UK paper: hacking probe witch-hunt

The Sun’s associate editor Trevor Kavanagh said the large-scale police investigations into the hacking practices that led to the closure of News International’s chief subsidiary The News of the World in 2011 and is threatening other big names such as The Times and The Sunday Times are nothing but a “witch hunt”.

After police arrested five of The Sun’s staff as part of an inquiry into bribes to police and officials, apparently, in exchange for information, Kavanagh wrote in an article for the paper that the police are treating the paper’s journalists as “members of an organized crime gang.”

While none of the arrestees has yet been charged with wrongdoing, Kavanagh was keen to accuse the police of crackdown on free speech.

He apparently ignored the fact that The News of the World’s case also began with what its managers described as hacking by a single “rogue reporter” before inquirers concluded hacking was a common organized news gathering tool in the hands of the paper’s journalists.

He also did not refer to the fact that James Murdoch, the chairman of News International, is now under investigation over evidence that shows he authorized phone hacking in his subsidiaries by ignoring emails that alerted him to the practice in 2008.

Nor did he say that News International is under investigation also in the US and has already secured a whopping 37 out-of-the-court settlements with hacking victims while its parent company News Corp has admitted to bribing a prison guard for information.

The scandal has muddled News Corp and News International so seriously that the former has launched an online settlement program while James Murdock has been forced to resign from the boards of The Sun and The Times.

Against such a colorful background of scandals, Kavanagh has ironically disputed the inquiry as “so far out of proportion” and the reason why Britain has lost nine places in the international Freedom of Speech league table.

Indeed, considering the scale of the disgrace, one could well argue that prosecuting phone hacking culprits is a rare opportunity for British media to repair their face in terms of freedom of speech and human rights.

London is now accused almost on a weekly basis of new failures in those fields, assisted by media such as The Sun itself.

Supporting despots in the Middle East and North Africa, questionable arms deals, close cooperation with the war criminals in Tel Aviv, silencing domestic protests and holding 24-hour hearings for anti-government cuts protesters and sending record numbers to prisons are only a handful of disgraces London is now grappling with.

It is difficult to argue that media like The Sun did their part in exposing the blatant violation of accepted norms of human rights, freedom of speech and democracy by the British government and the police.

Kavanagh said in his article that “The Sun is not a swamp that needs draining”.

He should probably wait and see for himself the result of investigations into the issue.