Not surprisingly BBC News was giving greater prominence than Sky News to the story that Sky News journalist Gerard Tubb hacked email account of the “Canoe Man”.
Being public-spirited an’ all Tubb gave the information to the Cleveland Police which used this as evidence. According to Sky News this prima facie was clearly in the “public interest” even though no such defence exists. But surely if the Police themselves had obtained this information, illegally…it would not have been admissable in court. But information obtained illegally by a journalist IS admissable. Im not sure how that adds up. Are journalists really above the Law?
We are led to believe that the incident is now being reviewed by Cleveland Police. Disturbingly Eve Pollard and the normally sane Labour MP, Stephen Pound reviewing tomorrows newspapers on Sky News (!!!) took the view that it WAS in the Public Interest. So thats all right then.
But a question that might be asked is…..how did Gerard Tubb get the skills to hack an email account? How did he know that Yahoo was “weak”? In what week do they teach this stuff in Journalism School?
Meanwhile James Murdoch has resigned……and presumably wont be making many visits to Britain for a while.
British Courts seem to have no problem extraditing people to the United States. I hope the courts in the United States are as accomodating.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
This case really is bit of a good public realations for the Murdoch empire -selflessly fighting crime wherever it may occur and not afraid to step outside the law for the over all good of society. If this was what the phone hacking saga was really about – Murdoch Senior as Batman, Murdoch Junior as Robin and Wendi Deng as Catwoman – ever alert and ready to help the overstreched police – then many, my self included, would be tempted to look the other way if a bit of snooping went on.
The non-crime-fighting-stuff however, leaves the stink of horse manure all the way to Number 10 (as depicted by Matt in the Torygraph) and to the top of the Met and I would hazaed a guess quite some distance into the intelligence servies – and may yet have serious and possibly terminal consequences for the Tory led governement and the Murdoch Empire.
I just wish Journalists would come clean about what they know. When Hackgate started, journalists covered it……now the red top papers and red top blogs ignore it. A case of the wider freemasonry of journalism perhaps.
There is probably an element of more narrow “secret shaking” going on in the top levels of journalism, police, politics and intelligence.
But mostly at the lower levels, journalism is about people hustling and hoping for the big break….getting an edge in a cut-throat world……and gathering intelligence.
Journalism is more about “knowing” stuff than it is about “writing” stuff.
Thus the clever journalist will always say less than he actually knows.
As to phone-hacking, computer hacking etc…well these new technologies were probably used, discussed over the water cooler, before the impact and illegality was really worked out.
I am quite prepared to believe that journalists did not really intend the consequences.
But rather like a bored police officer might be tempted to mis-use a police computer (or a public servant mis-use a government puter) just to find out the address of a celebrity……..and there are severe penalties for so doing……at the lower levels it is equally illegal and unethical to look up the address of an old boyfriend/girlfriend or even just to establish the address of a long lost friend to send a Christmas card.
Id rather journos said that “yes of course this stuff happens………we all knew it”.
It would certainly make them more credible when they jump to defend the “right” of a colleague to withold information.
Which is actually an interesting point. Journalists will leap to the defence of a colleague who is witholding information from the Police AND support a colleague using illegal means to give information to the Police.
They really DO want it both ways.
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