Journalists for Jesus?

The tabloid readership had been rather hypocritical. They accepted the use of phone hacking by journalists and their informants when the practice uncovered the indiscretions of celebrities and the match-fixing of international cricketers.

But it was the revelation that a private detective, working on behalf of The News of the World, had illegally accessed the mobile phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler (and those of the parents of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, relatives of 7/7 bomb victims and families of casualties in Afghanistan) which ignited total public outrage. This resulted in the closing of the Sunday paper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, in July.

National life

The implications for our national life are enormous and still unfolding.

We have some people in our police force who, it seems, are prepared to sell the personal information of victims for cash. We have a press which apparently stops at nothing to obtain a sensational story which will sell newspapers. We have media controllers who have such sway over public opinion that intimidated politicians feel they must ingratiate themselves with people like Mr. Murdoch or they have little chance of being elected.

What does this say about British democracy? Who really runs the country? Which voices are allowed to be heard in our national newspapers and on TV and which are not? (There was a collective sigh of relief as Rupert Murdoch withdrew his takeover bid for BSkyB.) We have a population so sold on celebrity and sensationalism that this state of affairs is almost inevitable.

When I see soppy stories about the private lives of soap stars or footballers dominating the pages of the ‘red tops’ I wonder which stories have been neglected to make room for this nonsense. In particular, of course, there is the huge under-reporting of the persecution of Christians across the world.

The News of the World phone hacking scandal is the third shocking exposure of the corruption at the heart of our national life in as many years. First, it was the dodgy dealing of our major banks. Then it was the scandal over MPs’ expenses. Now it is the ‘fourth estate’ of the press. The relative silence of other tabloids in condemning The News of the World implies that this kind of abuse goes wider than one paper.

The truth is that the secular world and its self-righteous news presenters talk a good line on ‘morality’ in public life, but, in reality, money, sex and power call the shots in a godless society and all three of those tend to corrupt. Who says the Bible is wrong about human nature needing redemption? No doubt there are some journalists of real integrity out there somewhere, but remember the hypocrisy of the BBC’s Andrew Marr using a gagging order when it suited him. Much as Christians love Britain, we can’t help ‘longing for a better country’ (Hebrews 11.16).

This newspaper

EN is a small outfit and we don’t get everything right. Sometimes we have been accused of giving a false impression of evangelical life by not reporting certain stories. In a way that is true. We don’t tend to report on church splits and ministers who run off with their secretaries, etc. We acknowledge that, regrettably, it happens, but we don’t report on specific incidents. We take the view that, in such circumstances, the last thing a grieving wife and children need is for their names to be in a newspaper. And who is going to be helped by publishing such details? It is tricky, but we are called to both truth and love.