Phone hacking was “rife” and reached an “industrial scale” at the Daily and Sunday Mirror and at the Sunday People from 1999 until 2009.
If you read the Guardian, this will not be a surprise. It was carried prominently on this website yesterday and it is the page 1 lead in today’s print edition. The story was given major billing on the TV and radio bulletins of the BBC, and on Sky News.
It got a full page in the Independent (page 11). Although the Financial Times carried nothing I could find in print, it did run a full report online.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sun took the opportunity to show that its rival had been guilty of unethical and illegal behaviour, so it ran the story as a page 6 lead with a big headline: “Mirror hackers”.
But how did the rest of the press treat a story of such significance? Here’s the run-down: Daily Telegraph, four paragraphs at foot of page 2; the Times, 12 pars, page 6 lead item; Daily Mail, eight pars at the foot of page 29; Daily Express, no mention; Daily Star, no mention; Daily Mirror, three pars, top of page 2; i, page 11 lead; Metro, page 2 lead.
The poor coverage in the majority of newspapers echoes the lack of interest originally shown by editors when the Guardian started to run articles about phone hacking at the News of the World prior to 2009.
I know some editors misguidedly (and self-interestedly) believe readers aren’t interested in media stories. I imagine some editors may be worried about the possibility of their own staff having been responsible for hacking.
Furthermore, some editors think all negative media stories plant the seeds of public distrust in their own credibility. By ignoring such stories, they seem to think people won’t notice them despite TV and online coverage.
None of these reasons for failing to cover the story properly are valid. Phone hacking was an illicit method of news-gathering. It invaded the targets’ privacy.
When you see the list of victims, it is obvious that reporters who intercepted voicemail messages were not seeking public interest stories.
From the moment the hacking drama became public knowledge in August 2006, there were allegations that it had not been confined to the News of the World.
The fact that it happened at the three Mirror group newspapers and involved, as we shall soon see, several members of staff, is a major development.
I am sympathetic to the plight of the current Trinity Mirror managers and editors in dealing with the fall-out from activities in which they were not involved, but covering it up is not editorially defensible.
Too many publishers, editors and journalists still don’t seem to get it. Hacking into people’s phones to obtain intimate gossip was wrong and they should be covering the story appropriately.
The public are more likely to trust them for having the guts to highlight journalism’s “dark arts”.