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I must be careful here, when commenting on the outcome of the case in which (1) a prison officer, (2) his girlfriend and (3) a journalist from the News of the World today faced sentence for offences arising from (1) selling stories to newspapers, (2) allowing her bank account to be used for payments and (3) for being the reporter who agreed the payments in two of many more cases.
At the Old Bailey, Judge Charles Wide jailed (1) for three-and-a-half years. This is 11 months longer than the sentence he considered appropriate in August for a man found guilty of possessing terrorist material and who admitted jumping bail. According to the report I saw, the man used YouTube to warn of a terrorist attack on the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Just in time for Christmas, he jailed (2), a mother-of-two, for an utterly pointless 13 weeks (Update: he said later he'd been misheard and that it was 30 weeks, which is not so pointless but could properly have been suspended). And he gave the reporter a six-month suspended sentence, accompanied by tagging and a long period of community service (150 hours). The woman jailed should have been shown similar mercy.
But then, I was not in court and therefore have not a full grasp of the facts.
Yet as Judge Wide did his Judge Jeffreys impersonation with (1), I could not help but wonder whether the reporter - identity known to me, but its publication is forbidden by court-imposed restrictions - had been spared jail only because an immediate custodial sentence would have seemed laughably unjust when set against acquittals on comparable facts.
Anyone who comes here regularly knows I do not support or defend tabloid excesses, or for that matter broadsheet, TV, radio or internet excesses. For all its flaws, and there were many, I have said I am prepared to live with Leveson or whatever regulatory system has evolved. I also believe, and have said so previously, that any profession or trade - judges included - subjected to Leveson-style scrutiny, with unlimited police and prosecution resources then thrown at suspected offenders, would yield a stream of civil or criminal cases, or at least public outrage.
Hacking was a vile practice but one best dealt with, in my view, by the generous civil redress that has followed, plus professional sanctions against the worst offenders.
The payment of officials is a trickier question, especially in a climate on which the Crown Prosecution Service decides what constitutes public interest (there is no statutory defence) and what does not. I do not trust them. The consequence, as we are seeing and as I have said, is that some defendants get a Ponting jury unwilling to convict and others do not.
For all the judges and lawyers may bleat about "different cases, different facts", it does not take the greatest of minds to see this as a lottery, a clear affront to natural justice.
And worst of all is the pursuit of foot soldiers, essentially people who went to work and did what was expected of them, at the behest of or to please more senior people and perhaps even with knowledge or go-ahead of in-house lawyers.
The judge told the reporter: "You claim to have been acting consciously in the public interest. I do not accept that but I do accept you were trying to satisfy your demanding boss in a fiercely competitive industry."
He also said that while only two articles arose from the information acquired, they were "intended to feed public loathing of Jon Venables". Now, Venables was one of the killers of the Liverpool toddler James Bulger. I have very liberal views on penal issues (in itself, I have no complaint with the unrelated Wide judgment referred to above). But there was an arguable public interest in the conditions, allegedly very agreeable, in which Venables was confined. But again, I do not know by what route the judge reached his dismissive view of the reporter's motives.
Maybe individual journalists acted as they did because they genuinely believed - sorry, Judge Wide - there to be public interest. Making the distinction is one heck of a challenge.
News International has aided and abetted this unseemly process by scouring its records to shop individual journalists, unconcerned by the consequent betrayal of confidential sources that all in media should resist whatever the cost.
Why did News International do that? Could it be that the company merely wishes to avoid a corporate criminal prosecution which, together with civil compensation, is really the way these matters ought to have been resolved?
As the sentences were handed down, there is likely to have been rejoicing among all those forces who loathe newspapers - Hacked Off, vengeful authority, internet trolls who post prejuducial comments on trials still before jury - as today's sentences were tweeted and reported. And perhaps a little regret when the reporter avoided jail.
I remain greatly relieved never to have worked for a tabloid. But on behalf of those that did, in murkier times that do call out to be replaced, I will end with a simple reminder of the climate in which they worked.
It's from Salut! and appeared in the piece I wrote after Nick Parker was cleared of a similar offence. I started by asserting that it was it was the absolute duty of Rupert Murdoch to assure Parker his job with the company was safe. I went on:
"Murdoch might even care to reflect on these words I wrote but did not publish as State vs Press intensified its pursuit of the foot soldiers:
One of the defence witnesses in every one of these cases should be the former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord MacDonald. Murdoch says his lordship, who briefly worked as an adviser for News Corp, had told him 'he knew that on Fleet Street there were payments made, and he decided not to go after it because it was all too petty – and too complicated'."
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