I am only doing my job and I know nothing

I have been able to watch some of the evidence given at the Leveson Inquiry, mostly by journalists. It struck me while watching then give their evidence just how focussed they are on getting their story in the papers to the exclusion of all else. Most of they use two defences to charges of shall I call it improper conduct. The first is that they were only doing their jobs and the second is that they knew nothing about the serious crimes that were committed.

These defences have a familiar ring; they have been used by scoundrels and worse throughout history.

The defence of “only doing my job” is no defence at all to improper conduct. If an employer requires an employee to do something that is illegal or grossly improper then the employee can and should refuse to do it. That is the law. This applies to all employees in whatever capacity they serve. For example if a soldier is asked to commit an act that would constitute a war crime, then the soldier must refuse to commit it; obeying orders is no defence. If a journalist is asked to invent something or to harass a person improperly then the journalist should refuse to do it.

I was astonished at how often journalists at Leveson claimed that they thought that they had the consent of a subject to publication of something belonging to that subject, but never sought to get the consent in writing. When the subject said “I never agreed” the journalist responds “but I thought you had agreed”. It is a convenient defence and one that I think is flawed.

The second defence of “I never knew anything” sounds odd coming from senior editors of large newspapers. It seems that editors take no ethical responsibility for the misdeeds of the journalists in their employ. Journalists may commit crimes and generally misbehave but editors and owners know nothing. They are the great ignorant people, these owners and editors. They do not know that the folk they employ get up to rascally conduct or behave unethically. They do not know when they sign off expense sheets that large payments to private investigators are being made or that police officials are being entertained at large expense. They not know.

We are rightly all concerned that the press should be free, but freedom of speech is the freedom to express ideas and facts and to make honest comment on facts and the ideas of others. This freedom is being expanded in some directions and restrained in other directions. For example is it very hard to express an idea that involves race and is at odds with the received wisdom on the issue of racial equality. In that case freedom of expression is restrained and another principle is held to be more important that freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech has been expanded in the field of politics. Journalists are no longer as deferential as they used to be with politicians (although a fair amount of brown nosing goes on) and journalists will occasionally robustly question politicians in newspapers or on the radio or television in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. This does not really inform us because the attention span of all media is relatively short and we end up reading or hearing a few sound bites.

Leveson has a hard job; clearly the press will continue to misbehave in pursuit of its stories, which it pursues not for any high ethical reasons but simply in the pursuit of wealth regardless of the cost in human misery that such pursuit brings.