From the Facebook page of Anthony France
One of the more fatuous tenets of the judicial process is the rigid assertion that ignorance of the law is no defence.
We are not talking here about the human mind being unsure of the rights and wrongs of killing, stealing or jumping red traffic lights.
But among the judges summing up in the string of failed prosecutions of journalists for antiquated "misconduct in public office" offences, one did try to equate being unaware paying public officials was a crime with not knowing murder was a crime. Even he must have known the attempted moral equivalence was preposterous.
On Friday morning, Judge Timothy Pontius will sentence Anthony France, a former Sun crime reporter, for aiding a betting a police office to commit that 13th century offence of committing misconduct in public office, and France risks imprisonment. Yet even an appeal court judge has said of the law France is held to have breached: "An ancient common law offence is being used in circumstances where it has rarely before been applied.”
Pending the sentencing hearing, Judge Pontius granted bail to France - whom I have never met though trusted confreres describe him as a thoroughly decent man - but warned him: "I emphasise very firmly that the fact I'm releasing you on bail should not serve as any sort of indication of what the sentence will be."
It would be an outrage if France were not able to leave the Old Bailey a free man, and I hope the judge, who admittedly has a difficult task, will see that no proper cause or interest would otherwise be served.
Now I do not wish to begrudge the Crown Prosecution Service, Metropolitan Police or Hacked Off their moment of chest-puffing satisfaction, perhaps even glee, that at last a jury has been found that is willing to convict a journalist on such matters.
OK, there was one earlier conviction - after a summing up found by the Appeal Court to have misdirected the jury; it was promptly quashed - and one admission of guilt by a man whose role as a prosecution witness put him in a very special position.
In all other cases so far, juries have either risen bravely above grotesque prosecution rhetoric designed to secure convictions, and undoubted public disdain for the tabloid press, to acquit or at least fail to convict the journalists standing in the dock. A few cases are pending, giving the CPS and Met lingering hope that this astonishingly expensive process may yet inflict a few casualties in authority's war on journalism.
But if I am right in believing the starting point for any jury is anti-press - and that it was disgracefully prejudicial for a whole raft of similar trials to be arranged in quick succession, even to overlap - that is a significant rebuff for vengeful officialdom.
The amounts of time and money devoted to what are really quite insignificant matters, when we consider - as a minor example - all the burglaries that go unsolved and in many cases barely investigated, simply do not justify the ends.
Please read my lips once more. It was not the finest hour of British journalism when people started hacking phones. It is regrettable that, as has probably happened since newspapers first appeared, money has exchanged hands for information.
I never hacked anyone's telephone and nor do I approve of it being done. There are only exceptional circumstances when cash should properly be given - to anyone - for information. In half a century of journalism, I have never paid a public official or witnessed one being paid, though it used to be commonplace to meet police officers and various others in authority for off-the-record conversations, by and large useful or at least acceptable aspects of a free-ish society, and for the journalist to pick up the bill.
In this way developed trust between those with information and those seeking it on the public's behalf; I do not doubt that the line was crossed at times between what was in the public interest and merely of public interest, but it was infinitely preferable to the quick march now under way towards government and administration by authorised press release. That system of managed news will suit Leveson, Hacked Off and secretive officials and businesses and organisations everywhere; it will not suit genuine public interest.
The large amount of compensation ordered by the courts for those whose phones have been hacked seems to me the best remedy, even if I am mischievously reminded of the Matt cartoon about a hefty defamation award one December: "Dear Santa, Please may I be libelled for Christmas?"
I have repeatedly written that a corporate criminal prosecution, arising from hacking or the payment of officials, would also be a reasonable step, whether or not it ought to result in conviction.
What I bitterly oppose is the squalid, politically convenient pursuit of foot soldiers doing the bidding of the generals, top brass who then, to their everlasting shame, deserted their troops (not to mention what they did to the civvies, ie the confidential sources). The Crown counsel who tried to compare this with the failed Nuremberg defence deserves be drummed from the bar; I am delighted to say he lost his case.
Repeatedly, juries have refused to convict these employees for doing their jobs. But the law is the law, even when it resembles a lottery or an ass, and poor Anthony France stands convicted of this dredged-up offence.
What I ask Judge Pontius to apply is a sense of proportion. Anthony France is not a menace to the public. He has not profited from his supposed crime, save to have kept his job. He honestly believed he was acting with at least the tacit blessing of in-house lawyers.
Rupert Murdoch has said, and I have not seen it contradicted, that a former Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken (now Lord) MacDonald, told him the paying of officials for stories was common knowledge to the authorities. Briefly working as an adviser for News Corp, the ex-DPP said “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". Precisely.
It is not denied that the newspapers for which France and others worked urged readers to spill the beans with the promise that “we pay for your stories”. An excellent piece at Press Gazette - http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/one-reporter-faces-carrying-can-payments-public-officials-sun-if-thats-justice-then-im- - reminds us they still do.
Pity the poor hack who is simply sent out to get the resulting stories. We're told the CPS, smarting from its many failures, is now concentrating on the payment of police officers as something still worth trying to nail reporters for (since it won't go for their employing companies). The logic is that if France had happened to be The Sun's consumer affairs or health reporter, paying the officials he dealt with would have been OK, if only because juries wouldn't convict to justify the extravagant expense. Just his tough luck to be the crime man, whose point-of-contact officials were cops.
The whole saga reeks of rotten justice. I do not expect an Old Bailey judge to agree with me on that. I do expect him to exercise the restraint and compassion Anthony France clearly deserves.
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