Image: Annie Mole* - London Underground Tube Diary
A few years ago, there was a minor fuss about speed cameras. Some police forces were sneakily camouflaging theirs, using green-coloured boxes to make them indistinguishable among the roadside trees so unsuspecting motorists could be trapped before they had a chance to see them.
If my memory is right, those forces were smartly instructed to revert to colours such as the grey that is otherwise commonplace. It sticks out, you see it, you slow down.
There was a hint of the British spirit of fair play at work here. We all know speeding is wrong, can and does kill, needs to be controlled.
But we don't really approve of policemen jumping out of the bush, even when - as here - taking inanimate electronic form. It may also have something to do with the widely held belief that while improving road safety is undoubtedly one of the motives at play in this cat-and-mouse game, revenue-building is certainly another.
No such restraints exist in France, incidentally, where it is accepted 1) that the speed cops will do their level best to hide, and catch as many drivers as they can and 2) that drivers who do spot them will flash their lights to warn oncoming traffic.
But it occurred to me that public outrage over the newspaper phonetapping scandal is fuelled by a similar outlook on what is and is not fair play.
It almost does not matter what wrongdoing a reporter using such methods happens to expose; it just seems below the belt to place secret bugs on other people's private conversations.
Broadsheet journalists, who have also resorted to phonetapping when investigating genuinely important matters, may look snootily down their noses at the tabloid hacks who merely wanted a bit of juicy gossip on celebrities. But my guess is that most people probably hold them in roughly equal opprobrium.
We rightly deplore the late François Mitterrand for having had, on some estimates, hundreds of people - enemies, real or imagined, but possibly also people who merely interested him - bugged in an operation directed from the Elysée Palace. And we try to be vigilant in imposing safeguards on the use by police of the interception of telecommunications, even though it is likely some serious crime would remain undetected or unpunished without it.
So we can hardly be surprised if journalists are criticised or pursued through the courts for phonetapping activities to yield information, whether the intention is disclosure in the public interests or just of interest to the public. The best defence for journalistic intrusion of this kind is that it occasionally uncovers real scandal; one of its most glaring weaknesses is that few would regard journalists as entitled to sit as judge and jury on the nature and extent of the alleged misconduct.
Murdoch's people, I read, have acknowledged that a number of reporters at the News of the World had people's phones tapped. A couple of its journalists have been arrested; a fund has been set aside to compensate aggrieved parties. It is said the practice extended to other popular papers. And we know broadsheets have been up to it too, one recent case being the bugging of Fifa officials to show instances of alleged corruption in the World Cup venue voting process.
In 43 years as a journalist, most of that time as a reporter, I have never even thought of causing someone's phone conversations to be secretly recorded. Nor has it ever occurred to me that a superior might instruct me to do so, so I can only say I sincerely hope and believe I would have resisted any such pressure had it appeared.
All forms of news media operate in uncertain territory, where their rights are ill-defined and, in many cases, inadequate to what I still see as an important tool of democracy.
There are some further restraints - for example in matters of privacy - that I would happily see introduced. And there are ways in which, in an ideal world, I would make it easier for journalists to report and comment without fear of draconian repercussions. But tapping phones? Just not my line.
* Annie Mole's London Undergound blog can be seen at this link. I have no idea of the provenance of the stories shown on the photographed page one of the News of the World so am not suggesting any connection with the use of phonetapping.
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