But only if the media
do the job they claim to be doing, investigating malfeasance at every
level.
For anybody with enough patience to sit
through the televised committee hearings on the l’affaire Murdoch, at
the end of it all, you would have learnt very little about the
relationship between the political class, the police and the media,
aside that is from the fact that they stick together like glue.
Craig Murray put it this way:
"I find it hard to believe that
anybody can watch today’s clutch of Select Committee hearings without
coming away with one overwhelming impression; the extraordinarily low
quality of the UK’s Members of Parliament. [...]
"The Murdochs could bat away
these pompous blunderers all day. Even the dull transatlantic management
speak of James Murdoch baffles them. It is humiliating for this country
that these dullards are our representatives." — ‘
Murdoch Circus‘ by Craig Murray, 19 July 2011
In fact the entire proceedings came across like a carefully
orchestrated dance. At one point during its coverage the BBC asked
whether it was now time ‘to draw a line under [it] and move on’? Move
on, or is it a call for a move back to business as usual? After all why
would the BBC ask this question in the first place? It’s outrageous that
with only the surface of Murdoch’s criminal empire’s connection to
political power scratched that the BBC thought it worthwhile to ask this
question.
What it reveals of course is that the BBC’s relationship with
corporate power is just as corrupt as that of the political class and
desperate to get back to the traditional relationship between the rulers
and the ruled. The BBC is well aware that this is yet another scandal
that further undermines the legitimacy of government.
Those pesky Downing Street emails
Timing is everything with these events, spread as they are over a
period of at least nine years and made all the more complex by the
revolving door relationship between the media and the political class.
Thus who knew what and when is critical to assigning
responsibility/culpability for this scandal.
Specifically, did David Cameron know about Andy Coulson’s involvement with the hacking/bribery scandal when he hired him?
One event did emerge yesterday that potentially shone a light on the
hidden relationship between News Corp, via Andy Coulson and the Met
police’s commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and 10 Downing Street. Thus
every effort had to be expended to make sure that there was no
connection between Cameron and News Corp, though in doing so, they have
revealed a direct connection to Downing Street and Cameron’s posse of
advisors:
“The Met had hired the paper’s
former deputy editor Wallis for PR work but the home affairs select
committee was told of the plan to keep it secret from Mr Cameron. An
email exchange released by Downing Street reveals how Mr Yates offered
to ‘have a conversation in the margins’ before Mr Llewellyn replied: ‘I
don’t think it would really be appropriate for the PM, or anyone else at
No.10, to discuss this issue with you and would be grateful if it were
not raised please.’ — ‘John Yates was told to keep Neil Wallis secret from David Cameron‘, Metro 19 July 2011
In fact, within the emails released by 10 Downing Street, the issue
is not actually mentioned at all, it’s all ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’.
What emerges is that the ‘issue’ itself should not be committed to print
as it would reveal a direct connection between Cameron and News Corp’s
criminal activities. But why keep it secret? This from the Guardian:
Sir Paul Stephenson, the
outgoing Metropolitan police commissioner, has told MPs he was advised
by a senior Downing Street official not to risk “compromising” the prime
minister by disclosing to him information related to the phone-hacking
scandal.
“Stephenson said he was unable
to name the No 10 aide but that outgoing Met assistant commissioner,
John Yates, who also resigned over the phone-hacking scandal, would
know. Yates later told the same home affairs select committee that it
was No 10 chief of staff Ed Llewellyn who turned down his offer to brief
Downing Street on the “nuances” of the hacking investigation after the
New York Times story in September 2010.
/../
To the surprise of MPs, he [Sir
Paul Stephenson] added: “Actually a senior official at No 10 guided us
that actually we should not compromise the prime minister, and it seems
to me to be entirely sensible.” — ‘Paul Stephenson: No 10 aide warned me not to compromise Cameron‘, The Guardian , 19 July 2011.
‘Nuances’? ‘Guided us’? You see what I’m getting at here, it’s
‘plausible deniability’ all round. 10 Downing Street knew that News Corp
was conducting criminal activities and colluding with the Met police
and employing people with a direct connection to News Corp’s criminal
enterprise and yet did nothing about it, more concerned with ‘protecting
the pm’ (because of his hiring of Andy Coulson) than with investigating
the criminal actions of News Corp and the police, even colluding with
the man in charge of the investigation, John Yates to make sure the
scandal was hidden, at least in recorded form from Cameron.
It gets worse. At yesterday’s committee meeting with Stephenson it was revealed that Stephenson tried to get the Guardian to halt its investigations into the scandal two years ago:
Stephenson was also asked about
a meeting he had with the Guardian in December 2009 to try to persuade
the newspaper that its coverage of phone hacking was exaggerated and
incorrect.
Asked whether he had looked
back “over the evidence and over the case” before going to see them and
tell them they were getting it wrong, he said: “I am the commissioner of
the Met, I have many people assisting me and I have senior grade chief
constables like Mr Yates. Mr Yates gave me assurances there was nothing
new to the Guardian article. I think I have a right to rely on those
assurances.”
He went to the Guardian because
the paper continued to run the campaign, he said – something for which
he has now acknowledged “we should be grateful”.
He denied he had taken advice
from Wallis – who he said had not worked directly for him as an adviser –
before the Guardian meeting. — (ibid)
It’s a self-referential system with Yates backing Stephenson and
Stephenson backing Yates, there is no independent evidence except
perhaps these crucial Downing street emails that indicate the complete
opposite, namely that at the highest levels there was collusion between
Downing Street and Commissioner Stephenson and deputy Commissioner Yates
to cover up Coulson’s involvement in criminal activities.
And remember that this relationship between transnational corporate
power and the political class is not new, it extends back thirty-two
years, to 1979 and the election of the Thatcher government, the Dirty
Digger’s first triumph in shaping the British political process, a
process consummated with the eventual election of the Labour government
in 1997 when Murdoch switched sides and backed Labour and its
corporatist agenda.
The question is: will this story be pursued to its conclusion by a
corporate/state press that seems more concerned with ‘drawing a line’
under the events and is most definitely not interested in pursuing the incestuous and utterly corrupt relationship between the media, the police and the state.
