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‘Don’t tar us all with same brush’ – regional editor in plea to PM

A senior regional editor has written to Prime Minister David Cameron urging him not to judge the industry by the standards of the News of the World.

As Mr Cameron promised a public inquiry into phone-hacking at the Rupert Murdoch-owned title, Ipswich Evening Star editor Nigel Pickover appealed to him not to use what he called a “condemnatory catch-all” for newspapers.

The hacking scandal continued to intensify yesterday following allegations that the NoTW hacked into the voicemail messages of teenage murder victim Milly Dowler and relatives of those killed in the 7/7 attacks.

Mr Pickover decided to speak out amid fears that what the Press Complaints Commission has called “this terrible moment in British journalism” will be used to herald a fresh clampdown on the whole industry – including the regional press.

In a letter to the PM, he wrote:  “I join you today in condemning the practice of phone-hacking in the strongest possible terms.

“As editor of a hard-campaigning, respected, responsible, accountable, regional evening newspaper – and as past president of Britain’s Society of Editors – I am disgusted at the practices which have been detailed.

“But when you describe newspapers, please, please do not use it as a condemnatory catch-all.

“Please differentiate between the work done by local newspapers, like mine, and the activities the nation is so repulsed by.

“Day in, day out, local newspapers like mine, working against the odds in a difficult economic climate, produce the news and information that helps people run their lives. We create community cohesion.

“With good, dogged, honest journalism as our beacon, we help make local life a better place to be.

“We investigate without fear – yet we uphold the law.

“Thousands of journalists up and down the land deserve better than being caught up in something which has sickened each and ever one of them to the core.”

In a similar vein, Hull Daily Mail editor John Meehan today tweeted that the local press should not be automatically bracketed with the nationals.

“Sick of references in TV #phonehacking coverage to ‘the press’ as if we’re all the same. Local papers are blameless & a force for good,” he said.

In the latest developments in the hacking affair today, it emerged that families of members of the armed forces killed in Afghanistan and Iraq may have been targeted.

It was also claimed that some police officers had received up to £30,000 for giving information to journalists.

Hull Daily Mail editor John Meehan's tweet earlier today

 

 

13 comments

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  • July 7, 2011 at 9:54 am
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    Blimey – I’m sure that once the PM has wiped away his tears of gratitude for the heroic struggle endured day in, day out by regional editors, it’ll be bravery awards and MBEs all round.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 10:16 am
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    Huzzah.

    However I hope the ‘each and ever one’ line in the last para is your mistake and not Nigel’s. I’d hate the PM to think of us as lacking in subbing skills (a dying art I know).

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  • July 7, 2011 at 10:22 am
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    I can’t believe the shock of it all. I mean newspapers regulating themselves, being the prosecutor, judge and jury on their own ‘crimes’ and negligence themselves. Unbelievable.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 10:33 am
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    Hacked-off: And you’ll be propping up a bar somewhere with wisdom like that, ya? If journalism isn’t what you’d hoped, don’t kick those who stand up for it. Check the nearest mirror.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 10:56 am
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    Oh give over Hacked Off. At least he’s doing something (and it’s nicely written I thought…).

    We’ve all spent the last week defending ourselves from the accusastions about “all journalsits…” and there is a real danger that this government – which reacts with massive knee jerks at the very drop of an indignant BBC reporter’s hat – of trying to appease the public (and fulfil an agenda of their own I’m sure) with regulations that ultimately will restrict the ability of the press to do its job properly, a job most of us are proud to do… most of the time…

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  • July 7, 2011 at 11:23 am
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    What the News of the World’s private eye did was wrong and illegal. However, I’m becoming a little nauseous at the stench of exaggerated piety emanating from some journalists over this, especially one or two regional editors.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 11:31 am
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    I agree with Subbo. Don’t know about Ipswich, but I seem to remember the Hull Daily Mail coming to the attention of the PCC last year, readers calling for a boycott, etc.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 11:31 am
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    Predictable response from the reporter who ran to the manipulative world of PR …. unfortunately he’s overlooked the fact that self-regulation has worked well for the regional press (which is what this is all about).

    Maybe the national press needs to be coralled into a different arena where’s its behaviour can be more stringently dealt with and leave newspapers in the real, everyday world to get on with their job.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 11:49 am
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    @Long gone.

    One of the more interesting things I’ve read about this is the methods journalists use to find information about people who are the subject of stories. It’s now commonplace to Google them, do a 192 search, etc. The interesting area is Facebook, where journalists track down friends, lift comments, lift pictures, despite the questionable ethics of this.
    It seems, at the NOTW, phone hacking was just another tool they used to do their job and ignored the legality/questionable moral stance.
    I think what the NOTW has done is terrible and disgusting, but seems to be an – albeit appalling – logical extension to the methods journalists. The whole thing desperately needs investigating and regulating properly. And that includes regionals.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 3:01 pm
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    I deplore phone hacking for all the obvious reasons: it’s the technological equivalent of peeping through people’s bedroom windows or photographing them while they’re on the can.
    But let’s not be naive about this: snooping of one kind or another has been going on for years. Police and government agencies have routinely bugged phones in the past, and tabloid newspapers have never been averse to nicking photos off the mantelpiece or paying big money ‘under the counter’ for explosive info. None of these practices can be described as ethically sound, but then the surveillance business never is.
    Even as far back as the 1950s, NOW reporters were posing as someone else while investigating massage parlours and paedophile scoutmasters. ‘We made our excuses and left’ was its stock phrase when investigators were on the point of being rumbled.
    The real point about this story is that, whatever the excesses of the NOW, it’s no reason to regulate the press. Tabloid journalism has always been the (comparatively small) price we have to pay for press freedom. Most journalists are actually very proper in their professional approach, unlike bankers, lawyers, accountants etc., many of whom are out-and-out crooks who make a fat living shafting the public.
    When we talk about the impending collapse of self-regulation, who are we nominating to do the regulating? Surely not Westminster, that oak-panelled compound for thieves, liars and fornicators. Or Scotland Yard, where corruption has been endemic since well before the days of the reforming commissioner Sir Robert Mark.
    The NOW has always been at the fag end of journalism. It’s not surprising that they’ve used mobile phones to extend their surveillance options. That doesn’t make it right – but it’s no big shock, either.

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  • July 7, 2011 at 3:18 pm
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    Stirring words from Mr Pickover defending the professional reputation of Suffolk’s local journalists – but will he now take action to stop his parent company Archant syndicating his newspaper’s stories to the News of the World and others to make a few quid profit.

    When people speak to his reporters or pose for pics, they think it is only for publication in the Evening Star and are never told that the newspaper has a policy of syndicating everything. How does fit in with the PCC rules on subterfuge

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  • July 7, 2011 at 4:55 pm
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    Well that’s the end of the News of the World then!

    How long before we get The Sun on Sunday?

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