A helpful collision of law and PR

February 11, 2010

Vanessa Perroncel’s solicitor believes that her client, and possibly her client’s lover, John Terry, may have had their phones illegally hacked. Charlotte Harris of JMW Solicitors does not specify which newspapers may have been involved in the hacking – a deeply scurrilous activity if you want our opinion – but, according to Media Guardian, she believes there is evidence that information from voicemail messages has appeared in national newspaper articles.

“We believe that Ms Perroncel’s tele­phone and that of her close friend [by which we assume Terry is meant] have been the subject of illegal interception and a complaint arrived with the Information Commissioner’s Office this morning,” says Ms Harris, who is also in the process of contacting various authorities, including the police and the information commissioner. She had also written to mobile-phone operator Vodafone.

Interestingly, Ms Harris also represents Max Clifford, a man who (to his considerable irritation) is no stranger to phone hacking. Indeed, Clifford, who of course represents the love-struck but charmingly silent Ms Perroncel, last week won a court action allowing him access to documents concerning the News of the World phone-hacking case, which saw a private investigator used by the paper, Glenn Mulcaire, and the paper’s royal editor, Clive Goodman, jailed.

Phone hacking is not a good thing. It is a despicable invasion of a person’s privacy, even if that person plays for Chelsea. But isn’t it interesting that just a few days after the News of the World’s second splash on the dangerous and doomed liaison between John Terry and Vanessa Perroncel, a story wends its way to the press alleging malfeasance in the means by which the story was uncovered?

Sometimes, law and PR collide in the most congenial of ways.

Sadly, there seem to be no rights free images of Ms Perroncel available, on Flickr or elsewhere. We infer nothing.

 

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Good work by Rusbridger

February 10, 2012
scissors

The headline says it all: ‘Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger takes pay cut‘.

Dan Sabbagh’s piece says a bit more: said editor ‘emailed staff at the newspaper to say that his salary in the upcoming 2012-13 financial year will be £395,010, compared with £438,900 in the current financial year’.

Some voices say: ‘How worthy.’

Others opine: ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’

But we say: good work by Mr Rusbridger. For the sake of the media’s survival, we hope that others in senior positions in the industry will follow suit.

Image of toolkit allegedly deployed by Alan Rusbridger courtesy of Flickr user LollyKnit.

From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.