Why UK tabloids bin-dive and blag

Now,though,one tabloid has gone too far. Rupert Murdochs News Corporation said on Thursday it will close its Sunday scandal sheet News of the World after the next edition,as a result of an escalating phone hacking scandal.

Allegations that tabloid journalists from the paper hacked into the mobile voicemails of ordinary people including a schoolgirl who was later found murdered,and victims and families of the 2005 terrorist attack in London and dead British soldiers have outraged Britons and spurred calls for public inquiries into tabloid behaviour,tougher regulation and limits on Murdochs ownership of media outlets.

The revelations,initially carried by the left-leaning Guardian newspaper,are part of a long-running hacking scandal which initially emerged when the royal family realised their phones were being hacked. Until now it has focused on the News of the Worlds pursuit of celebrities and royals.

As Britain descends into one of its regular bouts of self examination,its worth asking whether the countrys tabloids are really so much worse than those elsewhere. How do they stack up against rivals across the Atlantic,where the New York Post,another Murdoch property,faces a lawsuit over its claims that the maid at the centre of an attempted rape case against Dominic Strauss-Kahn was a prostitute. And what about the rest of Europe?

Steven Barnett,professor of communications at Westminster University,is in no doubt that Britains tabloids go further than any others.

Time and time again,particularly in the last three or four years when I travel for work,Im asked what is it about our tabloid press? he said. Why are they so outrageous and why is nothing done about it? I think the rest of the world looks on in astonishment frankly.

So what is it that drives Britains tabloids in a race to the bottom? And what holds back the press in other countries?

Blagging,bin-diving and tip offs

In Britain,the short answer is that the tabloids push harder because they can. Or rather,in a ferociously competitive environment,they must because if they dont do it,somebody else will.

Nick Davies,an investigative reporter for the Guardian and author of Flat Earth News,a book exposing Fleet Street excesses,has been a principal investigator of British tabloid scandals. Davies describes a regime of fear in British tabloid newsrooms in which journalists are terrified of getting fired unless they constantly produce exclusives. In that environment,ethics are often cast aside.

Tactics include Pell-style bin-diving,blagging pretending to be someone else to gain access to private information about an individual paying the police for tip-offs,and hiring private investigators to do the above or tail targets.

Some of those methods have been around for decades. It has long been known to insiders that British newspapers provide police sources with bungs slang for bribes. But with the advent of computers,voicemail and mobile phones,Fleet Street has become ever more sophisticated.

Some of Britains broadsheets are not totally averse to those methods,though Davies said that to his knowledge,the Guardian,The Financial Times and Britains Independent newspaper shun the use of illegal or unethical tactics and the employment of private detectives. Everybody else did it, he said. The Guardian and Financial Times are also among a handful of titles which refuse to follow a widespread tabloid practice of paying sources for a story.

Claire Enders,the head of the Enders Analysis media consultancy,said the British dont turn to tabloids for facts. There are more tabloids read in Britain than elsewhere,and Ive always put that down to the fact that news on TV is impartial so people get their opinions from the tabloids.

It doesnt help that the press watchdog is so weak. In Britain,the press is self-regulated by a body called the Press Complaints Commission,which can require a paper to publish its rulings on complaints against newspapers but little else. Even its gentlest critics call it toothless; one British parliamentarian this week described it as a fishnet condom.

Given British tabloids reputation,why the outrage over this case? Its one thing to target non-celebrities,many in the UK have noted this week,and another to go after the victims of crime and terrorism.

Private Eye has long used the derogatory term hacks to describe British journalists, said Ian Hislop,editor of Private Eye,a satirical bi-weekly magazine that has made media excesses a staple of its columns and is also a vigorous critic of Murdochs companies. We had no idea that under Rupert Murdochs malign influence,so many of them would take the term literally, he said in an email.

Other democracies every bit as strong and robust as ours thrive without the nauseating tabloid coverage and routine intrusion into ordinary peoples private lives, said Westminster Universitys Barnett. In terms of the tactics that they use and the way they routinely invade peoples privacy without any regard for the impact on those individuals,I think the Italians and others would still regard the British press as even below theirs. As do Americans.

The economy,stupid

The US has its share of tabloids full of punning headlines and lurid tales. But in general their journalists say they dont go as far as their British counterparts. One of the big differences between the two countries,according to Tom Rosenstiel,director of the Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington DC,boils down to economics. In the US,newspapers generate about 75 to 80 of their revenue from advertisers while newspapers in the UK depend more on newsstand sales.

While British papers need to shout,there is a tradition of the American press that is more serious, says Rosenstiel. That tradition has been encouraged by advertisers. They are paying for space that is credible and respectable.

Some scandals,such as President Bill Clintons affair with intern Monica Lewinsky,are broken by serious magazines and rely not on hacking but on more traditional reporting methods. Michael Isikoff,the reporter for Newsweek Magazine who originally uncovered the story,says the concept of hacking didnt even exist at that time.

I adhered to the standard rules of journalistic practice, Isikoff,who has since left Newsweek,said. I never pretended to be anyone other than who I was a journalist for Newsweek.

French restraint

In Europe,stronger laws and what some argue is an innate aversion to sleaze limit the tactics of the tabloids.

In France,strict privacy laws bar newspapers and magazines from printing intrusive photographs of public figures in private moments. Frederic Gerschel,a senior journalist at the daily Le Parisien,previously worked at the glossy,celebrity-filled weekly Paris Match and says he has never heard of papers hiring private detectives,intercepting telephone calls or sending people out undercover to frame or trap public figures.

Journalists dont use the same methods as British tabloids. We dont allow just anything there is a general respect, he said. A person who hacked into a mobile phone would be frowned upon by his peers. Im not saying everyone is whiter than white,but we respect a code. I have never come across journalists hacking into telephones or private conversations. Those are boundaries we have not yet crossed.

French media work to a rule that reporting stops at the bedroom door unless an issue with a public officials private life affects how they perform their duties. Politicians often sue magazines if they print images of their romantic partners and seek retractions of defamatory articles.

That tradition of restraint earned the French media criticism recently when stories emerged that Strauss-Kahn,head of the IMF,had faced previous allegations of harassment. Now,as doubts about the credibility of his hotel maid accuser grow,Gershel feels the French approach has been vindicated.

When I see how the US media embellished the Strauss-Kahn story,I think that in the end we did things right in France, Gershel said.

But there is a twist. French papers restraint may also be due to their frequent connections to broader business interests. Le Figaro,Frances top circulation daily,is owned by the Dassault Group,which owns companies like Dassault Aviation and whose CEO Serge Dassault is a senator for the ruling UMP party. The daily Les Echos,one of Frances top business newspapers,is owned by Bernard Arnault,chief executive of luxury goods firm LVMH.

Open secrets

Germanys Bild,read by about 12 million people each day and famous for its pictures of nude women on page one,regularly pays non-journalist sources for candid celebrity pictures and can certainly give the Sun a run for their money, according to Amanda Ball,senior lecturer in media law at Nottingham Trent Universitys Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism.

But Germany also has stringent privacy laws,and even its tabloids are cautious about reporting on the private lives of political leaders and celebrities unless they cross a loosely defined boundary and do something flagrantly public.

Wiretaps

In Italy,a country whose biggest private broadcaster Mediaset is owned by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi,its the serious newspapers Corriere della Sera,La Repubblica,La Stampa which have published information gained by wire-taps.

Italys government has been trying to pass a bill curbing the use of wiretaps by investigators and the publication of leaked phone conversations by newspapers. Critics say it is an effort to muzzle the press and will help criminals. Wire-taps played a major role in an investigation which last May led to a jail sentence for former Bank of Italy chief Antonio Fazio,over a 2005 takeover battle for Italian bank Antonveneta.

Britains phone tapping scandal has already hit Murdochs News of the World. Exactly how far public outrage will change the broader tabloid press,though,is hard to tell. I certainly think therell be more pressure for us to have a more robust system of regulation, Nottingham Trents Ball said.

At the newsstand outside Kings Cross railway station in London on Wednesday evening,vendor Thomas Treadwell is not so sure. The phone-hacking scandal was definitely helping sell more copies of rival newspapers,but the Sun and the Times are his best sellers and havent been noticeably affected,he said,shrugging as he loaded drinks into a fridge.

Endgame

News of the World closes over hacking scandal

Following are key facts about the Britains biggest-selling tabloid,which will close after Sundays edition as a result of a phone hacking scandal:

NUMBERS:

n The readership of the tabloid was around 7.5 million for each edition between July and December

n Circulation the number of copies sold was around 2.6 million in April 2011

OVERVIEW:

n The News of the World is part of News Group Newspapers,a subsidiary of News International,owned by the News Corporation group of

Rupert Murdoch

n The tabloid was generally considered to have a centre-right political stance,but it supported the Labour Party under Tony Blair at his three general election wins 1997,2001 and 2005

ORIGINS

n Founded by John Browne Bell,the first edition

of the paper was published on Oct 1,1843,in broadsheet format

n It was launched with the statement Our

motto is truth,our practice is the fearless advocacy of the truth

n The newspaper was sold at the low and affordable price of three pence. The aim was to secure circulation amongst the poor,as well as the rich,given that the working classes were newly literate as a result of Victorian education reforms

n The Carr family had a long association with the News of the World. In 1891,the newspaper was acquired by a syndicate including Lascelles Carr,the editor and part-proprietor of the Western Mail newspaper in Cardiff

n The tabloid became the worlds biggest-selling English-language newspaper under the Carr ownership and had an average circulation of 84,41,966 copies in 1950

n It merged with The Empire News on October 23,1960. The Empire News was a Sunday newspaper for citizens of the British Empire or Commonwealth,with a circulation of more than 2.5 million copies

THE Rupert MURDOCH ERA

n Murdoch bought the News of the World in 1969

n Developments in the 1980s included Sunday,the first colour magazine to be published alongside the newspaper in September 1981

n The News of the World changed from broadsheet to tabloid format on May 20,1984

n Wendy Henry became the first female editor

of the paper in 1987

n The leading newspaper supplement in the tabloid was Score,a football section that is published weekly during the football season

SCANDAL

n The closure comes after a growing raft of revelations about phone hacking involving

the tabloid

n The main accusations are that journalists,or their hired investigators,listened to messages left for celebrities,politicians or people involved in major stories on their mobile phones

n The latest claim on Thursday alleged the paper hacked the phones of relatives of British soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan

Sources: Reuters/NMA/www.historic-newspapers.co.uk