It is no secret that I believe authority to be in a state of war with the press. The conviction of Andy Coulson for conspiracy to hack mobile phones will give it a slice of flesh, but not remotely enough to justify the extravagant amounts of public funds and resources invested in securing a few scalps ...
Reporters who regularly cover court cases know that while it is respectable to disagree privately with a jury's verdict, it is wrong and potentially very libellous indeed to question, loudly, that verdict if it happens to be Not Guilty.
The least of the concerns of Rebekah Brooks, cleared of all phone-hacking, bribery and perversion of the course of justice charges against her at the Old Bailey, will be that Twitter trolls, and even quite sensible people at Facebook, have been questioning and challenging, indeed trashing, the verdicts in her favour.
In my eyes, that makes those responsible for the tweets guilty of worse than anything levelled at Andy Coulson, convicted of conspiracy to hack phones.
I respect the jury's verdicts, clearly reached after painstaking examination of all the evidence, both for and against fellow-journalists and, in two cases, people who work with journalists. Is it too much to ask that people who take it upon themselves to pontificate in no more than 140 characters at Twitter do the same? Clearly it is.
First, let me say this was the biggest sledgehammer imaginable to crack a rotten nut. I have seen a figure of £30m as representing what Scotland Yard spent investigating this case. That presumably takes no account of what it cost to stage the lavish Leveson inquiry, which created the necessary climate of outrage and even hysteria for the witchhunts that followed, or of the resources deployed to pursue various others awaiting trial or still, after grotesque periods on bail, awaiting news of whether they, too, face prosecution.
Authority has declared war on the press, especially the economically bedridden printed press, and has its very limited taste of first blood. And I, bizarrely, find myself defending people with whom I have little in common beyond a shared trade.
I do not think I would have liked to work with Rebekah Brooks. I do not much care for the papers she worked for, edited and eventually ran and, in one case, closed as its boss. I believe the Murdoch organisation's Management and Standards Committee to have been an odious body intent on ignoring cherished principles on the protection of sources in its quest for useful scapegoats some way below, say, the Murdochs for what was a corporate scandal.
But I am delighted that a jury has at least found the strength to resist a disreputable attempt to punish journalists, even very senior ones, for a system in which the pursuing forces of authority once cheerfully colluded.
And I am pleased beyond belief that the despicable pursuit of Brooks's PA, Cheryl Carter, failed. For reasons any fool could work out without even looking into the detail, the decision to haul her before the criminal courts will not be remembered as the CPS's noblest moment.
I shall have more to say. This, from an exchange at Facebook, captures the essence of my immediate thoughts:
Facebook friend (musician):
So let me get this right. You report straightforward news but aren't a pal of the president and get 7 years. You run an organisation that makes stuff up and spins and cheats and are a friend of the PM and you have a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Is that right?Reply 1:
Yep.
Reply 2:
That sums it up precisely - oh plus she had red hair and knows how many beans make five.
Me
I know I am the token media hack here. I may be a non-hacking, non-bribing one though that's no excuse. But I will resist the trashing of my trade to my dying day. Going behind a jury's NG verdict, as we see here and among the Twitter trolls, is much worse in my eyes than anything Coulson is alleged to have done and anything Brooks is cleared of having done. I realise lots of my fellow folkies would have had everyone, including the poor secretary, strung up. Throw a Leveson and £30m of police/prosecuting money at investigating any sector of society - journalists, bankers, accountants, lawyers, social workers, plumbers, judges, IT wizards, fishmongers et al - and you'll get yourself a criminal conviction or two. Oh, and I'm sure from all I've seen that I wouldn't have much liked her had I found myself in her professional company
Facebook friend:
I hear what you're saying, Colin, but your fellow tradespersons have done a pretty good job on reporting the evidence from both sides as it came up in court, just as they did with e.g. Nigella v the Grillos or the Max Clifford case. I think we're entitled to draw our own conclusions from what your team reported.
Reply 3:
.
Sometime NG is just too hard to believe. Just like guilty is all too often a stitch up
Me:
Big difference in law, Reply 3. In my full-time working life, I challenged as a journalist - even though employed by a right wing paper, the DT - several convictions/vindictive sentences/appeal failures etc. Trying to second-guess a jury's NG verdict is actually defamatory. Not just because they heard all the evidence and you didn't, but because the presumption of innocence has been upheld on verdict. You are calling someone guilty when they have been found to be innocent. You can, however, comment safely on of common ground which you find to the detriment of the acquitted person. A retrospective Witch of Salem trial by Twitter and Facebook, by people who despise the tabloids (and, in many cases, the whole of the printed press) is legally dangerous territory. I make no defence of activities I have never been asked to undertake and would have resisted, perhaps with some choice language, if asked. But by far most of the damage done is, in fact, adequately covered by civil redress as the enhanced bank accounts of several luvvies would bear witness
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