Chequebook journalism can never, ever be right

Not for the first time, the Government has looked into the possibility of making some of the most gross chequebook journalism a criminal offence. Not for the first time, the Government has retreated, after broad-ranging consultations suggested that the proposals it tendered were utterly useless.

Not for the first time, the Government has looked into the possibility of making some of the most gross chequebook journalism a criminal offence. Not for the first time, the Government has retreated, after broad-ranging consultations suggested that the proposals it tendered were utterly useless.

The Lord Chancellor's office had floated the idea that it should be made a criminal offence for journalists to pay, or to agree to pay, witnesses in current criminal proceedings with a view to publishing their stories when the trial is over. No newspaper has published a word in defence of the proposals, while the Society of Editors declared that such a law would be "the Dangerous Dogs Act on legs". I don't understand this slogan, or quite what the addition of extra legs to already dangerous dogs is attempting to communicate, and can only paraphrase St Luke and counsel: "Editor, edit thyself."

Which, of course, is exactly the Society of Editors' line on the issue, anyway. The usual stern warnings about the undermining of the voluntary system of press regulation and the threat posed to press freedom have been brandished by the society, as well as a further, much more revealing observation. The society concedes that while paying witnesses may be objectionable, this is merely a question of taste, and "it is not a crime in itself to be objectionable".

Indeed, it is not a crime to be objectionable. But it is far from desirable all the same.

Actions don't have to be crimes for them to be utterly reprehensible, and we shouldn't need to refer constantly to the letter of the law in telling right from wrong. It is not a crime, for example, to tell lies or practise deceit. But all professional organisations recognise that lying is unethical. Except, if we are to believe the Society of Editors, journalists.

We would, if a law against buying up witnesses came into effect, just broker secret deals that no one uninvolved need ever know about. That's a fine reason, isn't it, for not having a law? That the law would just be flouted? This from a profession that rightly criticises all other professions that self-regulate. What a laugh.

Which is not to say that the proposals were right. They weren't. They were stupid and clumsy. They missed the point. The idea behind the suggested legislation was that promising payment before a trial might prejudice the course of the trial. A promise of payment might, for example, lead a witness to distort his story in order to make it worth as much money as possible. Since, under the new legislation, a witness could sell his story after the trial anyway, the incentive to do such a thing would not be removed.

This, though, is a small point against the suggested legislation, compared to the much larger one, which is that some witnesses would never testify without the financial incentives that the press offer. Most recently, Ted Francis admitted he'd given Jeffrey Archer a false alibi in return for £19,000.

This should surprise no one. Just as giving a false alibi is the act of a man whose morals are more than questionable, so is receiving money for finally admitting the truth. As for offering such inducements, there may be justification if the facts being bought really are, as the Press Complaints Commission stipulates, "in the public interest". But the trouble with the Press Complaints Commission, and the rest of the nation, is that we've collectively forgotten, if we ever knew, the difference between interest and prurience.

The PCC rejected a complaint from the Labour MP Clive Soley recently, who had taken umbrage to the fact that five children were paid to tell their stories in the wake of the Amy Gehring trial. The commission ruled that the newspapers concerned had not broken the commission's voluntary code of ethics. It was in the public interest because Amy Gerhing was in this country because of the chronic teacher shortage, said the commission. Who suspected that a chronic teacher shortage was anything but a good thing until some teenage boys were able to explain that the shortage led directly to the fulfilment of their widest fantasies?

Anyway, there we are. Buying children's stories about their sexual abuse and then selling them on as entertainment is not unethical. Nor is turning the solemn duty of giving evidence in a criminal trial into a financial opportunity. Nor is getting your own back on a former partner in the public eye by kissing and telling for money, nor revealing the intimate details of the life of your ex-employer for money, nor selling pictures of your wedding, your babies, your foul taste in interior decoration, for money.

The thing is, though, that if such things were widely considered to be unethical, then perhaps society would be far the better for it. Instead, though, the word unethical is shied away from. These things are instead considered unwholesome or tacky or distasteful by those who turn their noses up. Those people, in turn, are pilloried as snobs and elitists for nurturing such precious views by those who trade in such rotten currency.

Chequebook journalism is just one aspect of a general lack of moral decency or ethical purpose in the media and in wider society, the two being sides of the same coin. That's part of the reason why government can never adequately argue for its banning. Politicians know that chequebook journalism stinks, but they fail to realise that you cannot criminalise a symptom. All that you can do with a symptom is diagnose a disease.

It is good to see that at last some public body is beginning to acknowledge that the rush to sell all human experience that can attract a buyer is something that ought to be challenged. Scotland Yard lawyers are said to be looking into ways of stripping former policeman Ken Wharfe of the profits made from his guard-and-tell memoir of Diana Windsor.

It is about time the police took note of how much the media mentality is overtaking its ranks – along with so many other aspects of our ethical and cultural lives. It has been quite a revelation seeing the police investigating the murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman insisting that far from the media manipulating the police, the police throughout the investigation were manipulating the media.

Did the police make an entirely innaccurate assessment of the situation – that the girls were still alive – and doggedly stick to it, to manipulate the media? If so, that "manipulation" has resulted in media attention now being a major obstacle to justice for the girls. Or did the police hold on to a scenario that the media adored because they, like so many of us, are now so used to thinking in media-speak and pandering to that simple, simple-minded agenda so much they don't even know they're doing it.

Even now, with judicial proceedings hampered by baying mobs and the people of Soham begging for grief tourists to go away, those elements of the media who did most to stir up emotions that had no personal roots, and no actual loss or grief to sustain them, continue to justify themselves while at the same time trying to create a distance between themselves and what their handiwork has spawned. Were there any witnesses available for them to open their chequebooks for, they'd be doing that too. A windfall payment, because two lovely girls were killed. How can this, or anything like it, be ethical?

d.orr@independent.co.uk

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