Dog is not supposed to eat dog, and with Rupert Murdoch's News International there is the added element of fear
At the end of November 2009 an employment tribunal awarded massive damages ? nearly �800,000 ? against the News of the World over a "consistent pattern of bullying behaviour" under its former editor Andy Coulson. At the time of the ruling, Mr Coulson was running David Cameron's press relations and was within six months of walking through the front door of Downing Street. It was therefore an irresistible story ? up there with the misdeeds of Damian McBride, Alastair Campbell ? and even Malcolm Tucker. In fact, virtually every newspaper in the country ignored the judgment, originally reported in this paper. Apart from features in the Independent on Sunday and the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, the case was simply buried.
Why the silence? The most benign explanation is that dog is not supposed to eat dog ? the partially observed code that newspapers don't write about other newspapers. With Rupert Murdoch's News International there is the added element of fear. The company is simply too large and powerful to upset. Plus, as events now demonstrate, the posh bit of the company ? with its former prime ministers, bankers and editors on its boards, and its upmarket broadsheets and TV news ? also had a paramilitary wing which stood primed to use illegal means to snoop on, and bring down, anyone it chose.
We can now see evidence of how that fear of upsetting a media megapower spread far beyond rival newspapers. MPs have confessed that the Commons committee which had been probing the Coulson affair pulled its punches out of fear that MPs' own personal lives would be turned over. The chief executive of News International felt confident to refuse a formal request to appear before a Commons committee ? and the MPs meekly deferred. Former NoW staff would happily talk about what went on at the paper, but only if guaranteed anonymity. The Metropolitan police shied away from any sort of thorough investigation. And the industry's regulator, the Press Complaints Commission, approached the whole affair with a tenacity that made the three wise monkeys look positively intrusive. It is doubtful that anything short of an independent judicial review or an investigation by a different police force would truly get to the bottom of what's been going on.
All this makes a very large company like News Corp quite unlike any other major organisation, company or institution in public life. It has not hitherto been subject to any of the normal scrutiny ? from press, regulator, parliament or police ? that other businesses have to put up with. And this is where the phone-hacking story and News Corp's bid for BSkyB intersect. There are some ? and, for all we know, the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt may be among them ? who believe in their hearts that there are few such matters that can't be sorted out by competition law. But the press is not a normal market: it is distorted by the very exceptionalism of the power that newspapers wield. Hunt has quite needlessly given himself the task of negotiating undertakings directly with the Murdochs. He should read the words we publish today of one of the most respected Australian editors, sacked just over two years ago. He says of any undertakings offered to Hunt: "Such assurances should be taken with a grain of salt. Actually, a whole shaker of the stuff. News Corp is a company only interested in outcomes. It has no interest in process. And it will pretty much do or say whatever it takes to achieve its ends."
Some commentators have accused the rival papers opposing the BSkyB deal of self-interest. It would be pointless to deny a measure of concern about surviving the predatory attentions of one who would willingly see the New York Times or Melbourne Age die in order to boost near-monopolistic positions. But don't hold out hope that the Huddersfield Daily Examiner would hold him to much account thereafter.
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