Skip to content

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Why investigative journalism needs … investigating

by Eric Beecher

At one level, The Guardian’s allegations that Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World routinely pays private investigators to illegally listen to the mobile phones of public figures are shocking and contemptible.

At another level — the wink-wink-nudge-nudge-whatever-it-takes-to-get-a-story, engine-room level of tabloid journalism — the really shocking aspect of these revelations is that they have appeared in public. The cat is out of the bag. A slimy cat and a filthy bag, to be sure, but not the kind of information that an upstanding tabloid publisher like Mr Murdoch ever intended to go on public display.

Of course, certain tabloid newspapers have always operated in a sleazy, subterranean world. Of course, their reporters (“correspondents”) and informants (“sources”) slink around boudoirs and bordellos in pursuit of scoops (“truth”). Of course they pay dubious characters to procure voyeuristic information (“news”). How else, and where else, would they so regularly obtain the dirt they publish week in and week out? From the Government Gazette?

If you need any confirmation of this subterranean tabloid world — the tactics, the culture, the ammorality, the arrogance — read “Confessions of a tabloid hack”, published a few days ago in The Guardian. Here are a few highlights:

As a reporter, we used every tool at our disposal. On one highly risky tabloid escapade in the 80s I used an electronics surveillance expert to bug Richard Burton’s hotel room to see if he was having an affair with his leading lady. We ended up overhearing him arguing with his daughter about her allowance, and learned what type of whisky he preferred, but we never stood up the affair. For every story that got in the paper, there were three like this that never made it.

By the 1990s, the News of the World’s … huge editorial budget enabled it to out-bid the others for the biggest, most salacious stories. And they certainly had the most money to spend on private investigators.

[Today] the tabloids are finding it increasingly hard to dig up any really juicy stories without using private investigators. It’s a bit like DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars admitting: “I had to take a bribe when I first started working as a copper otherwise none of the other bastards would have talked to me.” They’re all at it.

Private investigators rarely put their name to anything and are often paid through a myriad of companies to avoid any direct link to the story they have helped expose through illegal surveillance activities. There is even a code of honour between the private investigators and their tabloid paymasters. Massive fees are paid out on condition the shady snoopers never “grass up” their employers.

If there’s one big story you’ll never see in a Murdoch tabloid it is a genuine piece of investigative journalism into investigative journalism. After all, who’d be interested in reading that, apart from Guardian readers and civil libertarians?

Eric Beecher is Crikey’s publisher and former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.

6 Comments

  1. Mr Squid
    Posted Tuesday, 14 July 2009 at 1:53 pm | Permalink

    this is newscrap writ large. it’s the sleazy and slimy reality behind the the australian, the telegraph, and every other resident of murdoch’s augean stable.

  2. Keith is not my real name
    Posted Tuesday, 14 July 2009 at 2:54 pm | Permalink

    you’ll never see in a Murdoch tabloid it is a genuine piece of investigative journalism into investigative journalism

    Just a thought, how about YOU do it. I’d pay a premium for that

  3. Ken Benson
    Posted Tuesday, 14 July 2009 at 5:27 pm | Permalink

    Ah Mr.Squid, back with another thought provoking piece, well written…you’d think News was behind every dirty trick in this country. Maybe worthwhile separating the opinion pieces from news stories for starters…and remember this is Australia not England…..don’t visit any maybe trangressions in one country onto another

    did you ever stop to think how much Crikey has stepped up their anti-News campaign since the Punch started? This constant tirade is starting to wear a little thin isn’t it ? No vendetta there…of course not….although there’s probably 7 stories in today alone…obviously not much else happening in the world…

    PS Keith is not my real name…I’d like to see that myself, not likely sadly, easy to go the other way …and by hte way you’re already paying that premium…

  4. Tom McLoughlin
    Posted Tuesday, 14 July 2009 at 5:35 pm | Permalink

    The chutzpah surely starts with the corporation’s name. It’s Orwellian double think - news, right wing fantasy, news, right wing fantasy. Served up every day, day after day, it works it’s way into the brain like that sticky space dust into the first Moon shot.

    This ‘news’ is a bit like JRR Tolkien’s writing technique whereby he outlines various descriptive realism and then inserts major fantasy elements which sail through because we have already suspended disbelief: The detail of knuckle dragging foul breathed trolls in tunnels sniffing out the Hobbit, creatures that never existed except perhaps at Holt St?. In Murdoch’s case it’s calling it “News” then publishing cartoon like facsimiles of complex reality.

    Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy cartoon books mostly, but I don’t believe them. If only most conservatives understood this about their favourite reading fodder. But then privilege has to believe in ‘fair and balanced’ to justify their advantage. The reverse is just too psychologically painful to contemplate: That they don’t have any particular merit, just luck and their inheritance, and of course their prejudice.

    Tomorrow can we deconstruct Fairfax rabble?

  5. zayjaytay
    Posted Tuesday, 14 July 2009 at 8:29 pm | Permalink

    Mr Squid, what a grossly uninformed and flawed comment.
    Having worked at newspapers in London and Australia, how you can compare the News the World with Australian News Ltd titles is beyond me.
    Even the most tabloid of News Ltd papers here do not pay for stories.
    Even among the British press the NoW is out there in a league of its own in terms of sleaze and tactics. Is anyone really surprised that they pay private investigators? Please.

  6. Mr Squid
    Posted Tuesday, 14 July 2009 at 8:57 pm | Permalink

    ZJT, how does ‘having worked in … ’ relate grammatically to ‘how can you compare …’? only a newscrap ignoramus could write something like that.

    and as for the silly comment that ‘even the most tabloid of (newscrap) papers here do not pay for stories, excuse me?

    the photos for the most typical newscrap lie of recent times - the pauline hanson story - were paid for!

    newscrap journalism here is as dishonest, self-serving, hypocrital and ridiculous as the recent speech by john hartigan, a former editor of the telegraph, which published the deliberate lies about hanson.