Be Careful What You Wish For...

Hello again old friends, it's been a while, what with silly season kicking in, riots in London, no money in any of our bank accounts.

Still, the bitter winter is coming and that always enlivens a newsroom.

Anyway, I thought I'd return with a new tone of blog - a bitter and cynical rant. There, I knew that would surprise you.

The Guardian. Yes, I've mentioned it.

Set to scoop all awards this year for the paper's phone-hacking coverage, the whole sorry business still raises some questions for me.

In recent days, we've had story after story - certainly online, which seems to be their tactic these days - regarding the Met's attempts to garner sources from the paper.

Now, while I naturally don't agree with any journalist being forced to reveal their sources, the saga does raise some questions for me.

The Guardian is, quite rightly, outraged by this move and is standing firm against the attempts, legal or otherwise.

But something doesn't sit right with me.

After the shocking phone-hacking scandal and the investigations, inquiries and debate that will continue as it all goes on, doesn't the world's most worthy paper think that just this sort of thing could be the outcome?

Is the Guardian really naive enough to think that there will be no legislation after these inquiries and the resultant reports?

Could something enabling public bodies to demand sources really be that far from thinking in the corridors of power?

The Guardian would argue, of course, that what they have done is in the public interest, something which should be protected from any possible legislation.

But I'm not so sure that this will be as clear cut as they - or the likes of the Hacked Off campaign - think.

I hope I'm wrong, of course, but in urging full disclosure, and by going after those at the NoTW with such vigour an being so keen to condemn their tactics, the Guardian and those hanging on their shirt tails need to be careful what they wish for.

Don't forget, you can follow me on Twitter - @haplesshack - or email at thehaplesshack@gmail.com

I'm determined to have another moan today so look out for that if you're inclined to be as miserable as I am.

An allegation too far for the News Of The World?

A while ago, I wrote a piece on how newspapers should be very careful when judging the News of the World as more and more details of the alleged phone-hacking scandal emerged.

I argued then that many newspapers should be wary of the heat given to the News of the Screws as it would inevitably come back to haunt them - and the industry as a whole.

I stand by that, to an extent.

Yet, the latest allegations - that reporters/private detectives hacked the phone of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler before we discovered the horrific truth of her disappearance - do put something of a new light on things.

While never excusing the use of phone hacking, if indeed it was a common tactic for harvesting stories, I defended the needs of reporters under extreme pressure to produce exclusives and stated that many of us would use any means necessary to get the exclusive yarn.

But this does indeed feel like a step too far.

This is not using the tactic to find out if Jude Law is back together with Sienna Miller.

No, this allegation does not simply centre on listening in on messages, but claims messages were deleted once the missing girl's mailbox was full.

This is a whole new ball game, for everyone.

Not only could it have caused the police and her family problems, indeed may well have done, it also suggests a deeper heartlessness which many would have subconsciously ignored when reading of previous allegations and cases.

This story has now entered the world which the NoTW itself loves to harvest - that of the human interest story.

The News of the World itself ran an exclusive interview with the Dowler parents shortly after their daughter disappeared.

Now, it is alleged that they themselves had some hand in what those traumatised parents spoke of, what they thought, what they believed.

Journalists, if we could ever call them that, on the red tops may well have committed the ultimate act of suicide, launched the bullet with their name on it into their own foot, by crossing a line so cherished by their readers and which forms the basis of their own content.

The same self-righteous readers championing NoTW campaigns and shedding tears over interviews like that with the Dowlers, may well now turn on the paper that likes to think of itself as their voice.

The housewives and white van men who take so much comfort in bemoaning the actions of celebrities and the apparent idiocy of councils/the EU/the government highlighted by the NoTW week in, week out, may no longer hide behind the seemingly harmless world of 'well, you can't believe what you read in the papers anyway'.

No, now there is something they simply won't ignore. The News of the World has become the story, exactly the wrong type of story for them because they are now the aggressor against a traumatised family going through the kind of hell they milk every Sunday for sales.

The Milly Dowler allegations take this whole sorry saga to a new level, a level so base that not even the NoTW can ignore it, though they will doubtless hide behind another cloak of denial and shameless misinformation on what went on.

Other papers too must now brace themselves for the fallout, as I predict this won't be the last scandal to emerge from the murky underworld that has become national newspaper journalism.

And while I once warned of the consequences of such a collapse, I now rather welcome the possible demise of the tabloids (and possibly broadsheets) as we know them.

For while these people are spending thousands on private detectives and solicitors to fight battles they really have no right to wage, there are thousands of hard working reporters in the world who have no such resources to call on, no such tactics to use, who walk in to newsrooms up and down the country every day unconvinced they will walk out with a job.

The meek shall inherit the earth, and please, let it be those still working with some sort of integrity.

Great empires such as News International do fall, history tells us so, yet the world keeps turning.

Hopefully, painful though it will be for anyone linked with any newspaper, this could ultimately send it in the right direction.