Gibbgate and Phone Hacking: revelations about the state of Britain’s Media
I stand behind no-one in my hatred of the royal family and everything they stand for. The creepy Christmas advert of the Princess of Wales and her children volunteering at a baby bank was just seasonal propaganda. The whole lot of them need their heads chopped off. But I was cheering Harry on Friday after his court case against the Mirror Group, for which he received £140,000 in damages. The court proved what we already knew, that the industrial-scale phone-hacking was not confined to the Murdoch press but was standard practice across all of the red-tops.
The judge ruled that there was extensive phone hacking between 2006 and 2011. He also found that Piers Morgan, who was forced to resign from the Mirror in 2004, knew fine well about the phone hacking. Morgan – you might remember – denied on oath to the Leveson inquiry knowing anything about it. On Friday he was doubling-down and lashing out and claiming he knew nothing. If anyone is due a reckoning it is the odious Mr Morgan.
But the phone-hacking scandal is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of media corruption in Britain. The scale of illegal activity is mind-blowing. In the case of Chris Huhne, the former Lib Dem MP the News of the World spent thousands and thousands of pounds to hire private eyes to watch and tail the MP. As Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian describes “50 days of leg work—quietly tailing him, watching him, snooping on his partner, tailing her, eavesdropping on their conversations. And that’s all before the phone hacking.”
To get a sense of the scale of the crisis Huhne was eventually paid a six-figure in damages, on top of the £1.2bn in costs and damages which Murdoch Inc has already shelled out to victims of their illegal information gathering. While the victory must be sweet for the person formerly known as Prince (Harry) the sordid tale does speak to the fact that the tabloids and the wider media are regulated so badly in this country. Have you watched GB News?
Across at our own public broadcaster / state broadcaster (take your pick) things aren’t much better. Something called ‘Gibbgate’ broke out this week as revelations from Nadine Dorries’ book which claimed that Robbie Gibb (non-Exec Director of the BBC) attempted to influence the Govt so that it appointed Tory Lord Stephen Gilbert to be next Chairman of Ofcom were discussed in parliament.
Incoming BBC Chair, Samir Shah dodged questions from Welsh Labour MP by Kevin Brennan and John Nicholson MP about the whole affair and the naked and overt politicisation of the BBC. In an article in the New European (‘The real plot that’s hidden in Nadine Dorries’ potboiler’) Alan Rusbridger wrote:
“You’ll remember that Boris Johnson, on becoming prime minister, took a keen interest in who should run both the BBC and Ofcom, the supposedly independent regulator which oversees it. He wanted his old chum Charles (now Lord) Moore, to be in charge of the BBC. He then wanted Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, to run Ofcom.”
“Both choices eventually failed – but not before many well-qualified candidates had been deterred from applying.Quite why Johnson wanted “his” people in these crucial posts can only be guessed at. But we know he was no fan of the BBC. We know his friends in Fleet Street would dearly love to see it cut in size and influence. And we know several of his colleagues in the Conservative Party dearly wanted fledgling channels like GB News to succeed.”
“After Dacre pulled out of the running for Ofcom, having been found unappointable by the selection committee, the choice eventually came down to two Conservative peers, a Lord Gilbert (described by Dorries as a “party apparatchik”) and Lord (Michael) Grade, 79.”
What happened next was even weirder, and more disturbing. Nadine Dorries was approached by two ‘Downing Street aides’, Dougie Smith and Munira Mirza. Smith’s approach was described as “intimidating and bullying.” They wanted her to appoint Gilbert, not Grade. Then she was approached by Sir Robbie Gibb, Theresa Mays former spin doctor. His brother is a Tory MP, he’s a non-executive director of the BBC (and one of the original founders of GB News). This is the guy former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis called an “active agent of the Conservative party” who played a significant role in determining the nature of the corporation’s news output.
Here are the fifteen questions Rusbridger claims the BBC refuse to answer about the whole affair:
The politicisation of the BBC has never been more brutally exposed. The attempt to influence the regulator (pathetic as it is) lies completely exposed. In any decent world Robbie Gibb would be immediately sacked and Piers Morgan would be facing the consequences of his actions over the past two decades. Unfortunately it’s not a decent world and both the individuals will continue to fester and operate in the media swap they inhabit.
The state of the British media is shocking. It is a toxic influence on the whole of rotten edifice our politics and how people understand the world. This has been made clear as day this week. We had no doubts about the state of the tabloids, but now the political influence on the public broadcaster has been laid bear. The failure of any decent regulation is a disgrace and is the background to this whole charade. It’s a weird old world when you find yourself cheering Nadine Dorries and Prince Harry.
But if Harry is vilified and the whole thing reduced to some weird war between him and Piers Morgan, as if that is really an issue of any substance. Next up to appear in court after alleging unlawful information gathering by newspapers, including the owners of the Daily Mail is Baroness Lawrence, mother of Stephen. She will be less easy to vilify and ridicule and her testimony will bring in to sharp relief the issues at hand, not least the promulgation of racism for which the tabloids stand accused. Despite the lack of regulation, the doubling down, the obfuscation what we are seeing is the trashing of the press in real time.
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You don’t need to call for people’s heads to be chopped off to make the point. Frankly such hyperbolic comments only serve to undermine the very valid arguments you make about phone hacking and the media.
Och it was a wee joke!
I’m finding less and less understanding of irony and satire.
Context and nuance also Sandy.
On the evidence, the BBC is neither a public broadcaster nor a state broadcaster, but its upper management (apparently overwhelming cut from the same cloth) largely serve a section of the British ruling elite that overlaps the less deranged Conservatives (who realise they need it) and New Labour, but most strongly the Royalist-imperialist-militarist faction. Thus the BBC is a government broadcaster, a far more dangerous entity altogether, especially in the British sense of permanent government and Royal prerogative that bypasses democratic oversight norms. Such institutions have been packed by cronies of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair and their ilk ever since I studied politics.
I think your take is too negative but broadly correct. I would say the BBC is the broadcaster of the establishment and it is worth remembering that one of its actual remits has always been to disseminate to the people what the government of the day is saying and to some extent wants of us. This relationship has been there from the start, and of course we got mostly Tory UK governments due to FPTP. So it isn’t some creeping government control that is the issue (though needs to be monitored), if you see it that way, but the fact it has always been one of its jobs: it isn’t state broadcaster but it has a remit to ensure we know what the government wants. I think it a mistake though to think it is also what the ‘BBC’ wants, whatever that may even mean.
I find it very difficult to differentiate between establishment and state in UK today.
The establishment is still very much educated via the so called elite (expensive) public schools. A large number of Westminster politicians and media also come from this similar social background. These people then move around in the media (eg Piers Morgan) or Westminster (eg David Cameron) Westminster with no regard for previous performance or behaviour and indeed many now move between the two. It is perhaps no coincidence that media and politicians are usually the two most despised ‘professions’ in UK according to all polling. The Tory government from 2010 to current day exemplify this establishment and the mismanagement of last 13 years show how corrupt and inept this establishment is.
The Royal Family are the coat hanger the class system and establishment hang on. Although I would defer from capital punishment for even the most heinous of crimes or people (though Rupert Murdoch has really tested my moral resolve) we really need to sweep the monarchy and House of Lords away before any meaningful change will happen.
@Niemand, @John, there’s much I can agree with in your comments. I read Tom Mill’s The BBC: Myth of a Public Service, and I think if anything the author did not conclude strongly enough. There are no-go areas for the BBC in its flagship products (Peter Watkins’ The War Game is a well-known example but there are many more), and if anything the teeth have been drawn out of many kinds of programmes over recent years (notably in science fiction). If the BBC had to show a near-future world these days, it would raise the question of the breakup of the UK and Empire.
There will be more dissent and largely covert criticism further down and toward the margins in the BBC, but its paternalism remains even if occasionally masked. Along with Channel for its upper echelons are very elitist still, and the BBC admitted that its staff were all secretly vetted by (British security service) MI5 until comparatively recently, so these effects persist today.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43754737
BBC political reporting is largely based on the model of court politics, the politics of who, not what. I would say this is terribly damaging to the quality of political debate in the UK, which hardly ever rises to the level of systems critique in corporate media. I’ve just been reading Chapter 2 Wicked Liberty: the indigenous critique and the myth of progress, in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, where David Graeber and David Wengrow are discussing indigenous American views on French colonists, and according to the authors, the former were eloquent, polite and reasonable because their political system lacked coercion, whereas the latter lived in terror of their superiors and their behaviour was deceitful, bickering, envious, backstabbing… Something we should consider when even our European neighbours express horror and bemusement about the backward state of politics in the UK. Politics does not need to be conducted in this way.
If we consider the constitution of a Scottish broadcasting corporation after Independence, I would make (constructive) criticism of the government of the day a mandatory role, as would upholding the Constitution (not something that any British institution can easily do; royalism come second nature, though, with the BBC royally chartered), and experiment with democratic input in programming by licence payers perhaps with some kind of quota-voting system.
It is interesting to consider what a new non-commercial broadcaster, as in a new SBC after independence, would look like but I think the most crucial thing is how would it be funded? I assume we would not want it to be commercial, so that leaves, literally state funded (which would almost by default make it an actual state broadcaster, no matter the idea of a state-critical stance built in), a licence fee like the current BBC, sanctioned by the state (which would have to be enforced in one way or another), or some kind of voluntary subscription service.
All of these will come with strings attached – I don’t think it possible to have any truly neutral broadcaster as it will always be beholden to those paying i.e. the government of the day, the public and even if commercial, share-holders and advertisers. That doesn’t mean it is a hopeless conundrum but it does mean that expectations have to be realistic and I sometimes get the impression there is a utopian pie-in-the-sky attitude to the issue that imagines a fantasy broadcaster that is not only totally independent and objective but also pushes an agenda that is specific to certain groups but not others because that is just what happens to be the worldview of those arguing the point at the time.
NB I do agree with John about the blurring of the establishment and the state but they are still distinct and there will always be powerful vested interests no matter where they come from – it doesn’t need the monarchy and public schools to vanish for it to still exist and evolve in its own way. Increasingly I see the bigger problem is the whole capitalist paradigm.
@Niemand, yes, I don’t think a national Scottish broadcaster will be neutral or independent, but it should be a defender of the Constitution as agreed by the Scottish people, and have appropriate roles. For example, I would expect some declaration of equality in the Constitution to unfold as a duty on the broadcaster (that is perhaps unlikely to be the future term) to take a lead role in improving the accessibility of media.
The British quasi-constitutional arrangement makes it nigh impossible for the BBC to be such a defender of the constitution and serve the British public (and what about its other imperial territories?). The BBC has taken some steps towards improving accessibility, but also come under criticism for mumbled dialogue and roaring musical soundtracks in television dramas.
A national Scottish media corporation could be obliged to work internationally on best practice, such as developing a system of multichannel user-controlled audio (like they have in many games, like Minecraft), so voice tracks can be amplified and musical scores silenced for example, and user profiles saved.
This is how I see the political system cascading from the Constitution through civic organisations down to the individual; and in turn, the individual should have some say (collectively weighted) in what those organisations do.
I’m not sure if Bella has ever published an article on options for a ‘Scottish broadcasting corporation’ mandate/charter/constitution, but if not, perhaps we might expect one soon.
I failed to progress beyond the hatred and the wishful decapitaion in this opinion piece.
I mean, it was (very obviously) just a wee joke “Off with their heads” – you know!
I enjoyed the the hatred and the wishful decapitation in this opinion piece!
The ‘discovery’ of the corruption of the press and other MSM is not new, or recent. That corruption has been cooking for many years. Decades.
As with the widespread corruption (and – when if not that, then – complicity) of politicians and corporate heads, there has been a normalisation across this thing that masquerades as society.
To fix it is probably beyond the wit of humankind.
That’s very true Sandy – none of this is true – just more exposed and broken open?
Sandy – human nature is such that when a group of people get power there will be tendency to prioritise self interest and cronyism. The best way to combat and mitigate against this in any organisation is robust governance which is based upon firm principles, procedures and penalties for transgressors.
The establishment of this country primarily encompasses Westminster, the media, the financial sector and the royal family. Recent history has show severe shortfalls and criminal behaviour in all these sections of establishment and the severe lack of governance and consequences for wrongdoers.
I would contend that this lack of governance is rooted in the history of how these organisations came into being- ie in a time when only the rich and powerful (males) were allowed access to them. This had led any governance being introduced in response to a scandal often by the same section of society and being too little, too late. Real reform to benefit wider society has been limited to when more progressive governments have been in power (few and far between),
I would also contend that this had been enabled by the deep sense of deference embedded in UK (particularly English) society. The Royal Family and associated class system underpins this deference in a large section of the population.
John, human nature?
I agree that the behaviour you describe has been a key feature of human behaviour, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
On there other hand, I don’t see the will to have it changing any time soon…which does not augur well for human survival.
Regarding finding ways to enforce, such as legislation, etc, we can see pretty well already that the law can only apply, in the fulness of time, if people consent and want it to apply ie the same human behaviour as we think is not likely to support less punitive methods.
True Sandy plus history shows that when this type of behaviour becomes embedded within an organisation it becomes very difficult to eradicate.
Sandy – last comment – it also true that human behaviour can act to help the greater good rather than self. This often requires real leadership to be present to effect this positive behaviour but not always. I would contend that many people in this country acted for the greater good of others in society rather than self during recent pandemic in the absence of any real leadership (certainly from Westminster).
As someone who went on holiday to avoid the coronation and suggested Charles Windsor looked a prize joker in his outfit I too am not a fan of the royal family . However wanting their heads chopped off or hating them is not a positive way of getting your point across. I agree the sanctification of this most privileged family is utterly nauseating . The public purse drained while we keep this well off bunch in luxury is plain wrong….. especially when the charity and charities throughout the country are helping to make a Christmas of some sort for those who do not have the wherewithal to do so themselves. I would like to see not only Scotland independent but unencumbered by the Windsors and their ilk. I want to see them all paying more into this country which would be a fairer distribution of wealth. They and the likes of Michelle Mone and her rich husband pay back into the public purse every penny they have procured but do not deserve to have. We need to be cleverer than all of them and not debase our thoughts of finding our way to a better way of running things with ridiculous suggestions. I prefer the idea of putting Charles and Camilla and William and Kate with their three children on some council estate miles away from facilities and only universal credit to manage and see how long they last.
Hi Marybel – I didnt really want to chop their heads off. It’s a phrase “off with their heads”. You know, a wee joke?
Being of a rather literal disposition I read it differently. Maybe I am guilty of naivety. I just think we need to be very clever and careful in what we say and do. I think a revolution is due but I would want it to be a peaceful one. I think of the young man standing in front of the tanker in silent protest in China. I think of the rainbow of umbrellas in Hong Kong . Greenham Common and Faslane. These moments tried and failed perhaps but are not forgotten. I do not forget. I do however want huge change in the status quo. This is not going to come about with Keir Starmer and Labour . It is not going to be achieved by people arguing and disagreeing and petty squabbling but by a collective concerted effort of us all to achieve independence . We can then have those who have let us down and cheated us and continue to lie to us ………get their comeuppance.
What do you mean by “get their come-uppance”? The Guillotine perhaps?
Och. Send them to a housing scheme.
Ach, might as well cut their heids aff.
On the question of (British security service) MI5’s vetting of all BBC employees, while they may have been keen to block hires of people who professed belief in such dangerous stuff as “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, they did approve some very dodgy and some very wicked characters. Why? What is the shared culture of BBC management and MI5?
https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-mi5-is-helping-to-cover-up-sexual-abuse/
I suppose some of the answers will eventually come out in declassified papers, though how much will be forever redacted, lost, destroyed? The problem is that there is no institutional defender of the Constitution, because the British imperial quasi-constitution is nebulous, uncodified, crammed with ancient cruft and dubious convention/circumvention, and extremely secret (as goes with its royalist character of private government) in parts. Of course, this manifests in our national broadcaster being very voluble in some areas, and deathly silent in others.
Now, who else does MI5 vet?
It was called the Christmas Tree
@Editor, oh (or perhaps ho, very seasonal) I did not know that and had to check Wikipedia’s page on “Christmas tree” files, but I had read about MI5’s Red List.
https://www.declassifieduk.org/red-list-mi5s-culture-war/