The State Journalism is in: Edward Snowden and the British Press.

Julian Petley

Abstract

This article examines the reactions on the part of the government and much of the British

national press to Edward Snowden’s revelations in the Guardian about massive surveillance

by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the National Security Agency

(NSA). It argues that the revelations were politically embarrassing as opposed to damaging to

national security, and that although the government could be expected to adopt a hostile

attitude to the Guardian, it might appear strange that papers such as the Sun, Mail and

Telegraph did likewise, effectively backing calls for the paper to be prosecuted. However,

such a stance is surprising only if one regards such papers as conforming to a ‘Fourth Estate’

model of journalism, and the article argues that they, along with most of the rest of the British

national press, are actually a key part of the Establishment rather than a watchdog over it. It is

therefore entirely unsurprising that when the government and the security services declare

that a particular example of journalistic activity endangers ‘national security’ or damages the

‘national interest’, most newspapers accept this judgement without demur, and act

accordingly.

Key Words

Snowden; Guardian; Rusbridger; national security; GCHQ.

1

‘There’s no Need to Write Any More’

In June 2013 Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger was contacted by someone whom he

describes as ‘a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime

minister’. There followed two meetings in which the official demanded the return or

destruction of all the National Security Agency (NSA) material leaked by Edward Snowden

on which the paper was working. According to Rusbridger: ‘The tone was steely, if cordial,

but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured a far

more draconian approach’. The following month he received a phone call from the ‘centre of

government’ telling him: ‘You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back’. Other

meetings followed with shadowy Whitehall figures, in which the same demand was repeated.

At one of these, Rusbridger was told: ‘You've had your debate. There's no need to write any

more’. This is chilling enough, but even more so is revelation that:

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to

close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force

the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in

the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention.

Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the

table in the UK.

And so it was that on Saturday 20 July, in a deserted basement of the paper’s offices, a senior

editor and a Guardian computer expert smashed up the hard drives and memory chips on

which the encrypted files leaked by Snowden had been stored. They were watched by

technicians from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who took notes and

photographs, but who left empty-handed, one of them joking that ‘we can call off the black

helicopters’ (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/19/david-miranda-

schedule7-danger-reporters)

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‘Promoting a Political or Ideological Cause’

On Sunday 18 August, David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian

journalist who had written a series of stories based on Snowden’s revelations, was held for

almost nine hours (the maximum amount of time permitted by law) by UK authorities as he

passed through Heathrow on his way home to Rio de Janeiro. He was questioned under the

Terrorism Act 2000, the highly controversial section 7 of which allows police officers to stop,

search, question and detain individuals at ports, airports and border areas. He was eventually

released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop,

camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

The legality of the police action was queried both by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg,

and condemned as being without legal basis by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer.

In November Miranda launched a challenge in the High Court. At the time of writing this is

continuing, but it has already flushed into the open a particularly disturbing aspect of his

detention, namely that the document used to request it stated that ‘the disclosure or threat of

disclosure [of the material that he was carrying] is designed to influence a government, and is

made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within

the definition of terrorism and as such we request that the subject is examined under schedule

7’. As Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, exclaimed: ‘The express admission that

politics motivated the detention of David Miranda should shame police and legislators alike.

It's not just the schedule 7 detention power that needs urgent overhaul, but a definition of

terrorism that should chill the blood of any democrat’

(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/02/david-miranda-detained-political-causes).

Nonetheless, when Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, Scotland Yard’s head of counter-

terrorism, appeared before the Commons Home Affairs select committee on 13 December,

she revealed that the police were still combing through the material seized from Miranda in

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order to ascertain whether any offences may have been committed under the Official Secrets

or Terrorism Acts.

Catch-22

In the meantime there had been no let-up in the political pressure on and threats against the

Guardian. Indeed, on 20 August the Independent had revealed that Rusbridger’s emissary

from the ‘centre of government’ had been none other than Britain’s most senior civil servant,

Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, and that the approach took place with the explicit

approval of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Foreign Secretary William Hague.

At prime minister’s questions, on 16 October, the former defence secretary Liam Fox asked

Cameron:

May we have a full and transparent assessment of whether the Guardian’s involvement

in the Snowden affair has damaged Britain’s national security? Does my right hon.

Friend agree that it is bizarre that from some the hacking of a celebrity phone demands

a prosecution, whereas leaving the British people and their security personnel more

vulnerable is seen as opening a debate?

As we shall see, this was by no means the first time that the phone-hacking hare had been set

running during the Snowden affair, but what is interesting here is that Cameron’s reply (a)

shows that the Guardian had been put in a Catch- 22 situation by agreeing to destroy the

computers; and (b) appears to encourage one or more select committees to investigate

whether the Guardian had broken the law:

I commend my right hon. Friend for raising the issue. I think the plain fact is that what

has happened has damaged national security, and in many ways the Guardian itself

admitted that when, having been asked politely by my national security adviser and

Cabinet Secretary to destroy the files that it had, it went ahead and destroyed those

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files. It knows that what it is dealing with is dangerous for national security. I think that

it is up to Select Committees in the House to examine the issue if they wish to do so,

and to make further recommendations.

(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131016/debtext/

131016-0001.htm#13101671000010)

‘McCarthyite Scaremongering’

In a debate on 22 October, Julian Smith, Conservative MP for Skipton and Rippon, launched

a lengthy, innuendo-laden and inaccuracy-strewn attack on the Guardian. In it Smith paid

handsome tribute to ‘our ex-colleague, Louise Mensch, who through her blog, social media

and [Sun] columns has ensured that this major national security issue has been kept alive

throughout’. Mensch was to replay the compliment in her Sun column, 13 November, (of

which more below), in which she referred to ‘brave MP Julian Smith’. The speech was

described by Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, as ‘a piece of McCarthyite

scaremongering’ which ‘disgraces Parliament’. According to Smith, the subject of the debate

was ‘to highlight where the Guardian has crossed the line between responsible journalism

and seriously risking our national security and the lives of those who seek to protect us’. Such

charges are highly contentious, but they informed the entirety of Smith’s speech, at the end of

which he stated that:

The Terrorism Act is clear about the illegality of communicating information about our

intelligence staff and, specifically, GCHQ. The Official Secrets Act is equally clear

about the illegality of communicating classified information that the recipient knows, or

has reasonable cause to believe, to be to the detriment of national security. Last week, I

wrote to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to ask him to investigate whether the

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Guardian has breached those two Acts. I urge the Minister to do everything possible to

ensure that the police expedite their investigation.

In response, James Brokenshire, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home

Department, agreed that the Guardian’s reporting of the Snowden material had done ‘huge

damage to national security’ and echoed Cameron in claiming that ‘in many ways, the

Guardian admitted that when it agreed to destroy files when asked to by the Cabinet

Secretary, Jeremy Heywood’. However, he also added that ‘it is obviously not for Ministers

to direct the police to arrest or investigate anyone … It is for the police and the Crown

Prosecution Service to determine whether a crime has been committed and what action to

take’. (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131022/halltext/

131022h0002.htm#13102269000454). They cannot have been left in much doubt, however,

by this and numerous other political interventions, about what actions the government would

distinctly prefer them to take.

DA-Notices

Smith cropped up again on 28 October when he asked Cameron: ‘Following this morning’s

revelations in the Sun [sic] on the impact of the Snowden leaks, is it not time for any

newspaper that may have crossed the line on national security to come forward and

voluntarily work with the Government to mitigate further risks to our citizens?’ Cameron’s

response was, to all intents and purposes, to suggest that if the Guardian didn’t censor itself,

the government would take on the task:

We have a free press and it is very important that the press feels it is not pre-censored

in what it writes. The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain

how damaging some of these things can be. That is why the Guardian destroyed some

of the information on disks it had, although it has now printed further damaging

material. I do not want to have to use injunctions, D notices or other, tougher measures;

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it is much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. However, if

they do not demonstrate some social responsibility, it will be very difficult for the

Government to stand back and not to act.

(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm131028/debtext/

131028-0001.htm#1310285000470)

Finally, in this inevitably highly selective review of political pressure on the Guardian, one

cannot ignore the remarkable spectacle of Rusbridger being hauled before the Home Affairs

select committee as part of its enquiry into counter-terrorism. As Roy Greenslade pointed out

on 3 December:

What was remarkable is that the whole thing happened at all. With the British press

having obtained the right to its freedom from political control in the 17th century, here

was parliament calling a newspaper to account for exercising that freedom. Why, I kept

asking myself, was an editor being required to explain himself to MPs? What makes

them think they have the right to do so? Do they act for the people or against them?

(http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/03/alan-rusbridger-batted-away-mps-

bluster)

That said, the questioning of Rusbridger by Paul Flynn and the Labour MP for Walsall North,

David Winnick, did give Rusbridger an excellent opportunity to make his case. In particular

he repeatedly pointed out that, contrary to the impression given by much of the press, the

Guardian had not identified anyone named in the NSA files. Furthermore, he also revealed

that the DA-notice committee had not raised any concerns about the published material.

(http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/c231-iv/c23101.htm).

This is particularly important in the light of Cameron’s ill-informed remark about D notices

quoted above.

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DA-Notices are issued by the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee

(DPBAC) which operates a voluntary code between the media and UK Government

departments which have responsibilities for national security. According to the DPBAC, the

Committee and its Notices are ‘a means of providing advice and guidance to the media about

defence and counter-terrorist information the publication of which would be damaging to

national security. The system is voluntary, it has no legal authority and the final responsibility

for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned’

(http://www.dnotice.org.uk/danotices/index.htm), although it should be noted that Geoffrey

Robertson and Andrew Nicol condemn it as ‘a form of censorship by wink and nudge, by

threat and through the complicity of media executives’ (2008: 657).

On 7 November the Committee met and discussed, among other matters, the Snowden affair.

The minutes of this part of the meeting at worth quoting at some length, not least as they

appear to have received no media coverage at all:

Although views were diverse it was agreed that 99% of the media remained committed

to the DA Notice System. It was, however, important to distinguish between

embarrassment and genuine concerns for national security. The Vice-Chairman [Air

Vice-Marshal Vallance] felt that much of the material published by the Guardian fell

into the former category. They also understood that the Guardian’s initial

unwillingness to engage was due to a misunderstanding of the DA Notice Code and in

particular its commitment to confidentiality. The Editor feared that if he shared details

of his story with the secretariat it might potentially attract an injunction . Education was

required on both sides; the PM’s remarks on 28 October being an example of

misunderstanding on the Government side of how the system operated. He

recommended an approach to No 10 offering a briefing on the DA Notice System. The

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Vice-Chairman went on to say that this lack of understanding seemed to highlight a

greater malaise on the official side where there was worrying evidence of

disengagement. For example, the DPBAC Chairman [Jon Thompson, Permanent Under

Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence] had not attended the last two meetings, no

Cabinet Office representative was present and the Home Office and FCO [Foreign and

Commonwealth Office] principals had both sent representatives. By contrast, the Media

Side were well represented and its members made significant efforts to attend.

(http://www.dnotice.org.uk/records.htm)

‘Statutory Control’ of the Press

During this period, British newspapers had loudly and incessantly complained, as indeed they

had done from the start of the announcement of the Leveson Inquiry in July 2011, about the

danger of, as they saw it, ‘statutory control’ of the press. They might, therefore, have been

expected to spring swiftly and vociferously to the Guardian’s defence. Instead, the Mail, Sun

and Telegraph, along with the weekly Spectator, did their absolute utmost to undermine the

paper and to bolster the government’s case. And even those titles which did not join the

attack considerably underplayed both the significance of Snowden’s revelations and the

impropriety of the government’s pressure on the Guardian.

It is possible to distinguish a number of separate themes in the press campaign against the

Guardian and on behalf of the government, which I will now deal with in turn.

Payback

The first concerns pure and simple payback for the Guardian’s phone-hacking revelations

and the resultant Leveson inquiry. An early example occurs in a Mail article by Stephen

Glover on 21 August, headed ‘That Murky Arrest Troubles Me. But the Guardian’s in Murky

Waters Where Those Who Love Their Country Should not Venture’. It concludes thus:

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I also can't help wondering whether the officers didn't feel emboldened to throw their

weight about partly in consequence of the Leveson Report, which has virtually severed

relations between journalists and the police. The Guardian, of course, is almost single-

handedly responsible for Leveson because of its later debunked allegation that the News

of the World deleted the voicemails of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Nor can I

help pointing out the newspaper that has shed copious tears for Mr Miranda, held for

nine hours, had no such concerns over the interrogation of dozens of red-top journalists.

Some were arrested at dawn in front of their families, deprived of their computers for

months and released on bail. Charges won't be brought against some of them. Others

will end up in court. But even the most culpable among them never attempted to

damage their country. With friends like Edward Snowden, and employees such as

Glenn Greenwald, that is what the Guardian is in danger of doing.

Two days later, a Mail editorial entitled ‘Whiff of Hypocrisy?’ argued that ‘press freedom is

an essential right in any democratic society, but along with rights come responsibilities. The

Guardian continues to be vociferous in its demands for police to pursue tabloid journalists

suspected of  acting illegally. Is the paper so arrogant and hypocritical as to believe it is itself

above the law?’ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2401138/DAILY-MAIL-

COMMENT-Border-failings-Britain-soft-touch.html). The following day the same line was

taken by the Spectator in an article headed ‘The Guardian Didn’t Care When Murdoch’s

Journalists Were Arrested. So Why the Hysteria Now?’ This stated that:

It is good to see the Guardian suddenly rediscover its interest in the sanctity of a free

press.  Just five months ago, the paper seemed to have given up on the idea, when it

backed the statutory regulation of newspapers … When David Cameron’s government

proposed to bring back state licensing of the press, this magazine said it would boycott

any such regulator no matter what the consequences. We do not remember Mr

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Rusbridger rushing to support us. He seems to have a rather different test for press

freedom: whatever suits his newspaper the best. The Leveson report, and the notion of

allowing politicians to set the parameters in which the press can operate, seemed to be

quite acceptable to him: after all, it would hurt his rivals the most … Press freedom is

indeed under threat in Britain. The Guardian, for all of its proud history, has proven a

rather unreliable defender of these freedoms in recent years — especially when it has

spotted an opportunity to sock it to Rupert Murdoch. (http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-

week/leading-article/9000981/freedom-and-security/)

The theme occurred yet again in an article by Rod Liddle in the Sun, 10 October, which,

under the headline ‘Guardian Treason Helping Terrorists’, pointed out that:

This is the newspaper which has encouraged State control of the British Press. A

publication which has allied itself with the Hacked Off campaign to restrict the freedom

of what we in the Press can and can't report. It was particularly pious about the handful

of cases in which journalists on other papers hacked the phones of members of the

public in order to get stories. The phone hacking was unquestionably wrong. But it

doesn't compare to what the Guardian has done.

(http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/rodliddle/5192001/Guardian-

treason-is-helping-terrorists.html)

Louise Mensch took the same line in the paper on 13 October, remarking: ‘You know what's

funny about the Guardian newspaper? They were all for State regulation of the Press. The big

cheerleaders for Leveson loved it when the News of the World was closed over illegal

hacking. But when they break the law, they screech about Press freedom’.

The ‘argument’ being deployed in pieces such as these is so manifestly self-interested and

opportunistic as to be barely worth serious consideration. However, the crucial point that

nonetheless needs to be made is that no meaningful comparison can be made between the

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Guardian’s exposure of forms of state surveillance which should be of concern to every

citizen in the land, and the phone-hacking by the News of the World for reasons which had

absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the public interest. Furthermore, as we have seen,

David Miranda was detained in circumstances of highly dubious legality and he has thus far

been charged with precisely nothing, whilst many of those accused of phone-hacking have

been both arrested and charged, and, in some cases, have already been convicted of criminal

offences as clear-cut as they are serious.

‘A Wall of Prejudice’

A second theme broadened out the attack on the Guardian to take in other Tory hate objects,

namely the BBC, and, by extension, the ‘liberal-Left’. Entirely unsurprisingly, this was the

province of the Mail. It was sparked off by a speech by the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker,

which the Mail decided the BBC failed to cover in sufficient detail. Thus, on 9 October, in an

editorial headed ‘The Paper that Helps Britain’s Enemies’, it thundered:

It is impossible to imagine a graver charge against a newspaper than that it has given

succour to our country’s enemies and endangered all our lives by handing terrorists ‘the

gift they need to evade us and strike at will’. Yet so said Andrew Parker, in his first

speech as our spy chief, which yesterday was significantly endorsed by No10. So isn’t

it staggering that the BBC, after spending all last week trumpeting  Ed Miliband’s

attack on this paper over our charge that his father’s Marxist views validated one of the

most evil regimes in history, could hardly bring itself for much of yesterday to report 

Mr Parker’s devastating indictment of the Guardian? The problem, and it’s worse

under the new director general, is that a wall of prejudice surrounds Broadcasting

House – a belief that the Right merits relentless attack, while the BBC’s soulmates on

the liberal Left must always be protected. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-

2451557/Daily-Mail-Comment-The-Guardian-paper-helps-Britains-enemies.html)

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Exactly the same line was followed in the same day’s paper by Stephen Glover in a column

with the laborious headline: ‘Stupendous Arrogance: By Risking Lives, I Say Again, the

Guardian is Floundering Far out of its Depth in Realms Where no Newspaper Should

Venture’. According to Glover:

The Guardian is being accused of putting at risk not only the lives of agents but also

potentially the lives of ordinary British people, whom MI5 will now find it more

difficult to protect. Divide the accusations in two, and then halve them again, and they

are still mind-boggling. So what is the response? At the time of writing, the all-

powerful BBC has only parenthetically mentioned that the newspaper faces very

serious charges, and has made the most feeble attempts to hold the paper or its editor,

Alan Rusbridger, to account.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2451532/STEPHEN-GLOVER-By-risking-

lives-The-Guardian-floundering-far-depth.html)

This is a version of an argument that is now being put with increasing frequency by the Right,

namely that if the BBC doesn’t cover stories which dominate the press agenda on a particular

morning then this is sure-fire proof of the BBC’s fabled ‘Left-wing bias’. An alternative

explanation, of course, is that many stories which appear in most national dailies are stories

only by the very peculiar standards of Britain’s predominantly hard-Right press, and are

frequently too distorted and inaccurate to be worthy of inclusion on the news agenda of a

public service broadcaster. It has long been obvious that Britain’s ultra-Conservative

newspapers will not rest content until the broadcast news agenda is skewed as far to the Right

as is their own. If some semblance of political diversity is to be preserved in the British

media, the BBC is going to have resist this pressure with every fibre of its being – which

entails showing a very great deal more determination than it has done to date.

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Thus far, I have quoted only from opinion columns of one kind or another, and a possible

retort could be that as long as newspapers separate out fact from comment, news from views,

then they should be free to be as partisan as they wish. However, most of the ‘news’ stories

about the Guardian and Snowden in the Sun, Mail and (to a slightly lesser extent) Telegraph

have been every bit as biased as their op-ed pieces, and I will attempt to illustrate this by

reference to my third, and over-arching, theme, namely national security.

News and Views

Take, for example, an article in the Mail, 8 October, headed ‘The Guardian Has Produced a

“Handbook” that Will Help Fanatics Strike at Will’, followed by the straps ‘Security officials

say there was no public interest in Guardian's expose’, and ‘They also claim terrorists now

know where and where not to communicate’. The slant of the article is thus clearly apparent

before one even reads it, and the piece itself is dependent entirely upon anonymous ‘security

officials’ and ‘Whitehall insiders’ who claim variously that ‘the publication of the documents

stolen by Edward Snowden is considered to have done more damage to the security services

than any other event in history’, that ‘there was no public interest in publishing top-secret

information which details the precise methods used by agents to track terrorist plots’, that

‘fanatics were signposted to the places they should avoid when communicating’, and that ‘the

Guardian had helped to produce a “handbook” for terrorists’. Every one of these anonymous

quotes is highly contentious, yet there is not the slightest attempt to quote opposing or even

merely sceptical viewpoints (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2450291/The-

Guardian-produced-handbook-help-fanatics-strike-will.html).

The same day’s paper also carried a report of the above-mentioned speech by Parker. Again,

the headline and the accompanying straps give the clearest possible indication of the line

taken by the article: ‘Guardian has Handed a “Gift” to Terrorists, Warns MI5 Chief: Left-

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wing Paper's Leaks Caused “Greatest Damage to Western Security in History” Say Whitehall

Insiders’; ‘MI5 chief Andrew Parker called paper's expose a “guide book” for terrorists’; ‘He

said the coverage is a gift to “thousands” of UK-based extremists’; and ‘Secret techniques of

GCHQ laid bare by Guardian’. Much of the rest of the article consists of generous quotes

from Parker, and although there is a short quote from a Guardian spokesman, not only is

there no acknowledgement that Parker never once mentioned the Guardian by name but

precisely the opposite impression is given – repeatedly and emphatically

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2450237/MI5-chief-Andrew-Parke-The-Guardian-

handed-gift-terrorists.html). The Telegraph, 9 October, published the speech in full

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10366119/MI5-chief-security-

speech.html).

However, a classic example of Mail editorialising posing as ‘news’ stories was provided by

two more pieces on 9 October. The first is headed ‘PM Backs Spy Chief's Attack on

Guardian: Security Expert Warned Leaks Risk “Widespread Loss of Life” but BBC Buries

Criticism of Left-wing Paper’, with the straps ‘PM's spokesman said MI5's Andrew Parker

made an “excellent speech”’; ‘The spy chief blasted the Guardian's publication of secret

material’; and ‘Security officials say the expose could lead to UK lives being lost’. On the

matter of the BBC, the article reveals that ‘there were last night accusations of editorial bias

at the BBC, which initially ignored the scathing criticisms of the Guardian’

((http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2451540/David-Cameron-backs-spy-chiefs-attack-

Guardian-BBC-buries-criticism-Left-wing-paper.html ). However, the accusations turn out to

have been made by none other than the Mail itself! These were in a story headed ‘How the

BBC buried the story: MI5 attack on Left-wing paper's leaks played down’, with the straps

‘BBC downplays MI5 chief's scathing condemnation of the Guardian’; ‘Newsnight editor is

former Guardian executive Ian Katz’; and ‘“They appear to be protecting Left-wing friends”

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- Tory MP’. But the plain fact remains that Parker did not mention the Guardian by name,

and that no amount of mis-representation can alter this inconvenient truth, so the real culprit

here is actually the Mail for insistently stating that he did. Of course, the story cannot appear

to have been manufactured by the Mail itself as part of its endless campaign against the BBC,

so Conor Burns, the Tory MP for Bournemouth West and a member of the Culture, Media

and Sport select committee, is quoted to the effect that:

It is extraordinary that the biggest security story for a generation wasn’t deemed worthy

of comment by the BBC’s leading investigative news programme. There seems to be a

clear conflict of interest when its editor has so recently taken the Guardian’s  shilling.

The whole tone of the BBC’s coverage of this issue seems to indicate clear editorial

bias. They appear to be protecting their Left-wing friends.

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2451549/How-BBC-buried-story-MI5-attack-

Left-wing-papers-leaks-played-down.html)

Whether Burns offered this quote unprompted, or whether the Mail, in its usual fashion,

prodded him into it in order to give the appearance of legitimacy to a smear which it had

itself concocted is, of course, impossible to tell. But nor does it matter. The point is that both

the BBC and the Guardian can appear ‘Left-wing’ only when viewed from the hard-Right of

the political spectrum, and thus that this is a ‘story’ only in terms of the Mail’s own peculiar

news values. But as noted earlier, this ‘story’ then became the subject of furious and

indignant comment in the Mail editorial and the Glover piece quoted earlier. This is an

absolutely archetypal Mail ploy: run a ‘news’ story which is either wildly distorted, or indeed

untrue, and then use this as the basis for enraged editorialising, which is then defended on the

grounds that the paper has a right to express its opinions (as opposed to a duty to get its facts

right).

National Security

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It should be abundantly clear by now that for the Sun and the Mail it is absolutely axiomatic

that Snowden’s revelations via the Guardian have irreparably damaged national security.

Sceptical or dissenting sources are very rarely quoted, and pronouncements by government

ministers and ‘security chiefs’ (as they are habitually called) are taken entirely at face value.

For these papers, national security is whatever these people say it is, an attitude epitomised

by Stephen Glover’s remark that Rusbridger is ‘a newspaperman, not a security expert. The

high-handedness is amazing. Mr Rusbridger thinks he can determine which stories might

harm national security — and which will not. According to the experts, he is hopelessly

unqualified to make such a judgment’

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2451532/STEPHEN-GLOVER-By-risking-lives-

The-Guardian-floundering-far-depth.html).

From such a perspective, it is thus perfectly acceptable for newspapers to give large amounts

of uncontested space to those calling for the prosecution of journalists. For example, Louise

Mensch who, in the Sun, 13 October, opines in an unctuous piece headed ‘May Must

Prosecute Guardian’ that ‘if Theresa [sic] doesn't prosecute the Guardian, she is giving a

green light to any blogger or reporter to give our agents' names to anybody they like. She has

been a true Iron Lady so far. She mustn't stop now’. Or Lord Carlile, the former independent

reviewer of terrorist legislation, who gave a speech, reported in the Telegraph, 24 October,

under the headline ‘Publishing Edward Snowden Security Secrets a “Criminal” Act, Says

Former Terrorism Watchdog’, in which he asked, rhetorically: ‘Is it anything other than

criminal to seek to publish such secrets?’ and stated that ‘it is worth investigating whether

there were any conspiracies to breach the Official Secrets Act’

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10401711/Publishing-Edward-

Snowden-security-secrets-a-criminal-act-says-former-terrorism-watchdog.html). Or Liam

Fox, given a Telegraph column of his own on 9 November in which to ask: ‘Does the

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Guardian newspaper's publication of stolen secrets amount to irresponsible and potentially

criminal behaviour?’, a question which the article answers with a resounding and emphatic

‘yes’. In it he reveals that ‘I have written to the Director of Public Prosecutions on the issue’

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10438356/Liam-Fox-A-free-press-but-not-not-when-

it-endangers-the-security-of-our-nation.html), and a further article in the same day’s paper

explains that his letter to the DPP states: ‘In recent days there have been further accusations

that the Guardian passed the names of GCHQ agents to foreign journalists and bloggers.

Would such activities, if true, constitute an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 or other

related legislation, particularly the passing of details of identified security personnel?’ He

also asks: ‘Under what conditions and by what procedures would a decision be taken to

prosecute any individuals responsible for such activities and how would such a process be

initiated?’ (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10438200/Edward-

Snowden-spy-leaks-Liam-Fox-in-push-for-Guardian-newspaper-to-be-prosecuted.html).

In any other democratic country, such threats to journalists would immediately be the subject

of stories and indignant comment in most newspapers, but in Britain the threats are made in

and, effectively, by, newspapers themselves. There is, unfortunately, absolutely nothing new

about this – the majority of Britain’s national press has a long and deeply dishonourable

history when it comes to attacking those few journalists brave enough not to be cowed the

moment ‘national security’ or the ‘national interest’ are mentioned, and fortunate enough to

work for those few media organisations which will facilitate their work (Petley 2013). Most

newspapers are far more likely to endorse attempts by the state to censor such journalism

than they are to condemn them, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by their behaviour over,

to take but a few of the most egregious examples, the ABC show trial (Hooper 1988: 133-56;

Rogers 1997: 79-83; Robertson 1999: 104-34), the BBC series Secret Society (Petley 2001),

the programme Edge of the Union in the BBC series Real Lives (Barnett 2011: 91-102;

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Leapman 1997: 294-331), and the Death on the Rock edition of Thames Television’s This

Week slot (Bolton 1990: 189-306).

Ideological Affinities

On almost every single occasion that governments have argued that a piece of journalism

should be suppressed on the grounds that it endangers ‘national security’ or the ‘national

interest’ it turns out that it does absolutely no such thing – it merely embarrasses the

government of the day. So why do most newspapers so unhesitatingly and eagerly take the

government side on these occasions? The answer has to do with profound ideological

affinities between those who run the country and those who own and run most national

newspapers, affinities which transcend mere party allegiances. In Britain, most of the national

press is by no stretch of the imagination a Fourth Estate acting as the public’s watchdog but

an absolutely crucial part of the Establishment – and all the more effective for its constant

and remorseless peddling of the rhetoric of the ‘free press’. It is a key part of the all-

pervasive ideological machinery designed to keep things as they are – and all the more

powerful for having rendered itself largely invisible by becoming so naturalised and taken-

for-granted (Petley 2009).

That is at least partly why in Britain, quite unlike in America and elsewhere in Europe, public

debate about Snowden has turned as much, if not more, upon the behaviour of a newspaper as

opposed to that of GCHQ and the NSA. So when the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ appeared

before the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) on 7 November, which they agreed to

do only on condition that they saw all the questions in advance, the obsequiousness of the

politicians was matched only by the fawning of most newspapers, whose breathless and

gushing tones wouldn’t have been out of place in the Boy’s Own Paper. Inevitably the papers

seized with relish on the trio’s peevish and aggrieved comments on the media, who turned out

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to be the real villains of the occasion. A particular gift to the headline writers was the

soundbite from the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, that ‘the leaks from Snowden have been

very damaging; they have put our operations at risk. It is clear that our adversaries are

rubbing their hands with glee. Al-Qaida is lapping it up and our own security has suffered as

a consequence’. Far less widely reported, however, was that when the committee chairman,

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, then asked: ‘Do you have any additional information you can share

with us … as to actual hard evidence that terrorists or potential terrorists have been looking at

these reports and have changed their plans or the way they operate, as a result of them?’, Sir

Iain Lobban, head of GCHQ replied: ‘Not in this public forum, Chairman. Yes, in a private

forum’ (http://isc.independent.gov.uk/). And that was very much that.

Having themselves shown no interest in the real issues raised by Snowden’s revelations, it

was clearly of no concern to most newspapers that the ISC did exactly the same. So, for

example, there was nothing in the ISC hearing, and nothing in most papers’ reports of the

event, on Tempora (the programme that allows GCHQ to hoover up vast amounts of data

from the cables that carry internet traffic in and out of the country, information that is shared

with the NSA), and nothing on why neither the ISC nor the cabinet nor the National Security

Council were informed about its existence in the first place; nothing on the bugging of world

leaders who are supposed to be our allies; and nothing on the immense damage done by

GCHQ and the NSA by cracking much of the online encryption on which hundreds of

millions of users rely to guard data privacy, actions described by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the

creator of the world wide web, as ‘appalling and foolish’

(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/tim-berners-lee-encryption-spy-agencies).

It was left to Nick Pickles, the director of Big Brother Watch, to draw the obvious

conclusion, namely: ‘As the US president, world leaders and international experts express

concern about the scale of surveillance and the need to review the laws and policies involved,

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today was perhaps more unique for the fact parliament found three people who think there is

no need for reform’

(http://www.theguardian.com/news/defence-and-security-blog/2013/nov/07/mi6-uksecurity).

Big Brother: a Caring Sibling

The truth of the matter is that the remarkably incurious ISC and those newspapers which are

remarkably eager to take the government side against journalists who expose wrongdoing by

the state are both expressions of precisely the same culture. As Jonathan Freedland pointed

out in the Guardian, 2 December, the reason why Americans have been so shocked by

Snowden’s revelations and Britons so unmoved has to do with profound differences between

the cultures of the two countries. In America, people believe that their government is

supposed to work for them, that it should be their servant, not their master. Hence the

Constitution begins with a declaration of where sovereign authority belongs: ‘We the people’.

That is why the Snowden revelations are so shocking to Americans: they expose an arm of

government acting without the permission, or indeed the knowledge, of the American people

and their representatives in Congress. And that is why it is axiomatic for reputable American

newspapers to subscribe to and try to live up to the Fourth Estate ideal. By contrast:

Britons have no such starting assumptions. The people are not sovereign here, they

never have been. We speak of parliamentary, not popular, sovereignty. We are used to

power flowing from the top down, from the centre outward, and most of the time we

accept it. We act as if it's natural for the state to be in charge and it's an act of

generosity when it deigns to let in a little daylight. If an arm of the state insists on total

secrecy, that seems reasonable to Brits in a way few Americans would ever accept. It's

not a natural instinct for Britons to see, say, GCHQ as their employees.

(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/snowden-fallout-us-uk-liberty-nsa-

spying).

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Or as Ben Macintyre put it in The Times, 30 August, ‘we cannot quite believe that Big

Brother is not, for the most part, a caring sibling with our best interests at heart’, with the

consequence that, in one of the most developed surveillance societies on the planet, ‘we are

more reassured than dismayed by being spied upon’

(http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/benmacintyre/article3855545.ece). In

such a culture, it really is no wonder that the majority of the national press is prone to act as if

it were an arm of the state, and that a play called Pravda could be written about it. It is surely

high time that it was revived.

References

Barnett, Stephen (2011) The rise and fall of television journalism: Just wires and lights in a

box?, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Bolton, R. (1990) Death on the Rock and other stories, London: WH Allen/Optomen.

Hooper, David (1988) Official secrets: The use and abuse of the Act, London: Coronet.

Leapman, Michael (1997) The last days of the Beeb, London: Coronet.

Petley, Julian (2001), Secret Society, Jones, Derek (ed.), Censorship: A world encyclopedia,

London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers pp 2181-4.

Petley, Julian (2009) What Fourth Estate?, Bailey, Michael (ed.) Narrating Media History,

Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge pp 184-95.

Petley, Julian (2013) Newspapers call for censorship British Journalism Review, Vol. 24, No.

3 pp 33-8.

Robertson, Geoffrey (1999) The justice game, London: Vintage.

Robertson, Geoffrey and Nicol, Andrew (2008) Media law, London: Penguin, fifth edition.

Rogers, Ann (1997) Secrecy and power in the British state: A history of the Official Secrets

Act, London: Pluto Press.

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Julian Petley is Professor of Screen Media in the School of Arts at Brunel University, chair of

the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and a member of the advisory board of

Index on Censorship and of the editorial board of the British Journalism Review. His most

recent book is the edited collection The Media and Public Shaming (I.B. Tauris, 2013).

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