The reporting of phone hacking victims tends to concentrate on celebrities such as Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan and Paul Gascoigne, which is inevitable in 2011 but which also serves the interests of the News of the World in a way that we should probably be concerned about.
Whether we like it or not, (again, this being 2011) if the public perceives this as a problem affecting the rich and famous they will feel less sympathy and outrage than they would otherwise, and that is surely what Rupert Murdoch’s paper must want as it seeks to buy its way out of trouble.
So it is worth remembering that already most of the victims we know of are not rich and famous by any definition, and that as the numbers continue to rise (it was once a handful, then it was 12, then 24, then 91 and now way beyond that the proportion of famous and/or rich people among them is certain to shrink to the point where it is a modest fraction.
Most of the known or suspected victims are family members, friends and colleagues of the newspaper’s principal targets — the collateral damage, if you like, of the newspaper’s bombing. They will include people such as Sienna Miller’s mother, Lesley Ash’s children, Jude Law’s personal assistant, colleagues of PR man Max Clifford, a legal adviser to Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers’ Association.
These are blameless members of the public whose right to privacy no responsible person would dispute, and yet they have grounds to believe that employees of a national newspaper have listened to voicemails they have received or left. And remember, the listening was inevitably indiscriminate — the eavesdroppers heard the personal with the trivial, the businesslike with the intimate. And it may have gone on for a year and a half.
One case in preparation, according to a legal source, involves a woman who was assistant to a famous personality. Because of damaging stories about that personality which appeared in the News of the World, she will allege, she was fired — her employer was convinced that only she could have been responsible. She had a nervous breakdown and struggled to find other work. Now she has grounds to believe the source was her hacked voicemails. She is not rich and not a celebrity.
Besides the collateral damage there is another non-celebrity category: the politicians. It may be fashionable to dislike them (and again, the News of the World is happy if you do), but they too are entitled to privacy. Just as important, though, are the anti-democratic character of what has been done, and the national security implications. The supposedly secure personal communications of democratically elected representatives have been illegally intercepted by an important private corporation with no conceivable public interest justification. Not just one but a least several and perhaps dozens of MPs; not just wacky backbenchers but the Cabinet minister in charge of media affairs and the deputy leader of the LibDems, not to mention, it seems likely, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Deputy Prime Minister too. And these are not, by and large, rich people, nor necessarily that well known.
And there is a third category, still small and possibly never to be fully revealed, represented by a young woman who aroused the interest of the News of the World because she told police she was raped by a professional footballer. On that basis, she has grounds to believe, her private communications were illegally intercepted. She has no connection to fame, therefore, except as a victim of alleged crime. How many people like her are entitled to compensation, an apology and a day in court will be very difficult to establish.
So it is not “just” about celebrities — though it should also be said, first, that celebrities too have rights to privacy and, second, that we are indebted to Miller, Coogan, Chris Tarrant, Andy Gray and others for forcing the scandal into the open over the past year — and forcing News International into its confession.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London and Tweets at @BrianCathcart
