Johann Hari: The Indy basically says 'meh'

The Johann Hari saga at the Independent has come to a sort of sputtering, unsatisfying end. Hari's issued an apology in which he repeats his earlier admission that it was wrong of him to take quotes from other sources and pass them off as words said to him in interviews. This time, the admission comes without the attempt at justification which coloured his original apology, and instead with the concession that it was 'arrogant and stupid' of him not to have asked older, more experienced colleagues for their opinion on his unorthodox method. Hari's apology also includes an admission that he did in fact edit Wikipedia articles under the name of David Rose, making his more favourable and adding false, insulting 'facts' to the pages of people with whom he'd argued.

The actions taken to rectify the situation: Hari's returned his Orwell prize, which he admits isn't that big of a deal since rumour has it they were going to strip him of it anyway; he's taken an unpaid leave of absence from the Indy; and he's going to study journalism, to learn all of the things I guess people thought he picked up somewhere but never did. When he returns to writing, his articles will all be footnoted and accompanied by audio recordings of his interviews so people can check his work.

I think Hari's done pretty much everything he can aside from actually resigning from the Indy, which is what I had expected. He's admitted to the things he's been accused of doing wrong, he's acknowledged the way he would be treating someone he didn't like who had done the same things, he's returned his prize, he's gone off to get proper professional training, and he's agreed to a level of disclosure upon his return that is presumably unprecedented for a mainstream journalist. As someone who greatly admired Hari before this all happened, I don't think I'll ever read his stuff again and think of it highly, but I think he's handled this fairly well. Except that I really think he should have just admitted to it all off the bat and resigned, gone to journalism school, and seen if anyone would hire his new, improved self. But I mean, barring that, I guess this is the next best thing.

Unfortunately, the Independent comes out of this affair looking ridiculous, with its credibility in tatters. The Indy currently has no plans to release the report of its investigation in to Hari, saying it's 'private'. This means that any criticisms or revelations about the Indy's editorial practices, ie how this could possibly have been allowed to happen and what will be done in the future to sort that out, who is responsible, etc, are not going to be made public. The Indy's request that the Orwell Prize committee hold off on their announcement (to reportedly strip Hari of the prize) until they were done their investigation just allowed Hari to beat them to it, making the loss of the prize look like his gracious concession instead of a disgrace. The two-month long investigation into facts that were proven by bloggers in the space of a day or two and which one would think were admitted to by Hari pretty early on, just looks sluggish, reactive and desperate to buy time to figure out how to protect Hari and themselves.

I said I assumed Hari would resign - I assumed that he would resign to save both parties from having to say they sacked him, but that they would sack him if he didn't choose to resign. But no. Hari will be welcomed back in 2012 with a watchful eye (well, maybe, who knows since the Indy aren't saying!) and a pat on the head for his journalism degree. Despite admitting to repeatedly breaching two very serious rules (of journalism, of ethics, of basic decency and common sense, take your pick) and destroying the trust readers had in him, Hari will return to a prominent position at the Indy that most young journalists could only dream of; he won't, I imagine, be hired on as a local London news reporter who has to work his way up to the op-ed pages. He'll probably even be able to spin this whole thing and his subsequent foray into j-school (rumoured to be at Columbia) into a good couple of first articles.

In short, a year or so from now, the only people who will really remember will be the people that didn't like Hari in the first place. He'll gain new readers who aren't familiar with his past indiscretions. He'll be without his Orwell prize but will be relieved to have salvaged his job and, let's be honest, his reputation among those in the mainstream media who were never really willing to admit that he did very much wrong in the first place. The Independent has failed miserably in creating real consequences, either for Hari or for itself, and I for one will avoid reading it in the future as a result.

Phone Hacking and the Future of Newspapers

Well. I feel like I probably should have written something about this whole phone hacking business a lot sooner, but I had kind of been waiting for it to settle down for a second first to allow for some perspective and clear facts. But with new allegations surfacing and executives resigning and being arrested on a daily basis (including Rebekah Brooks as of about three hours ago), we seem to be a long way away at the moment.

So far, then. I think 'appalled by hacking into phones of families of dead/missing people' goes without saying, so I'm not going to dwell on that. But there's been a lot of moralising about phone hacking/blagging full stop, and that's been a bit of a joke. While of course there are people who care about it as purely a privacy and/or legal issue, the vast majority of outraged people are outraged because of who the victims were. People were interested, but not especially angry, when they thought the News of the World had been hacking celebrities' voicemails. Much of the ill-sentiment back in January seemed to be aimed at Andy Coulson, then David Cameron's director of communications, and at least part of that was more about politics than anything. I mean, the general feeling just seemed to be that the people responsible had either gone to jail or lost their jobs, the victims were going to be getting compensation to the tune of £100,000, and NOTW apologised. Fine.

The interesting thing about the past couple of weeks is that the new allegations have brought the scandal to a whole other level. The old allegations didn't seem to threaten the BSkyB deal in the least, and the idea that the NOTW would be shut down was beyond imagination. The practices aren't new, but, for the most part, the victims are, and that's part of the difference (the other part being that it appears those old practices were far more widespread than initially believed). And it's not necessarily that there are so many victims, but the stories that were sought. No one can condone illegal activities used to get 'juicy' stories of grieving family members.

But there seems to be a grey area where these same activities don't seem to be so reprehensible if the stories are a bit more in the public interest. The tip of that is the somewhat 'meh' reaction to celebrities being hacked - the idea that the stories generated would just be bits of entertainment gossip, nothing too harmful, and certainly no dead children involved. Going deeper, there don't seem to be that many people fixated on Tom Baldwin, Ed Miliband's director of communications, in quite the same was as they were/are on Andy Coulson. That's not to say there's no interest - there is, both among those with a political agenda and those who simply say fair is fair, if Miliband's going to criticise Cameron over Coulson then he should have to explain Baldwin. And it was brought up in the House of Commons by Jeremy Hunt. But that allegation has so far not exactly scandalised the public in the way the NOTW allegations have.

And why not? Well, for one thing, Lord Ashcroft doesn't exactly elicit the same kind of sympathy as Milly Dowler's family does. For another, people don't seem to be especially bothered by the idea of looking into political donations and tax revenues for someone who's been accused of illegality on both counts. I somehow doubt we'd hear the same kind of moralising on phone hacking and blagging if those practices turned up a story that was actually in the public interest. For example, though the information for the MPs expenses scandal was probably illegally obtained, the public (and indeed politicians) were not particularly bothered by the ethics of that fact. So it's worth everyone examining whether they actually think certain practices are wrong, or if they only think they're unethical when they're carried out against certain kinds of people.

So what happens now? The full process of a police investigation, subsequent prosecutions (if any) and parliamentary and public inquiries is likely to take the better part of two years. And what will the UK media landscape look like at that point? Will there be tighter regulation? What will the relationship between politicians and press and police and press look like? What will the Sunday tabloid market look like? Will tabloid readers still expect the same kind of stories and information? Will anything really fundamentally change?

One idea that's been floating around (apologies for that picture of Ed Miliband - what were they thinking?), though it's too early to tell whether it'll amount to anything, is the possibility of changing media ownership laws. This isn't specifically about Rupert Murdoch (or, at any rate, it shouldn't be). Concentration of media ownership should always be a concern in terms of hurting freedom of the press by limiting the diversity of information available and giving too much power to one person or company.

One problem with more stringent regulations, though, is that newspapers are increasingly not profitable. For example: in 2010, News International-owned The Times reported pre-tax losses of £45m, and in 2009 News Corp. announced that its newspaper revenues were down 97%. But News Corp. can afford to continue running their papers at a loss (while making cuts and introducing paywalls to try to offset some of those losses) because their other operations (TV, specifically) are so profitable.

So if we want to regulate and limit media ownership, how picky can be about what prospective owners already own? When the NOTW was abruptly closed down, there was speculation that Murdoch was ridding himself of the paper in order to quash some concerns about media plurality around the BSkyB deal (which had not yet unravelled). Assuming newspapers continue to lose money (and the loss of advertising revenue and competition from online news mean that trend is almost certainly irreversible), if new regulations mean owners have to choose between profitable TV stations or tabloids and loss-making broadsheets, how long will those newspapers survive?