Ethical decisions must be taken in pursuit of stories

Published on Monday 6 August 2007 00:58

THE days of newspapers simply reporting the news that is given to them have been over for years. Newsdesks have to be proactive, now even more so given the intense competition among news sources. Reporters have actively to seek out information. There are many ways this can be done, from cultivating contacts to analysing information to putting two and two together and making the right phone calls, or simply going out and looking. But there are ethical judgments to be made.

The issue has been brought to the fore again within the industry after an incident involving tabloid journalists.

Is transport security an issue a newspaper can take a justifiable interest in? The answer is a resounding yes. It is part of a newspaper's job to hold the authorities to account.

But is it acceptable for journalists to gain access to a train yard and plant an electronic tracking device on a train heading for the Channel Tunnel? And is it right for them to be arrested over the incident? Two Daily Mirror journalists were detained by police for 12 hours after being discovered by railway staff and their homes were searched.

With an air of righteous indignation, the Mirror stated: "The heavy-handed response shows how the [Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001] Act could be misused to intimidate journalists on a legitimate assignment - and raises questions over whether the authorities can be trusted with new powers under Gordon Brown's 56-day detention proposals".

Whether it tells anything about authorities' abilities to deal with new laws is surely stretching a point, but was it a legitimate story-getting tactic?

Roy Greenslade, the media commentator and a former editor, has called for a new clause in the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Code of Conduct to cover security tests to "deal with this problem".

He said it was a stunt, that total security is unrealistic and it may actually tell terrorists how weak security is. But that is nonsense. Even if total security is unrealistic, the public has a right to know just what the level of security is.

Did the act of placing the device cause widespread fear and alarm? No. It was a legitimate journalistic exercise.

Should they have been arrested? Yes, until the police could ascertain to their own satisfaction exactly what was going on. That is their job and the journalists should expect them to do that. But prosecuting them for trespass smacks of pettiness.

READER Stephen Bunyan brings up a very interesting complaint, and one we will be happy to act on.

In an e-mail, he writes: "I fully appreciate the importance of Gaelic as part of our culture, but as a non-Gaelic speaker, or reader, I find it frustrating to have pages of the paper, for which I pay, to which I have no access. I have some Highland ancestry and considerable interest in Highland affairs.

"This issue seemed particularly irritating this last week, when enough could be gleaned from the page to see it might well have been of considerable interest. In the past, summaries were given. This could be done again or perhaps a translation could be provided on the web. "

As far as I can recall, this is the first time this issue has come up, and it is a very valid view. However, it would seem a shame to cut the paper's Gaelic content simply to put in an English translation, so I am proposing it goes online. I realise that not everybody has access to the internet, but this strikes me as the best compromise.

IT DOESN'T matter how many years you spend in newspapers, there are always complaints that you could never see coming.

We carried a story recently, as did many other papers, sent to us by Reuters. It concerned a British soldier serving in Afghanistan who was accused of passing secrets to Iran. It included the sentence: "He... is the first person charged with spying under the Official Secrets Act since 1984, when an MI5 officer was jailed for giving secrets to the Soviets."

Last week, a letter arrived from the PCC alerting us that it had received an official complaint regarding the story. Something we always take very seriously. The complainant claimed Section 1 of the PCC's Code of Conduct had been breached. Section 1 concerns accuracy. He said the statement was not accurate because it ignored his conviction for selling military secrets in the 1990s. He said he was "personally offended" by the error. We will, of course, be happy to publish a correction.