by Christopher Hird
Dartmouth Films
I write as the former managing editor of the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism and before that as a journalist on the Economist, New Statesman
and Sunday Times and as a reporter and producer of factual and current affairs
television. Since 2008 I have run Dartmouth
Films, an independent documentary company. I also write a “position paper”
with some caution as those attending the seminar are much more versed in these
matters than I am. However, I hope I can bring some perspective as a practising
journalist to the discussion.
I think it worth noting that the building of a media agenda
around the narrative of national security as a means of suppressing the work of
journalists – and, indeed, oppressing journalists themselves – is not new. In
particular, in the second half of the 1970s the Labour government successfully
deported two US citizens - Philip Agee (a CIA whistleblower) and Mark Hosenball
(a journalist) on the grounds that their reporting of the CIA’s undercover work
was a threat to national security. When a British former soldier – John Berry -
knowing that what Agee was saying was true, contacted two journalists – Crispin
Aubrey and Duncan Campbell – all three were arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act.
Although, in the end, the trial effectively collapsed it was far from a
foregone conclusion that it would.
In the context of this seminar, the point to emphasise is
that the line pedalled by the government and in private briefings to the
media was that these five were a threat
to national security – a narrative reinforced by witnesses in the ABC trial (as it
was known) not being identified. And further reinforced in my own case – as one
of the people standing bail for the accused – by telephone calls from Special
Branch to my employers (the Daily Mail) underlying the seriousness of the offences.
The media consensus – until the
collapse of the ABC case – was very much: if a Labour government says these
people are a threat to national security, then we should trust them. At the
time, the only media organisations which consistently attacked this position
were Time Out (which had published Hosenball’s work and employed Aubrey) and
the New Statesman (who had decided to employ Campbell) – the latter running
brilliant essays by EP Thompson on – among other things – the cosy and
corrupting relationship between the security services and the national
newspapers. (The case and the operation of the secret state were all discussed
in Crispin
Aubrey’s 1981 book: Who is Watching You? Britain’s Security Services and
the Official Secrets Act)
35 years on what has changed? Well, starting with the good
news: The Guardian. Unlike in the 1970s there is a major media organisation
which is willing to devote a substantial amount of money to challenge the unaccountable
operations of the secret state, as its publication of the Snowden papers
demonstrates. Faced with a lack of transparency around the operation of the
security services, imagine a world without the Guardian : remember that its
publication of both the Wikileaks
disclosures and those of Snowden provoked some of the Guardian’s competitors to
launch attacks on the paper, claiming that they undermined national security –
claims often based on briefings from unnamed “security sources”.
The bad news. That UK legislation to ensure that journalists
can do their job of ensuring appropriate transparency of state and other agencies
is not fit for purpose. In my capacity as Managing Editor of the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism I am one of the people who has taken the British
government to the European Court of Human Rights in an attempt to secure a
ruling that the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 is a breach of the European Convention as
it allows for mass surveillance of journalists’ (and others) communications. In
the 1970s they tapped Crispin Aubrey’s phone. Today sophisticated computer
programmes can routinely search and analyse all our communications – phone and
emails.
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