Reflecting on my time as a tabloid journalist

In a new ITV documentary, victims of phone hacking say justice still has not been done. Is this another Post Office scandal? And what do they actually want?

Victims of phone hacking are speaking about how their privacy was invaded by tabloid reporters in a new documentary on the scandal. 

Due to air tonight on ITV, Tabloids on Trial speaks to celebrities, ordinary people and investigators involved in recent and impending civil trials. 

That Hugh Grant, Charlotte Church, Paul Gascoigne and Prince Harry were victims of hacking is not new information, some of their cases were settled years ago. 

However we are two decades on from when the story broke and there are still loose ends, and big battles to come. 

The Duke of Sussex won his case against Mirror Group Newspapers last year, with the judge saying there was “widespread and habitual” use of phone hacking. 

Photo by Marjan Grabowski on Unsplash

In the next year he’s due in court again with similar showdowns against The Sun and Mail publishers over illegal information gathering. The Duke has previously said it is his “life’s work” to see reform of the press. Of all the individuals who have tried to take on the media he’s the one with the funds and determination to see it through to the end. 

Actor Grant says in the ITV documentary that he does not hold ill-will towards the “foot soldiers”, the journalists told to go out and get the story no matter what. He does want to see accountability for the senior executives who oversaw it taking place. 

We could easily draw parallels between the phone hacking scandal and the Post Office Horizon scandal. Both have lumbered stubbornly on for years, have victims feeling they’ve been swept aside, involve a public inquiry and involve accusations of a cover-up. 

Perhaps we will see a Toby Jones-fronted drama in the near future. 

I suspect the tabloid executives who did preside over phone hacking and have subsequently got off relatively unscathed will breathe a sigh of relief that there seems to generally be public apathy towards the subject. 

The Leveson Inquiry, dramatic changes to the UK press in the last 10 years, legal settlements and fading memories have helped to draw a hazy line under the scandal. Plus there’s the fact this is about the media.  You’re unlikely to see front page stories in The Sun and Mail calling for action on press intrusion like we saw them calling for accountability of Post Office bosses. 

To be cold and calculated about it in PR terms, it doesn’t help the press reform crusaders that their figurehead is Prince Harry, someone who divides public opinion. He was vindicated in his case against the Mirror, proving his private life was invaded by unlawful means including phone hacking. However, can the prince’s suffering in this regard ever evoke the same sort of feelings among the British public as it did with the sub-postmasters?

While stories of beloved community sub-postmasters being hauled off to jail for crimes they did not commit has sparked strong feelings of anger, would the same level of anger come about on behalf of wealthy celebrities? Of course, the documentary highlights that it is not only the rich and famous who were targeted. Normal people caught up in extraordinary events also saw their privacy invaded.

Unlike the Post Office, seen as cuddly and nice, the general public has no warm feelings to lose when it comes to the tabloids. This perhaps works in their favour. Like when an embarrassing relative acts up at a family event. You’re annoyed, but did you expect them to behave otherwise?

Lifting the lid on tabloid reporting 

I’ll be watching the documentary with particular interest because, as those who have followed me for a while on Instagram will know, I was a reporter for the Daily Mirror. 

My stint as a tabloid journalist began in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press, launched after the News of the World phone hacking scandal came to light. 

When I worked on Fleet Street - not literally, because none of the big papers are based there any more but it’s still the spiritual home of journalism - it was a new era. Post-Leveson we were frequently reminded of our legal obligations and the editors’ code. 

I’m not a witness to what came before, but it was clear to me from day one that the pressure to deliver exclusive stories was immense. 

Prior to working for the Daily Mirror as their district reporter in the Thames Valley I had been a news editor for a weekly newspaper in an area with hardly any crime, where the biggest scandals were unpopular planning applications.

Right from the interview the bosses were clear what they wanted. Exclusives. Tabloid exclusives. That meant a huge emphasis on celebrity scoops and big crime stories. 

You can’t make a big crime story happen, although you can of course go back and investigate historic cases. But you can try to drum up a celebrity exclusive and this was the bit of the job I found the least fulfilling. Look, I find the Mail’s right hand bar of shame as hard to resist as the next person, we are all fascinated by peeking into other people’s lives. But I think very very few people get into journalism in order to find out whose relationship is on the rocks or who threw a hissy fit on the set of The X Factor (a story I actually spent an entire day on). 

The job swung between moments of feeling I was covering stories that really mattered, and moments where I needed to hold my breath and just get it over with. 

I recall being dispatched to a nightclub in London where a very famous young star had allegedly been seen drinking heavily, despite being a recovering alcoholic. I was relieved that the story went nowhere. 

Much of my time was spent on the doorstep, knocking doors to get new lines on breaking stories or chasing leads on older ones. 

One time I got a few words with Rolf Harris’s wife not long after he was accused of sexual assault. It was a two-minute chat that resulted in a huge front page story. The editors sent me a bottle of Champagne. This was how much exclusives mattered. They were everything. 

Anything about the royal family, especially the young royals - Harry, William and Kate - was extremely high value. But the royals are a closed circle, and any exclusives I ever managed to get were through sheer luck from chatting to the right person at the right time. 

My time as a tabloid reporter was punctuated with incredible highs and anxiety-riddled lows. 

Despite delivering agenda-setting exclusives or producing in depth coverage of a big court case everyone was following, you were only ever as good as your next front page splash. 

Such is the competition on Fleet Street that I used to wait for the next day’s front pages to drop with utter dread at 10pm. Once they had arrived and there was nothing there I could be accused of having missed, I breathed a sigh of relief.

It’s this experience that helps me to understand what it must have been like to be a “foot solider”, as Grant calls them, for a tabloid newspaper when phone hacking was “widespread and habitual”.

You did what was necessary to get the story, because that was the job. And because your competition was doing all of the same things. 

Is reform needed?

It will be interesting to see what argument, if any, the documentary makes for press reform. You need to remember that phone hacking was and still is already illegal. As is breaking into someone’s home, which Grant says happened to him. That is a matter for police to enforce and for corporations to address within their culture. 

And there’s already been a change in culture. Grant and his Hacked Off campaign group may argue there hasn’t been sufficient accountability, but it’s hard to see how tougher laws and regulation can do much at this point. 

Any calls for reform need to be balanced against a need to safeguard press freedom, which is essential for a functioning democracy. 

I think it more likely that Grant and Harry want the scalps of key executives who oversaw privacy invasions and have continued to work in the industry. Harry also wants the satisfaction of more High Court wins, and a very public spanking for the newspapers involved. 

The media is already in crisis thanks to the rise in online news, killing the business model of making money from print ads and paper sales. 

If Brits want a media that is more focused on “real” news, then we all need to be honest with ourselves about why the press is so obsessed with entertainment journalism. It’s because we as a society are obsessed with it too. 

These celebrity scoops are needed to fund the important journalism, the stuff that holds politicians to account and exposes wrongdoing. They are what people click on and share on social media. 

A more positive way forward would be to encourage people to get comfortable with paying for their news. A more stable business model for the media would mean we get the journalism we all want and need. 

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In other news 

Kamala is brat - is she the future president?

Kamala Harris’s bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee looks certain to be a success, raising $80m in donations in 24 hours and gaining high profile endorsements like Biden and Hillary Clinton. I’ll admit had you asked me a month ago whether she could take over for Joe Biden, I would have been sceptical. That’s because in terms of vice presidents, she has not polled well compared to her predecessors. But the momentum behind her campaign has been truly remarkable in these early days. It’s possible that enthusiasm comes from the sheer relief Democrats feel at Biden’s decision to step aside. 

Memeification of Harris. The VP is benefiting from major good vibes around her campaign and that is powerful stuff. There’s the backing from singer Charli XCX, whose “Kamala is brat” tweet led the Harris campaign to rebrand its online presence based on Charli’s Brat album cover. Content creators are taking clips from her speeches and setting them to music. It’s the kind of PR you cannot buy.

What does brat mean? The struggle to explain what “Kamala is brat” actually means has inspired 1000+ word features and TV presenters holding up copies of Charli’s album in a bid to make it make sense. Ultimately, it means she’s cool.

 

Can she win? One early poll suggests Harris leads Trump 44% to 42%. Previous “what if” polls had suggested she trails the former president. Now that we have moved from a hypothetical match-up to a very real one, things could change rapidly. Keep an eye out for the polls after Harris announces her running mate. The other week I said Biden needed to reinvigorate his election campaign, and by stepping back he has done that. Now instead of the focus being on whether Biden is too old to run, it’s now whether Trump is too old to run. Plus Harris is already going big on her career as an attorney general and prosecutor - the prosecutor vs felon slogan is a powerful one. 

Why should Brits care? A few people asked me this week why the US election gets so much coverage here. In part it’s because it is more dramatic than a series of West Wing. Trump’s legal woes. Biden stepping down. Trump nearly being assassinated. The fact it’s still all to play for. However more importantly it’s because the person in charge of the US and the direction they take in the coming years makes a difference for us. Especially when it comes to foreign policy. It could have a huge impact on the conflict in Ukraine - where withdrawal of US support would almost certainly mean a loss for Volodomyr Zelenskyy. Trump has indicated he may withdraw from Nato, which would have an impact on Europe’s security. Then there’s the economy, with Trump potentially starting a trade war with China and adding tariffs to almost all imports. And then there’s the psychological impact of any change to the UK’s “special relationship” with the US. If there is a feeling we can no longer rely on the US to be our close diplomatic and security partner then that may lead the government to rethink certain approaches. 

Anything else? It’s pronounced comma-la, not kar-meh-la. 

Crazy stat: 2024 will be the first White House race since 1976 without a Bush, Biden or Clinton on the ticket.

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• Is JD Vance the wrong pick for Trump? The vice president pick is usually a chance for a presidential candidate to broaden their appeal. With JD Vance, it’s possible Trump has missed an opportunity. Vance’s stance on women- including anti-abortion statements and a newly viral old clip where he refers to people who do not have kids as “childless cat ladies” - could become a liability for Trump. The former president already is polling less favourably with women this time around. Politico writes: “…when it comes to the women’s vote, especially with young and urban women, Vance only exacerbates Trump’s problem — one that’s only been worsened by the former president’s recent legal cases involving women.”

• PM cracks down hard Labour rebels. Seven Labour MPs were suspended from the party (they will now sit as independents) for voting in favour of an SNP amendment to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Sir Keir Starmer’s election campaign included a commitment to keep the cap until it became affordable to remove it. The new PM has come in for criticism for coming down hard on MPs who were voting to ease child poverty. However Starmer will be wanting to stamp out dissent from within the party on day one - having promised voters the Labour Party has swung back to the centre left. His concern with an early rebellion will be preventing criticism that he is vulnerable to being controlled by far left figures in the party, as well as taking a tough approach to discipline early on. The debate over the cap is unlikely to go away, with the SNP, Green Party, Reform and Lib Dems joining voices within Labour in backing its removal. 

  What is the two-child benefit cap? It’s not actually referring to child benefit. The two-child limit was introduced in 2017 to restrict support in universal credit and tax credits to two children in a family. Read more in Money Saving Expert’s explainer. 

• National emergency over violence against women and girls. An official report found that more than a million violent crimes against women and children were recorded in the 12 months to March 2023, equivalent to almost 3,000 crimes every day in England and Wales. The report issued by the National Police Chiefs Council said: “Violence against women and girls (VAWG) has reached epidemic levels in England and Wales, in terms of its scale, complexity and impact on victims.” Young men and boys are at risk of being radicalised into extreme misogyny by online influencers like Andrew Tate, the report warned. The report noted that extreme online content and misogynistic influencers were "fuelling sex offences committed by teenage boys" who had been “radicalised”. This New Statesman article from last year discusses the spread of radical misogyny, warning “there are thousands of Andrew Tates out there”. 

• William loves sending WhatsApps, doesn’t love sharing his tax bill. The royal family’s annual accounts have been published and, as always, it has sparked headlines about the cost to the taxpayer. The Crown Estate’s profits jumped to £1.1bn thanks to deals involving leasing of seabed sites to offshore wind producers. This means the money the royal family receives from the government will rise to £132m, up from £86.3m. In a light-hearted interview, the Duchy of Cornwall’s secretary revealed Prince William communicates regarding the estate’s handling through a flurry of WhatsApp messages. But end-of-year accounts for the Duchy of Cornwall (which is not part of the Crown Estate) show that William has withheld the amount of tax he pays on his earnings. The accounts for the last full year - in which Charles was the Prince of Wales - revealed he voluntarily paid £5.9 million in income tax. William has chosen not to reveal the amount, as he is not obliged to do so, but we do know he pays a standard rate tax on his earnings - which were £23.6m. 

• Were the Just Stop Oil sentences too harsh? Celebrities are among those who have condemned the lengthy sentences given to Just Stop Oil protesters. Roger Hallam, 58, was jailed for five years, and four others for four years, after being found guilty of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. It relates to a protest that disrupted the M25 in London for more than four days in November 2022. In the Observer Sonia Sodha wrote that “to suggest that freedom of conscience creates an unlimited right to cause other citizens harm is to fail to engage with the nature of their offence”.

• Whale vs boat. In a battle of whale vs boat, whale won when a humpback sent two people flying into the water off the New Hampshire coast in the US. The two sailors on board were shaken but unharmed. 

• Cocaine sharks. Sharks in Brazilian waters have tested positive for cocaine. Study scientists believe cocaine is getting into fish through waste from drug users’ bodies entering the sewage system and cocaine-refining laboratories disposing pure cocaine into sewage ducts. 

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