quickly stamped on by the bully boys of the tabloid press as a direct attack on freedom of expression. And people have been intimidated.

But in the quest for ever-increasing sales, ever more shocking headlines, the tabloids have long since crossed the line of morality, fairness, decency, compassion and, in many cases, legality.

I became a journalist because I wanted to expose the bad guys, to write about important things, things that mattered, things that people cared about. Somewhere along the line, the tabloids have lost perspective, they’ve forgotten what’s right and wrong, they’ve become morally bankrupt. They’ve forgotten how important the job of a journalist should be. Instead, they pump out truck-loads of “pap” – just look at the average tabloid to see how many stories are based on celebrities, TV shows and which sports star is shagging which glamour model – and they have been prepared to stomp over anybody just to get that bigger scoop.

There are still great papers and great journalists out there, uncovering corruption and wrong-doing. But the industry has been tainted – no, smeared more like – by the deeds of those under focus now.

I’ve gone from being a fervent supporter of a free and self-regulated press to someone who is now very much in favour of statutory – and strict - regulation of the press. But I fear the true journalists will lose out because of that.

I sincerely hope certain people end up behind bars when this is all finished. That’s exactly where they deserve to be. This industry has needed a serious clean-up for a long time. I´m glad it finally appears to be happening.