the same day’s paper also carried a report...
TRANSCRIPT
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The State Journalism is in: Edward Snowden and the British Press.
Julian Petley
Abstract
This article examines the reactions on the part of the government and much of the British
national press to Edward Snowden’s revelations in the Guardian about massive surveillance
by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the National Security Agency
(NSA). It argues that the revelations were politically embarrassing as opposed to damaging to
national security, and that although the government could be expected to adopt a hostile
attitude to the Guardian, it might appear strange that papers such as the Sun, Mail and
Telegraph did likewise, effectively backing calls for the paper to be prosecuted. However,
such a stance is surprising only if one regards such papers as conforming to a ‘Fourth Estate’
model of journalism, and the article argues that they, along with most of the rest of the British
national press, are actually a key part of the Establishment rather than a watchdog over it. It is
therefore entirely unsurprising that when the government and the security services declare
that a particular example of journalistic activity endangers ‘national security’ or damages the
‘national interest’, most newspapers accept this judgement without demur, and act
accordingly.
Key Words
Snowden; Guardian; Rusbridger; national security; GCHQ.
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‘There’s no Need to Write Any More’
In June 2013 Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger was contacted by someone whom he
describes as ‘a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime
minister’. There followed two meetings in which the official demanded the return or
destruction of all the National Security Agency (NSA) material leaked by Edward Snowden
on which the paper was working. According to Rusbridger: ‘The tone was steely, if cordial,
but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far
more draconian approach’. The following month he received a phone call from the ‘centre of
government’ telling him: ‘You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back’. Other
meetings followed with shadowy Whitehall figures, in which the same demand was repeated.
At one of these, Rusbridger was told: ‘You've had your debate. There's no need to write any
more’. This is chilling enough, but even more so is revelation that:
During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to
close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force
the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in
the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention.
Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the
table in the UK.
And so it was that on Saturday 20 July, in a deserted basement of the paper’s offices, a senior
editor and a Guardian computer expert smashed up the hard drives and memory chips on
which the encrypted files leaked by Snowden had been stored. They were watched by
technicians from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who took notes and
photographs, but who left empty-handed, one of them joking that ‘we can call off the black
helicopters’ (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-
schedule7-danger-reporters)
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‘Promoting a Political or Ideological Cause’
On Sunday 18 August, David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian
journalist who had written a series of stories based on Snowden’s revelations, was held for
almost nine hours (the maximum amount of time permitted by law) by UK authorities as he
passed through Heathrow on his way home to Rio de Janeiro. He was questioned under the
Terrorism Act 2000, the highly controversial section 7 of which allows police officers to stop,
search, question and detain individuals at ports, airports and border areas. He was eventually
released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop,
camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
The legality of the police action was queried both by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg,
and condemned as being without legal basis by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer.
In November Miranda launched a challenge in the High Court. At the time of writing this is
continuing, but it has already flushed into the open a particularly disturbing aspect of his
detention, namely that the document used to request it stated that ‘the disclosure or threat of
disclosure [of the material that he was carrying] is designed to influence a government, and is
made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within
the definition of terrorism and as such we request that the subject is examined under schedule
7’. As Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, exclaimed: ‘The express admission that
politics motivated the detention of David Miranda should shame police and legislators alike.
It's not just the schedule 7 detention power that needs urgent overhaul, but a definition of
terrorism that should chill the blood of any democrat’
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/02/david-miranda-detained-political-causes).
Nonetheless, when Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, Scotland Yard’s head of counter-
terrorism, appeared before the Commons Home Affairs select committee on 13 December,
she revealed that the police were still combing through the material seized from Miranda in
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order to ascertain whether any offences may have been committed under the Official Secrets
or Terrorism Acts.
Catch-22
In the meantime there had been no let-up in the political pressure on and threats against the
Guardian. Indeed, on 20 August the Independent had revealed that Rusbridger’s emissary
from the ‘centre of government’ had been none other than Britain’s most senior civil servant,
Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, and that the approach took place with the explicit
approval of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Foreign Secretary William Hague.
At prime minister’s questions, on 16 October, the former defence secretary Liam Fox asked
Cameron:
May we have a full and transparent assessment of whether the Guardian’s involvement
in the Snowden affair has damaged Britain’s national security? Does my right hon.
Friend agree that it is bizarre that from some the hacking of a celebrity phone demands
a prosecution, whereas leaving the British people and their security personnel more
vulnerable is seen as opening a debate?
As we shall see, this was by no means the first time that the phone-hacking hare had been set
running during the Snowden affair, but what is interesting here is that Cameron’s reply (a)
shows that the Guardian had been put in a Catch- 22 situation by agreeing to destroy the
computers; and (b) appears to encourage one or more select committees to investigate
whether the Guardian had broken the law:
I commend my right hon. Friend for raising the issue. I think the plain fact is that what
has happened has damaged national security, and in many ways the Guardian itself
admitted that when, having been asked politely by my national security adviser and
Cabinet Secretary to destroy the files that it had, it went ahead and destroyed those
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files. It knows that what it is dealing with is dangerous for national security. I think that
it is up to Select Committees in the House to examine the issue if they wish to do so,
and to make further recommendations.
(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131016/debtext/
131016-0001.htm#13101671000010)
‘McCarthyite Scaremongering’
In a debate on 22 October, Julian Smith, Conservative MP for Skipton and Rippon, launched
a lengthy, innuendo-laden and inaccuracy-strewn attack on the Guardian. In it Smith paid
handsome tribute to ‘our ex-colleague, Louise Mensch, who through her blog, social media
and [Sun] columns has ensured that this major national security issue has been kept alive
throughout’. Mensch was to replay the compliment in her Sun column, 13 November, (of
which more below), in which she referred to ‘brave MP Julian Smith’. The speech was
described by Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, as ‘a piece of McCarthyite
scaremongering’ which ‘disgraces Parliament’. According to Smith, the subject of the debate
was ‘to highlight where the Guardian has crossed the line between responsible journalism
and seriously risking our national security and the lives of those who seek to protect us’. Such
charges are highly contentious, but they informed the entirety of Smith’s speech, at the end of
which he stated that:
The Terrorism Act is clear about the illegality of communicating information about our
intelligence staff and, specifically, GCHQ. The Official Secrets Act is equally clear
about the illegality of communicating classified information that the recipient knows, or
has reasonable cause to believe, to be to the detriment of national security. Last week, I
wrote to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to ask him to investigate whether the
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Guardian has breached those two Acts. I urge the Minister to do everything possible to
ensure that the police expedite their investigation.
In response, James Brokenshire, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department, agreed that the Guardian’s reporting of the Snowden material had done ‘huge
damage to national security’ and echoed Cameron in claiming that ‘in many ways, the
Guardian admitted that when it agreed to destroy files when asked to by the Cabinet
Secretary, Jeremy Heywood’. However, he also added that ‘it is obviously not for Ministers
to direct the police to arrest or investigate anyone … It is for the police and the Crown
Prosecution Service to determine whether a crime has been committed and what action to
take’. (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131022/halltext/
131022h0002.htm#13102269000454). They cannot have been left in much doubt, however,
by this and numerous other political interventions, about what actions the government would
distinctly prefer them to take.
DA-Notices
Smith cropped up again on 28 October when he asked Cameron: ‘Following this morning’s
revelations in the Sun [sic] on the impact of the Snowden leaks, is it not time for any
newspaper that may have crossed the line on national security to come forward and
voluntarily work with the Government to mitigate further risks to our citizens?’ Cameron’s
response was, to all intents and purposes, to suggest that if the Guardian didn’t censor itself,
the government would take on the task:
We have a free press and it is very important that the press feels it is not pre-censored
in what it writes. The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain
how damaging some of these things can be. That is why the Guardian destroyed some
of the information on disks it had, although it has now printed further damaging
material. I do not want to have to use injunctions, D notices or other, tougher measures;
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it is much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. However, if
they do not demonstrate some social responsibility, it will be very difficult for the
Government to stand back and not to act.
(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131028/debtext/
131028-0001.htm#1310285000470)
Finally, in this inevitably highly selective review of political pressure on the Guardian, one
cannot ignore the remarkable spectacle of Rusbridger being hauled before the Home Affairs
select committee as part of its enquiry into counter-terrorism. As Roy Greenslade pointed out
on 3 December:
What was remarkable is that the whole thing happened at all. With the British press
having obtained the right to its freedom from political control in the 17th century, here
was parliament calling a newspaper to account for exercising that freedom. Why, I kept
asking myself, was an editor being required to explain himself to MPs? What makes
them think they have the right to do so? Do they act for the people or against them?
(http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/03/alan-rusbridger-batted-away-mps-
bluster)
That said, the questioning of Rusbridger by Paul Flynn and the Labour MP for Walsall North,
David Winnick, did give Rusbridger an excellent opportunity to make his case. In particular
he repeatedly pointed out that, contrary to the impression given by much of the press, the
Guardian had not identified anyone named in the NSA files. Furthermore, he also revealed
that the DA-notice committee had not raised any concerns about the published material.
(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/c231-iv/c23101.htm).
This is particularly important in the light of Cameron’s ill-informed remark about D notices
quoted above.
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DA-Notices are issued by the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee
(DPBAC) which operates a voluntary code between the media and UK Government
departments which have responsibilities for national security. According to the DPBAC, the
Committee and its Notices are ‘a means of providing advice and guidance to the media about
defence and counter-terrorist information the publication of which would be damaging to
national security. The system is voluntary, it has no legal authority and the final responsibility
for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned’
(http://www.dnotice.org.uk/danotices/index.htm), although it should be noted that Geoffrey
Robertson and Andrew Nicol condemn it as ‘a form of censorship by wink and nudge, by
threat and through the complicity of media executives’ (2008: 657).
On 7 November the Committee met and discussed, among other matters, the Snowden affair.
The minutes of this part of the meeting at worth quoting at some length, not least as they
appear to have received no media coverage at all:
Although views were diverse it was agreed that 99% of the media remained committed
to the DA Notice System. It was, however, important to distinguish between
embarrassment and genuine concerns for national security. The Vice-Chairman [Air
Vice-Marshal Vallance] felt that much of the material published by the Guardian fell
into the former category. They also understood that the Guardian’s initial
unwillingness to engage was due to a misunderstanding of the DA Notice Code and in
particular its commitment to confidentiality. The Editor feared that if he shared details
of his story with the secretariat it might potentially attract an injunction . Education was
required on both sides; the PM’s remarks on 28 October being an example of
misunderstanding on the Government side of how the system operated. He
recommended an approach to No 10 offering a briefing on the DA Notice System. The
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Vice-Chairman went on to say that this lack of understanding seemed to highlight a
greater malaise on the official side where there was worrying evidence of
disengagement. For example, the DPBAC Chairman [Jon Thompson, Permanent Under
Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence] had not attended the last two meetings, no
Cabinet Office representative was present and the Home Office and FCO [Foreign and
Commonwealth Office] principals had both sent representatives. By contrast, the Media
Side were well represented and its members made significant efforts to attend.
(http://www.dnotice.org.uk/records.htm)
‘Statutory Control’ of the Press
During this period, British newspapers had loudly and incessantly complained, as indeed they
had done from the start of the announcement of the Leveson Inquiry in July 2011, about the
danger of, as they saw it, ‘statutory control’ of the press. They might, therefore, have been
expected to spring swiftly and vociferously to the Guardian’s defence. Instead, the Mail, Sun
and Telegraph, along with the weekly Spectator, did their absolute utmost to undermine the
paper and to bolster the government’s case. And even those titles which did not join the
attack considerably underplayed both the significance of Snowden’s revelations and the
impropriety of the government’s pressure on the Guardian.
It is possible to distinguish a number of separate themes in the press campaign against the
Guardian and on behalf of the government, which I will now deal with in turn.
Payback
The first concerns pure and simple payback for the Guardian’s phone-hacking revelations
and the resultant Leveson inquiry. An early example occurs in a Mail article by Stephen
Glover on 21 August, headed ‘That Murky Arrest Troubles Me. But the Guardian’s in Murky
Waters Where Those Who Love Their Country Should not Venture’. It concludes thus:
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I also can't help wondering whether the officers didn't feel emboldened to throw their
weight about partly in consequence of the Leveson Report, which has virtually severed
relations between journalists and the police. The Guardian, of course, is almost single-
handedly responsible for Leveson because of its later debunked allegation that the News
of the World deleted the voicemails of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Nor can I
help pointing out the newspaper that has shed copious tears for Mr Miranda, held for
nine hours, had no such concerns over the interrogation of dozens of red-top journalists.
Some were arrested at dawn in front of their families, deprived of their computers for
months and released on bail. Charges won't be brought against some of them. Others
will end up in court. But even the most culpable among them never attempted to
damage their country. With friends like Edward Snowden, and employees such as
Glenn Greenwald, that is what the Guardian is in danger of doing.
Two days later, a Mail editorial entitled ‘Whiff of Hypocrisy?’ argued that ‘press freedom is
an essential right in any democratic society, but along with rights come responsibilities. The
Guardian continues to be vociferous in its demands for police to pursue tabloid journalists
suspected of acting illegally. Is the paper so arrogant and hypocritical as to believe it is itself
above the law?’ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2401138/DAILY-MAIL-
COMMENT-Border-failings-Britain-soft-touch.html). The following day the same line was
taken by the Spectator in an article headed ‘The Guardian Didn’t Care When Murdoch’s
Journalists Were Arrested. So Why the Hysteria Now?’ This stated that:
It is good to see the Guardian suddenly rediscover its interest in the sanctity of a free
press. Just five months ago, the paper seemed to have given up on the idea, when it
backed the statutory regulation of newspapers … When David Cameron’s government
proposed to bring back state licensing of the press, this magazine said it would boycott
any such regulator no matter what the consequences. We do not remember Mr
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Rusbridger rushing to support us. He seems to have a rather different test for press
freedom: whatever suits his newspaper the best. The Leveson report, and the notion of
allowing politicians to set the parameters in which the press can operate, seemed to be
quite acceptable to him: after all, it would hurt his rivals the most … Press freedom is
indeed under threat in Britain. The Guardian, for all of its proud history, has proven a
rather unreliable defender of these freedoms in recent years — especially when it has
spotted an opportunity to sock it to Rupert Murdoch. (http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-
week/leading-article/9000981/freedom-and-security/)
The theme occurred yet again in an article by Rod Liddle in the Sun, 10 October, which,
under the headline ‘Guardian Treason Helping Terrorists’, pointed out that:
This is the newspaper which has encouraged State control of the British Press. A
publication which has allied itself with the Hacked Off campaign to restrict the freedom
of what we in the Press can and can't report. It was particularly pious about the handful
of cases in which journalists on other papers hacked the phones of members of the
public in order to get stories. The phone hacking was unquestionably wrong. But it
doesn't compare to what the Guardian has done.
(http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/rodliddle/5192001/Guardian-
treason-is-helping-terrorists.html)
Louise Mensch took the same line in the paper on 13 October, remarking: ‘You know what's
funny about the Guardian newspaper? They were all for State regulation of the Press. The big
cheerleaders for Leveson loved it when the News of the World was closed over illegal
hacking. But when they break the law, they screech about Press freedom’.
The ‘argument’ being deployed in pieces such as these is so manifestly self-interested and
opportunistic as to be barely worth serious consideration. However, the crucial point that
nonetheless needs to be made is that no meaningful comparison can be made between the
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Guardian’s exposure of forms of state surveillance which should be of concern to every
citizen in the land, and the phone-hacking by the News of the World for reasons which had
absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the public interest. Furthermore, as we have seen,
David Miranda was detained in circumstances of highly dubious legality and he has thus far
been charged with precisely nothing, whilst many of those accused of phone-hacking have
been both arrested and charged, and, in some cases, have already been convicted of criminal
offences as clear-cut as they are serious.
‘A Wall of Prejudice’
A second theme broadened out the attack on the Guardian to take in other Tory hate objects,
namely the BBC, and, by extension, the ‘liberal-Left’. Entirely unsurprisingly, this was the
province of the Mail. It was sparked off by a speech by the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker,
which the Mail decided the BBC failed to cover in sufficient detail. Thus, on 9 October, in an
editorial headed ‘The Paper that Helps Britain’s Enemies’, it thundered:
It is impossible to imagine a graver charge against a newspaper than that it has given
succour to our country’s enemies and endangered all our lives by handing terrorists ‘the
gift they need to evade us and strike at will’. Yet so said Andrew Parker, in his first
speech as our spy chief, which yesterday was significantly endorsed by No10. So isn’t
it staggering that the BBC, after spending all last week trumpeting Ed Miliband’s
attack on this paper over our charge that his father’s Marxist views validated one of the
most evil regimes in history, could hardly bring itself for much of yesterday to report
Mr Parker’s devastating indictment of the Guardian? The problem, and it’s worse
under the new director general, is that a wall of prejudice surrounds Broadcasting
House – a belief that the Right merits relentless attack, while the BBC’s soulmates on
the liberal Left must always be protected. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-
2451557/Daily-Mail-Comment-The-Guardian-paper-helps-Britains-enemies.html)
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Exactly the same line was followed in the same day’s paper by Stephen Glover in a column
with the laborious headline: ‘Stupendous Arrogance: By Risking Lives, I Say Again, the
Guardian is Floundering Far out of its Depth in Realms Where no Newspaper Should
Venture’. According to Glover:
The Guardian is being accused of putting at risk not only the lives of agents but also
potentially the lives of ordinary British people, whom MI5 will now find it more
difficult to protect. Divide the accusations in two, and then halve them again, and they
are still mind-boggling. So what is the response? At the time of writing, the all-
powerful BBC has only parenthetically mentioned that the newspaper faces very
serious charges, and has made the most feeble attempts to hold the paper or its editor,
Alan Rusbridger, to account.
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2451532/STEPHEN-GLOVER-By-risking-
lives-The-Guardian-floundering-far-depth.html)
This is a version of an argument that is now being put with increasing frequency by the Right,
namely that if the BBC doesn’t cover stories which dominate the press agenda on a particular
morning then this is sure-fire proof of the BBC’s fabled ‘Left-wing bias’. An alternative
explanation, of course, is that many stories which appear in most national dailies are stories
only by the very peculiar standards of Britain’s predominantly hard-Right press, and are
frequently too distorted and inaccurate to be worthy of inclusion on the news agenda of a
public service broadcaster. It has long been obvious that Britain’s ultra-Conservative
newspapers will not rest content until the broadcast news agenda is skewed as far to the Right
as is their own. If some semblance of political diversity is to be preserved in the British
media, the BBC is going to have resist this pressure with every fibre of its being – which
entails showing a very great deal more determination than it has done to date.
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Thus far, I have quoted only from opinion columns of one kind or another, and a possible
retort could be that as long as newspapers separate out fact from comment, news from views,
then they should be free to be as partisan as they wish. However, most of the ‘news’ stories
about the Guardian and Snowden in the Sun, Mail and (to a slightly lesser extent) Telegraph
have been every bit as biased as their op-ed pieces, and I will attempt to illustrate this by
reference to my third, and over-arching, theme, namely national security.
News and Views
Take, for example, an article in the Mail, 8 October, headed ‘The Guardian Has Produced a
“Handbook” that Will Help Fanatics Strike at Will’, followed by the straps ‘Security officials
say there was no public interest in Guardian's expose’, and ‘They also claim terrorists now
know where and where not to communicate’. The slant of the article is thus clearly apparent
before one even reads it, and the piece itself is dependent entirely upon anonymous ‘security
officials’ and ‘Whitehall insiders’ who claim variously that ‘the publication of the documents
stolen by Edward Snowden is considered to have done more damage to the security services
than any other event in history’, that ‘there was no public interest in publishing top-secret
information which details the precise methods used by agents to track terrorist plots’, that
‘fanatics were signposted to the places they should avoid when communicating’, and that ‘the
Guardian had helped to produce a “handbook” for terrorists’. Every one of these anonymous
quotes is highly contentious, yet there is not the slightest attempt to quote opposing or even
merely sceptical viewpoints (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2450291/The-
Guardian-produced-handbook-help-fanatics-strike-will.html).
The same day’s paper also carried a report of the above-mentioned speech by Parker. Again,
the headline and the accompanying straps give the clearest possible indication of the line
taken by the article: ‘Guardian has Handed a “Gift” to Terrorists, Warns MI5 Chief: Left-
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wing Paper's Leaks Caused “Greatest Damage to Western Security in History” Say Whitehall
Insiders’; ‘MI5 chief Andrew Parker called paper's expose a “guide book” for terrorists’; ‘He
said the coverage is a gift to “thousands” of UK-based extremists’; and ‘Secret techniques of
GCHQ laid bare by Guardian’. Much of the rest of the article consists of generous quotes
from Parker, and although there is a short quote from a Guardian spokesman, not only is
there no acknowledgement that Parker never once mentioned the Guardian by name but
precisely the opposite impression is given – repeatedly and emphatically
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2450237/MI5-chief-Andrew-Parke-The-Guardian-
handed-gift-terrorists.html). The Telegraph, 9 October, published the speech in full
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10366119/MI5-chief-security-
speech.html).
However, a classic example of Mail editorialising posing as ‘news’ stories was provided by
two more pieces on 9 October. The first is headed ‘PM Backs Spy Chief's Attack on
Guardian: Security Expert Warned Leaks Risk “Widespread Loss of Life” but BBC Buries
Criticism of Left-wing Paper’, with the straps ‘PM's spokesman said MI5's Andrew Parker
made an “excellent speech”’; ‘The spy chief blasted the Guardian's publication of secret
material’; and ‘Security officials say the expose could lead to UK lives being lost’. On the
matter of the BBC, the article reveals that ‘there were last night accusations of editorial bias
at the BBC, which initially ignored the scathing criticisms of the Guardian’
((http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2451540/David-Cameron-backs-spy-chiefs-attack-
Guardian-BBC-buries-criticism-Left-wing-paper.html ). However, the accusations turn out to
have been made by none other than the Mail itself! These were in a story headed ‘How the
BBC buried the story: MI5 attack on Left-wing paper's leaks played down’, with the straps
‘BBC downplays MI5 chief's scathing condemnation of the Guardian’; ‘Newsnight editor is
former Guardian executive Ian Katz’; and ‘“They appear to be protecting Left-wing friends”
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- Tory MP’. But the plain fact remains that Parker did not mention the Guardian by name,
and that no amount of mis-representation can alter this inconvenient truth, so the real culprit
here is actually the Mail for insistently stating that he did. Of course, the story cannot appear
to have been manufactured by the Mail itself as part of its endless campaign against the BBC,
so Conor Burns, the Tory MP for Bournemouth West and a member of the Culture, Media
and Sport select committee, is quoted to the effect that:
It is extraordinary that the biggest security story for a generation wasn’t deemed worthy
of comment by the BBC’s leading investigative news programme. There seems to be a
clear conflict of interest when its editor has so recently taken the Guardian’s shilling.
The whole tone of the BBC’s coverage of this issue seems to indicate clear editorial
bias. They appear to be protecting their Left-wing friends.
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2451549/How-BBC-buried-story-MI5-attack-
Left-wing-papers-leaks-played-down.html)
Whether Burns offered this quote unprompted, or whether the Mail, in its usual fashion,
prodded him into it in order to give the appearance of legitimacy to a smear which it had
itself concocted is, of course, impossible to tell. But nor does it matter. The point is that both
the BBC and the Guardian can appear ‘Left-wing’ only when viewed from the hard-Right of
the political spectrum, and thus that this is a ‘story’ only in terms of the Mail’s own peculiar
news values. But as noted earlier, this ‘story’ then became the subject of furious and
indignant comment in the Mail editorial and the Glover piece quoted earlier. This is an
absolutely archetypal Mail ploy: run a ‘news’ story which is either wildly distorted, or indeed
untrue, and then use this as the basis for enraged editorialising, which is then defended on the
grounds that the paper has a right to express its opinions (as opposed to a duty to get its facts
right).
National Security
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It should be abundantly clear by now that for the Sun and the Mail it is absolutely axiomatic
that Snowden’s revelations via the Guardian have irreparably damaged national security.
Sceptical or dissenting sources are very rarely quoted, and pronouncements by government
ministers and ‘security chiefs’ (as they are habitually called) are taken entirely at face value.
For these papers, national security is whatever these people say it is, an attitude epitomised
by Stephen Glover’s remark that Rusbridger is ‘a newspaperman, not a security expert. The
high-handedness is amazing. Mr Rusbridger thinks he can determine which stories might
harm national security — and which will not. According to the experts, he is hopelessly
unqualified to make such a judgment’
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2451532/STEPHEN-GLOVER-By-risking-lives-
The-Guardian-floundering-far-depth.html).
From such a perspective, it is thus perfectly acceptable for newspapers to give large amounts
of uncontested space to those calling for the prosecution of journalists. For example, Louise
Mensch who, in the Sun, 13 October, opines in an unctuous piece headed ‘May Must
Prosecute Guardian’ that ‘if Theresa [sic] doesn't prosecute the Guardian, she is giving a
green light to any blogger or reporter to give our agents' names to anybody they like. She has
been a true Iron Lady so far. She mustn't stop now’. Or Lord Carlile, the former independent
reviewer of terrorist legislation, who gave a speech, reported in the Telegraph, 24 October,
under the headline ‘Publishing Edward Snowden Security Secrets a “Criminal” Act, Says
Former Terrorism Watchdog’, in which he asked, rhetorically: ‘Is it anything other than
criminal to seek to publish such secrets?’ and stated that ‘it is worth investigating whether
there were any conspiracies to breach the Official Secrets Act’
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10401711/Publishing-Edward-
Snowden-security-secrets-a-criminal-act-says-former-terrorism-watchdog.html). Or Liam
Fox, given a Telegraph column of his own on 9 November in which to ask: ‘Does the
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Guardian newspaper's publication of stolen secrets amount to irresponsible and potentially
criminal behaviour?’, a question which the article answers with a resounding and emphatic
‘yes’. In it he reveals that ‘I have written to the Director of Public Prosecutions on the issue’
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10438356/Liam-Fox-A-free-press-but-not-not-when-
it-endangers-the-security-of-our-nation.html), and a further article in the same day’s paper
explains that his letter to the DPP states: ‘In recent days there have been further accusations
that the Guardian passed the names of GCHQ agents to foreign journalists and bloggers.
Would such activities, if true, constitute an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 or other
related legislation, particularly the passing of details of identified security personnel?’ He
also asks: ‘Under what conditions and by what procedures would a decision be taken to
prosecute any individuals responsible for such activities and how would such a process be
initiated?’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10438200/Edward-
Snowden-spy-leaks-Liam-Fox-in-push-for-Guardian-newspaper-to-be-prosecuted.html).
In any other democratic country, such threats to journalists would immediately be the subject
of stories and indignant comment in most newspapers, but in Britain the threats are made in
and, effectively, by, newspapers themselves. There is, unfortunately, absolutely nothing new
about this – the majority of Britain’s national press has a long and deeply dishonourable
history when it comes to attacking those few journalists brave enough not to be cowed the
moment ‘national security’ or the ‘national interest’ are mentioned, and fortunate enough to
work for those few media organisations which will facilitate their work (Petley 2013). Most
newspapers are far more likely to endorse attempts by the state to censor such journalism
than they are to condemn them, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by their behaviour over,
to take but a few of the most egregious examples, the ABC show trial (Hooper 1988: 133-56;
Rogers 1997: 79-83; Robertson 1999: 104-34), the BBC series Secret Society (Petley 2001),
the programme Edge of the Union in the BBC series Real Lives (Barnett 2011: 91-102;
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Leapman 1997: 294-331), and the Death on the Rock edition of Thames Television’s This
Week slot (Bolton 1990: 189-306).
Ideological Affinities
On almost every single occasion that governments have argued that a piece of journalism
should be suppressed on the grounds that it endangers ‘national security’ or the ‘national
interest’ it turns out that it does absolutely no such thing – it merely embarrasses the
government of the day. So why do most newspapers so unhesitatingly and eagerly take the
government side on these occasions? The answer has to do with profound ideological
affinities between those who run the country and those who own and run most national
newspapers, affinities which transcend mere party allegiances. In Britain, most of the national
press is by no stretch of the imagination a Fourth Estate acting as the public’s watchdog but
an absolutely crucial part of the Establishment – and all the more effective for its constant
and remorseless peddling of the rhetoric of the ‘free press’. It is a key part of the all-
pervasive ideological machinery designed to keep things as they are – and all the more
powerful for having rendered itself largely invisible by becoming so naturalised and taken-
for-granted (Petley 2009).
That is at least partly why in Britain, quite unlike in America and elsewhere in Europe, public
debate about Snowden has turned as much, if not more, upon the behaviour of a newspaper as
opposed to that of GCHQ and the NSA. So when the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ appeared
before the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) on 7 November, which they agreed to
do only on condition that they saw all the questions in advance, the obsequiousness of the
politicians was matched only by the fawning of most newspapers, whose breathless and
gushing tones wouldn’t have been out of place in the Boy’s Own Paper. Inevitably the papers
seized with relish on the trio’s peevish and aggrieved comments on the media, who turned out
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to be the real villains of the occasion. A particular gift to the headline writers was the
soundbite from the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, that ‘the leaks from Snowden have been
very damaging; they have put our operations at risk. It is clear that our adversaries are
rubbing their hands with glee. Al-Qaida is lapping it up and our own security has suffered as
a consequence’. Far less widely reported, however, was that when the committee chairman,
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, then asked: ‘Do you have any additional information you can share
with us … as to actual hard evidence that terrorists or potential terrorists have been looking at
these reports and have changed their plans or the way they operate, as a result of them?’, Sir
Iain Lobban, head of GCHQ replied: ‘Not in this public forum, Chairman. Yes, in a private
forum’ (http://isc.independent.gov.uk/). And that was very much that.
Having themselves shown no interest in the real issues raised by Snowden’s revelations, it
was clearly of no concern to most newspapers that the ISC did exactly the same. So, for
example, there was nothing in the ISC hearing, and nothing in most papers’ reports of the
event, on Tempora (the programme that allows GCHQ to hoover up vast amounts of data
from the cables that carry internet traffic in and out of the country, information that is shared
with the NSA), and nothing on why neither the ISC nor the cabinet nor the National Security
Council were informed about its existence in the first place; nothing on the bugging of world
leaders who are supposed to be our allies; and nothing on the immense damage done by
GCHQ and the NSA by cracking much of the online encryption on which hundreds of
millions of users rely to guard data privacy, actions described by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the
creator of the world wide web, as ‘appalling and foolish’
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/tim-berners-lee-encryption-spy-agencies).
It was left to Nick Pickles, the director of Big Brother Watch, to draw the obvious
conclusion, namely: ‘As the US president, world leaders and international experts express
concern about the scale of surveillance and the need to review the laws and policies involved,
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today was perhaps more unique for the fact parliament found three people who think there is
no need for reform’
(http://www.theguardian.com/news/defence-and-security-blog/2013/nov/07/mi6-uksecurity).
Big Brother: a Caring Sibling
The truth of the matter is that the remarkably incurious ISC and those newspapers which are
remarkably eager to take the government side against journalists who expose wrongdoing by
the state are both expressions of precisely the same culture. As Jonathan Freedland pointed
out in the Guardian, 2 December, the reason why Americans have been so shocked by
Snowden’s revelations and Britons so unmoved has to do with profound differences between
the cultures of the two countries. In America, people believe that their government is
supposed to work for them, that it should be their servant, not their master. Hence the
Constitution begins with a declaration of where sovereign authority belongs: ‘We the people’.
That is why the Snowden revelations are so shocking to Americans: they expose an arm of
government acting without the permission, or indeed the knowledge, of the American people
and their representatives in Congress. And that is why it is axiomatic for reputable American
newspapers to subscribe to and try to live up to the Fourth Estate ideal. By contrast:
Britons have no such starting assumptions. The people are not sovereign here, they
never have been. We speak of parliamentary, not popular, sovereignty. We are used to
power flowing from the top down, from the centre outward, and most of the time we
accept it. We act as if it's natural for the state to be in charge and it's an act of
generosity when it deigns to let in a little daylight. If an arm of the state insists on total
secrecy, that seems reasonable to Brits in a way few Americans would ever accept. It's
not a natural instinct for Britons to see, say, GCHQ as their employees.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/snowden-fallout-us-uk-liberty-nsa-
spying).
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Or as Ben Macintyre put it in The Times, 30 August, ‘we cannot quite believe that Big
Brother is not, for the most part, a caring sibling with our best interests at heart’, with the
consequence that, in one of the most developed surveillance societies on the planet, ‘we are
more reassured than dismayed by being spied upon’
(http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/benmacintyre/article3855545.ece). In
such a culture, it really is no wonder that the majority of the national press is prone to act as if
it were an arm of the state, and that a play called Pravda could be written about it. It is surely
high time that it was revived.
References
Barnett, Stephen (2011) The rise and fall of television journalism: Just wires and lights in a
box?, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Bolton, R. (1990) Death on the Rock and other stories, London: WH Allen/Optomen.
Hooper, David (1988) Official secrets: The use and abuse of the Act, London: Coronet.
Leapman, Michael (1997) The last days of the Beeb, London: Coronet.
Petley, Julian (2001), Secret Society, Jones, Derek (ed.), Censorship: A world encyclopedia,
London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers pp 2181-4.
Petley, Julian (2009) What Fourth Estate?, Bailey, Michael (ed.) Narrating Media History,
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge pp 184-95.
Petley, Julian (2013) Newspapers call for censorship British Journalism Review, Vol. 24, No.
3 pp 33-8.
Robertson, Geoffrey (1999) The justice game, London: Vintage.
Robertson, Geoffrey and Nicol, Andrew (2008) Media law, London: Penguin, fifth edition.
Rogers, Ann (1997) Secrecy and power in the British state: A history of the Official Secrets
Act, London: Pluto Press.
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Julian Petley is Professor of Screen Media in the School of Arts at Brunel University, chair of
the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and a member of the advisory board of
Index on Censorship and of the editorial board of the British Journalism Review. His most
recent book is the edited collection The Media and Public Shaming (I.B. Tauris, 2013).
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