COMMENT: Such stories are hardly in the public interest (From Worcester News)

COMMENT: Such stories are hardly in the public interest

8:00am Friday 10th July 2009 in

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ALLEGATIONS that one of Britain’s biggest-selling newspapers hacked into the mobile phones of thousands of celebrities and politicians are a damaging blow for journalism in this country.

Though the allegations are three years old they indicate that reporters on the News of the World used illegal means to gain confidential information as a matter of course.

Three years ago the Sunday newspaper’s royal editor Clive Goodman and a private investigator were arrested and jailed for hacking into the telephone messages of royal aides.

Andy Coulson, the paper’s editor at the time, resigned despite saying he had no knowledge of his reporter’s activities. And the News of the World carried out its own investigation, concluding that Goodman was a rogue employee and there was no evidence that other journalists were using similar illegal methods.

Now it is alleged that News Group, the paper’s owners, have paid out more than £1 million to settle cases that threatened to reveal evidence of its journalists’ involvement in telephone hacking.

There are some serious questions for Mr Coulson, now employed as the Conservative Party’s director of communications, and News Group to answer. If the allegations are true Mr Coulson was at best a pretty inept editor for not knowing how his reporters were getting their stories. At worst he was lying. Either way, David Cameron’s judgement in employing him must be brought into question.

Equally, News Group either carried out a shoddy internal investigation or the organisation was also lying.

Journalism is partly about uncovering information that those in power want kept secret. In rare cases, where there is a substantial public interest in doing so, shady methods may have to be used to uncover such information.

But details about the private lives of the likes of Nigella Lawson and Gwyneth Paltrow can hardly be described as being in the public interest.