His critics were able to show quite easily that he doesn’t understand how the law works in this country, and that personal attacks – his speciality – don’t work when it’s obvious that Parliament, and not simply Justice Eady, were behind the privacy legislation he attacked with such “corkscrew logic” (Polly Toynbee).
Max Mosley has now gone on the record twice about the case he won against the News of the World. He has a shrewd understanding of the possibilities offered by legal action, as his success in court showed. And his main point has been that if a newspaper thinks public interest is really involved, they can appeal against a lower court’s decision. Dacre wants to be able to investigate people’s private lives – he calls it “good journalism”, but everybody else calls it triviality and invasion of privacy. Eady is the “arrogant and amoral” judge who has facilitated this
.
Well, it’s not true. Listen to Mosley in the Guardian, 20 October:
To live in a society where the rules are made by the [tabloid] editors, I think, would horrify most people. Particularly as it’s very one-sided. They never hesitate, for example, to use completely illegal means to get information, such as bribing people with access to the police computer. So they can’t talk about morality, they are immoral themselves.
Exactly: and it was this that Dacre was defending, with more than a hint that his friend Gordon Brown had been spoken to, and had showed much sympathy for the press’s need to get hold of people’s “gas bills or medical records”. (Yes, Dacre said that.)
If Mosley’s remarks are enough to deal with the red-tops – and how useful his red bottom has been! – what about the more serious papers?
There’s a problem here, because Dacre wasn’t the first to complain about Eady’s judgement. First out were the liberal press, and it was upright figures like Peter Wilby (ex-New Statesman and Observer) and Donald Trelford (ex-Observer) who were complaining about the likely effect of Eady’s judgement on the ability of the serious press to conduct investigative journalism.
There is a difficult question to be asked here. What investigative journalism? The Sunday Times's Insight column is dead – has been dead for thirty years. David Leitch is dead. Phillip Knightley, once a fine reporter, is today reduced to making resentful-old-age (he’s 78) remarks about the probity of the great photographer Robert Capa. Today’s Sunday Times is committed to articles that make its readers anxious – part of its right-wing strategy – not to ones that make them exult over the revelation of financial wrong-doing or political chicanery.
When did David Leigh last have a scoop that mattered? Even nice David Hencke used to have good stories. What happened to the Guardian? Richard Norton-Taylor has good contacts, but there’s been nothing big recently. It’s a good “basic news” newspaper, not an investigating paper. The BBC does better in getting strong stories (don’t fail to give Andrew Gilligan credit for the David Kelly story, just because Gilligan has turned out to be a frightful person). The Times isn’t even trying, for obvious reasons. The Indy is mostly concerned with large-issue revelations, like Monsanto or some aspect of global warming. A lot of recent “exclusives” are of the “who cares” variety.
The bitter truth is that the heavy papers can’t afford investigative journalism any more. So there’s something disingenuous about their claims that investigative journalism is going to be impeded by Eady’s judgment .
The playwright David Hare remarked on Radio 4’s “Broadcasting House” back in January, when brought in to discuss the Sunday papers, that there was nothing in them. Presenter Paddy O’Connell was panicked– there has to be something in the papers, or we’re lost! Well, perhaps we are lost, because Hare was right. Skim through, and what do you find that really matters? Saturday’s papers will have picked up anything of interest from the previous week, as Peter Wilby has admitted. What you get in the Sundays is a bit more depth, and a whole lot of comment. But no real investigations.
So let’s hear less criticism of Mosley’s success from the liberal left until the liberal papers can get their act together.
What the red-tops do is made more difficult by Eady’s judgement, and that’s all to the good. Now let’s see if the liberal Sundays and dailies can come up with the necessary funds. With the Independent heading for financial difficulties, that’s not going to be easy.
Meanwhile, Max Mosley can have some satisfaction. His battered bottom has prevented a lot of unhappiness for a lot of people.
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