Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
William Hague's newly appointed special adviser Christopher Myers was forced to resign today after a whispering campaign over whether he was Hague's lover.
The allegations were started by blogger Guido Fawkes. William Hague has had to release a statement denying everything and listing very personal information about his relationship with his wife.
Guido's story is essentially this.
This post details Hague's statement.
What I am wondering is what would happen if he worked for a national newspaper or broadcaster.
I have refused to touch numerous stories like this one. In the course of my career I was told that three former members of the Labour cabinet were 'definitely lying about their sexuality.' I have been offered pictures of a married cabinet minister's boyfriend. I have seen testimony from a woman who claimed to be the mother of a minister's child. I have been offered the name of a senior minister who was 'without doubt an active and predatory paedophile.' The people who offered these allegations were often as certain as Guido that they were right. They were usually imagining a story and sometimes inventing one. Guido's allegation is not good reporting. It is a smear spun from a suspicion and rooted in political and sexual prejudice. Ian is right that it has been followed up by every major newspaper and broadcaster. But that is mainly the consequence of Hague's statement, not a legitimate response to Guido's blog. There is a long and worrying tradition of respectable titles repeating stories only after they have been 'legitimised' by a denial. There is an even longer tradition of editors deciding not to blight lives and careers by implying conclusions for which they have no hard evidence. Blogging has changed the rules. By placing smears in the public domain without attempting to prove them it invites denials that would not previously have been issued. It has lowered the threshold at which rumours reach the public. I think that is sad. Technology does not just offer new opportunity. It demands a new set of ethics too. Without it professional journalism will be replaced by mere gossip-mongering. I prefer the ethics, but I don't think we are likely to get them from Guido. His political views have long coloured his approach. The advent of coalition politics appears to unsettle him greatly.
I don't agree that you can merely dismiss this as an unfounded 'smear'. It's a story - Senior politician shares hotel room with new employee half his age - that asks serious questions of our Foreign Secretary's judgement, irrespective of the gender of the aide in question.
"Tittle Tattle, gossip and rumours about Westminster's Mother of Parliaments".
Guido Fawkes has an aim to spread rumour, not fact. His mantra that sits at the top of his website is quite clear about that. Surely a journalist with these intentions would not last any commendable length of time at a National or prestigious broadcaster.
You touch on a basic distinction between reporters and bloggers, Alister. If Guido Fawkes - real name Paul Staines, pictured above - had been a political correspondent on The Scotsman, Today or Five Live I would not have allowed his story to appear in the form in which he blogged it. I would not have been content to publish pointed innuendo. I would have insisted on supporting evidence. Guido is not subject to any system of editorial control or checking. He is a lone wolf operating according to his own conscience. Many professional journalists argue that this is precisely why journalism is a profession and blogging is not. A blogger can report responsibly, but without a culture of editorial ethics and a system for checking the accuracy of copy there is little to compel him to do so. It depresses me that so many professional publications have followed Guido's story. Many newspapers and broadcasters take the view that because a blogger has placed an allegation in the public domain they are free to repeat it. I find that depressing as well as legally dodgy. That said, there were newspapers that did not run the story this morning. That was not because they were not aware of Guido's story. It is interesting that this case of 2+2=7 appeared on an essentially Conservative blog. Does it, I wonder, hint at the extent of Conservative resentment of the men responsible for their coalition with the Liberal Democrats? There I go blogging instead of reporting. Naughty.
Before we get too carried away with duffing up the blogger, remember the story that he published says not much more than that the two shared a room on the campaign trail - and that the blogger had evidence to back this up. That being true, there's nothing about the story in the form it was published that would make it unsafe for any newspaper to have carried - although some lawyers may have baulked at the line about their body language. And the fact that Hague subsequently confirmed it largely backs that up. Remember that there are several examples of stories - Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky being the most celebrated - where a blogger has published accurate stories which newspapers and magazines knew about but were dithering over because of the political implications.
I don't agree that Matt Drudge's revelation of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair is comparable. Drudge checked the details of his story before he published it. Crucially, he also alleged an affair between the President and the intern. He didn't leave it to innuendo or rumour to convey an unstated meaning. He wrote what he knew, asserted that it was true and took reponsibility for publishing it. The point of Guido's blog was to imply an unstated meaning for which he had no firm evidence. You are right that it does not explicitly allege sexual intimacy. It carefully avoids stating what it hopes to convey. This is not an accurate story that has been placed in the public domain against the opposition of establishment journalists. It is a smear. If there is evidence that William Hague has lied about his sexuality then it has not been produced. Hague responded because the smear is dangerous and because it has been placed in the public domain. When similar rumours were circulated about Gordon Brown, he ignored them entirely for the excellent reason that they were entirely untrue. I suspect that today he would be placed in a similar position to that faced by William Hague. This is not public service journalism. It is evidence of what unmediated amateurs motivated by ideology can do to damage the precious relationship between journalism and representative democracy. Discuss!
I don't hold any particular admiration for Fawkes - or for this kind of story - but I do support his right to publish it regardless of the fact that he earns his money from a blog site and not a newspaper proprietor. Stories like this one have appeared and continue to appear in newspaper gossip columns and diary columns every day. This one happens to be about a very senior politician showing a very peculiar lack of judgement. And Fawkes/Staines has done a job of journalism: following a story, standing it up and publishing it. Neither can you really dismiss him as a fly-by-night blogger who will publish any old nonense willy nilly; one reason this has been taken so seriously is that he's established a reputation over a number of years for getting stories right. It's one of the reasons this one continues to lead bulletins and to prompt discussions like this.
I was ambivalent about Guido's "story" at first - and also felt there was some agenda to it all. Why should it matter if Hague was gay and/or had shared a hotel bedroom with a male colleague? I think some of the nationals were waiting for a development which would give the story legs and Hague's statement did it for them. (The Mail's coverage was characteristically nauseating).
But I tend to agree with Ian. Hague did show a lack of judgement and the possession - or lack of - judgement is something we tend to measure politicians by. It's certainly not a hanging offence but I think it raised legitimate questions that needed answering.
It's true that Guido did not follow normal journalistic protocol, but I wouldn't consider him a journalist. I agree with Tim that certain bloggers operate without any compunction to follow some kind of ethical approach but if they are not putting themselves up as journalists in the first place, why should they be measured against our standards or expectations?
In the end, whatever his agenda and the motives of those who were keen to get this into the open, Guido was the catalyst for a story which, on balance, was in the public interest and not just of interest to the public.
Some of the subsequent coverage was typically craven and self-serving, of course. And I have some sympathy with Hague on a personal level. But in the end, it was a story and that's what counts.