In one phrase in his evidence to the culture media and sport select committee yesterday, Gerry McCann described a phenomenon most reporters will recognise, some with more shame than others. When, he said, reporters were told that there were no new developments, nothing more to be said, no news that day for the tens and sometimes hundreds of them who were on Maddie watch, they would say: sorry, but we have to write something anyway.
And thus, he said, they would take material from the Portuguese press – often wrong, or fanciful – add something to it, and file it. Or they would simply make something up. Or they would add more wind to the kite, aloft for many months, that perhaps, after all, the McCanns killed their own child and disposed of her body, then put on a mask of grief.
The testimony struck to the heart of the dilemma of journalism. For all journalists know that we are part of a machine – the news media, increasingly difficult to separate out from the media as a whole – which in some of its manifestations is voracious, ruthless and insouciant as to consequences.
At the core of this issue is the matter of privacy, and the circumstances under which journalists should grant themselves the right to intrude upon it. In Britain's culture of journalism, we have – perhaps more strongly than anywhere else – two strongly opposing conceptions of that right, conceptions stemming from the practice of a press that has a uniquely strong popular production, and a more than usually flourishing number of elite newspapers.
The elite tradition produces a view of privacy and intrusion which justifies intrusion into privacy on the basis of public interest. A politician who proclaims strict moral standards in public and who flouts them in private; an NGO that preaches transparency and conceals dubious funding; a corporation whose directors use family relationships or connections to conceal illegal practices may all expect exposure. The determining principle is that the activity they wish to keep private has public consequences – and thus should be known.
The popular tradition is older and is more … popular. It is built around the widespread fascination with other people's private lives – especially private sexual lives. British (and other) popular journalism is very substantially based on revelations of sexual impropriety – a practice that appeals to the prurience most people possess in some measure. Last November, that prurience was given a robust moral underpinning by Paul Dacre, editor in chief of the Daily Mail: Dacre argued to the Society of Editors that "since time immemorial shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour … for hundreds of years, the press has played a role in that process" If, he added, papers were stopped from doing this through laws which protected privacy, "I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulations with the obvious worrying implications for the democratic process."
It is the second of these which underpins celebrity culture, and the way in which it is represented in the UK. Celebrities – especially that burgeoning number who have modest talent – play an elaborate series of games with the media, many of which revolve around sexual revelation. The drive to have them adhere to these standards for the good of the community, as Dacre proposes, may be at times be hard to discern: but there is no doubt that they sustain, in newspapers and magazines and increasingly on the web, mass circulations.
This highly conditional view of privacy derived from this approach is what the McCanns faced when they decided to enlist the press in their search for their daughter, and thus became the possession of the media. The view that they could not legitimately object to any coverage once they had invited some was widespread: and thus they met the imperative of the 24-hour media. It must be fed at regular intervals, and if nothing solid must be found, something must be made up.
The example which Paul Dacre had in mind when he made his comments on shaming in the interests of public morality was Max Mosley, head of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, who won £60,000 from the News of the World when he proved that the paper had invaded his privacy, in revealing details of a sadomasochistic session he had held. Mosley, who also appeared before the culture committee, was adamant – as was Gerry McCann – that the press had to have tighter regulation if harm to reputations, families and private lives were to be avoided.
Mosley and McCann were right, for three reasons. First, there is a strong public value in the protection of private life – one increasingly recognised by the courts. For people in public life, with the pressure a high public office inevitably inflicts on family and privacy, that is even more the case. Second, a liberal society must recognise the right of privacy for behaviour which may be unappealing for many, but is within the law. Third, journalists are not well equipped to play the role of moral guardians and censors which Dacre sees as one of their most public duties – not because they are necessarily more sinful than other professions (though there is anecdotal evidence which sometimes points that way) but because they have neither training nor calling to be so.
Journalism finds its calling in trying to ascertain the truth, and in providing a platform for diverse views. The rest is for the law, religion and conscience.
John Lloyd is a contributing editor to the Financial Times, and director of journalism at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism