Trevor Kavanagh cries 'police state' (with backing of the Culture Secretary)

So after decades of implying if not assuming guilt on the basis of arrest if not suspicion alone (e.g. Forest Gate), The Sun have taken to defending... erm, themselves:

'Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom'; The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh on the biggest police operation in British criminal history

And to prove his point, here's Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary of that supposed police state, playing lapdog for Murdoch (again) and pulling out all the stops to support this false prospectus, both in The Sun itself and in the wider media that he claims is under a threat all of a sudden now his chums at the Downing Street Echo are subject to arrest.

(Roll over. Play outraged. Good boy!)

Earlier in the 'Hackgate' scandal, The Sun had their Page 3 girl deliver a special message to police. Now it's Trevor Kavanagh's turn to be a massive tit for Murdoch. His editorial self-serving rant is repeated in full below. We post it here and invite comment because The Sun have decided to disallow comments on their version. For some reason.

Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom

The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh on the biggest police operation in British criminal history

The Sun is not a "swamp" that needs draining.

Nor are those other great News International titles, The Times and The Sunday Times.

Yet in what would at any other time cause uproar in Parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners, its journalists are being treated like members of an organised crime gang.

They are subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history — bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder probe.

Major crime investigations are on hold as 171 police are drafted in to run three separate operations.

In one raid, two officers revealed they had been pulled off an elite 11-man anti-terror squad trying to protect the Olympics from a mass suicide attack.

Instead of being called in for questioning, 30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked.

Private

Wives and children have been humiliated as up to 20 officers at a time rip up floorboards and sift through intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents.

It is important that we do not jump to conclusions.

Nobody has been charged with any offence, still less tried or convicted.

Yet all are now on open-ended police bail, their lives disrupted and their careers on hold and potentially ruined.

Is it any surprise that Britain has dropped nine places to 28th, behind ex-Soviet bloc states Poland, Estonia and Slovakia, in the international Freedom of Speech league table?

So when the police get matters so far out of proportion, we are entitled to ask: Who polices the police?

Why should questions about police procedures be handled solely by the so-called Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is notoriously reluctant to rule against police?

This inquiry has even begun to disturb those of our critics who have been at least partly responsible for what many see as a "witch-hunt".

The Guardian has raised questions about freedom of the Press. Its media analyst, Steve Hewlett, says that when it comes to paying for stories, no newspaper — "tabloid or otherwise" — is exempt.

Yet in a quite extraordinary assumption of power, police are able to impose conditions not unlike those applied to suspected terrorists.

Under the draconian terms of police bail, many journalists are barred from speaking to each other. They are treated like threats to national security. And there is no end in sight to their ordeal.

Their alleged crimes? To act as journalists have acted on all newspapers through the ages, unearthing stories that shape our lives, often obstructed by those who prefer to operate behind closed doors.

These stories sometimes involve whistleblowers. Sometimes money changes hands. This has been standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed, here and abroad.

There is nothing disreputable about it. And, as far as we know at this point, nothing illegal.

Without good sources no newspaper could uncover scandals in the public interest.

Certainly, the world would never have learned about the expenses scandal that landed so many politicians in jail.

Which brings us to a sensitive domestic issue within the News International "family" which we cannot ignore.

Nabbed

It is absolutely right the company co-operates with police on inquiries ranging from phone and computer hacking to illegal payments.

We are right to hand over any evidence — emails, expense claims, memos — that might aid those inquiries.

It is right that those inquiries are carried out separately from the journalists under investigation. Nobody on The Sun was aware in advance that ten colleagues were about to be nabbed.

It is also important our parent company, News Corp, protects its reputation in the United States and the interests of its shareholders. But some of the greatest legends in Fleet Street have been held, at least on the basis of evidence so far revealed, for simply doing their jobs as journalists on behalf of the company.

Meanwhile, a huge operation driven by politicians threatens the very foundations of a free Press.

We have three separate police inquiries — Elveden, Weeting and Tuleta.

There is a Parliamentary inquiry and of course the free-ranging Leveson Inquiry into newspaper practices.

The field is open to almost anyone with a grievance to deliver their two cents' worth, even touching unrelated issues such as Page Three.

The process, costing tens of millions of pounds, threatens to roll on for at least another year and probably two.

Interestingly, nothing on this scale is envisaged for the banking industry which has brought the nation to the brink of bankruptcy.

Before it is too late, should we not be asking where all this is likely to lead? Will we have a better Press?

Or a Press that has been bullied by politicians into delivering what they, not the readers, think fit?

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(Psst! In other news, that memo sent aorund by SKY News recently looks almost prescient, doesn't it?)

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UPDATE - Just a quick note about The Sun comparing their situation to the uncovering of the expenses scandal (to the point where some cynics might suspect they seek to associate themselves with same in the eyes of the weak/lazy-minded...

The relevant source turned them down because they wanted to go soft on Cameron's Tories, and he did not think that appropriate. The Sun then acted in bad faith by publishing a story based on what was supposed to be a confidential authentication sample; they were clearly trying to cash in on the story before a real newspaper got to the evidence, and they did not care if their efforts derailed or undermined the publications of this evidence. With what little contact they did have with the expenses scandal, The Sun did not act in the public interest; they acted out of self-interest.

Responding to deliberate obfuscation with deliberate obfuscation.

It's not often that you see the Murdoch press seriously rattled; it probably last happened when the Sun misjudged the public mood over its increasingly personal attacks on Gordon Brown. In that case the paper backed down and softened its coverage, but it didn't have that option when it came to the release last night of the Culture, Media and Sport committee's report into press standards, privacy and libel, which included the fresh allegations concerning the phone-hacking at the News of the World.

The options it did have were to either ignore it entirely, as it almost completely ignored the story when the allegations were running in the Guardian last year, or to come out fighting despite it not actually concerning the Sun itself in any capacity. It chose to do the latter, a decision which has probably deeply mystified its readers that wonder what on earth the paper is banging on about. It's not even as if the paper is still edited by Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade), a former editor of the NotW, but rather by Dominic Mohan, who has no connections with the Sun's sister paper whatsoever. It therefore makes you think it was a management decision, or indeed, even one that came directly from either Murdoch senior or junior themselves.

The most damning comments made by the parliamentary committee were that those giving evidence for News International had indulged in "deliberate obfuscation" while also suffering from "collective amnesia". What better way then to respond to such a slur than through, um, deliberate obfuscation, which is exactly what the Sun's editorial does?

TODAY is another dark day for Parliament.

MPs on the Labour-dominated Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee have abandoned fairness and independence in pursuit of cheap political advantage.

The committee had an important opportunity to investigate crucial issues such as privacy law, libel tourism and the Madeleine McCann case.

Yet members wasted seven months - nearly half their time - on unfounded claims made by the Labour-supporting Guardian newspaper against News International, publisher of The Sun and the News of the World.

An important opportunity which the committee took, and looked at in great detail. The section on the News of the World phone-hacking takes up only half of the chapter on "press standards"; the rest of the report deals at length with all the subjects the Sun mentions, but maybe it's because the committee comes to conclusions which the Sun doesn't like that it dismisses them in such a way?

Shamefully, the committee colluded with The Guardian, giving it leaks and tip-offs. But not a shred of new evidence was found to support The Guardian's claims.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that the committee colluded with the Guardian in this way? No. Was there however new evidence to support the Guardian's claims? Well, err, let's see what the report says in answer to exactly that allegation:

493. The Guardian articles did contain new information, in particular, concerning the payments to Gordon Taylor and others and the 'for Neville' email. This inquiry has subsequently revealed more facts, including the pay-offs made to Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire and that they tapped the phones of the princes themselves. They also highlighted the fact that a culture undoubtedly did exist in the newsroom of News of the World and other newspapers at the time which at best turned a blind eye to illegal activities such as phone-hacking and blagging and at worst actively condoned it. We condemn this without reservation and believe that it has done substantial damage to the newspaper industry as a whole.

Thwarted, the committee has fallen back in its report on familiar Labour tactics of smear and innuendo.

Yes, tactics which this editorial and which News International as a whole regards as completely abhorrent. They would never smear anyone or rely on innuendo.

Labour MP Tom Watson pathetically used the report to try to link the Conservative Party with the bullying allegations that have shamed Downing St.

Oh, what's that? A smear perhaps? It's also not sour grapes on the Sun's part, having to recently pay a certain Tom Watson damages for libelling him, by err, claiming that he was involved or knew about Damian MacBride's smearing of Tory MPs. And in any case, why shouldn't we be able to compare the allegations made about Gordon Brown's behaviour in Downing Street with the err, proved allegations involving ex-Screws editor and now Tory spin doctor Andy Coulson's bullying of Matt Driscoll?

Parliamentary select committees are important but only work if MPs on them behave with fairness and honour.

Some on this committee have not. Its report is accordingly worthless.

The Sun talking about behaving with fairness and honour? Would someone please pass the sick bag?

(For more on the committee's report, see the post on my own blog.)

Rebekah Wade snared in phone hacking.

As might have been expected, Private Eye (1241) has some additional information on the phone hacking scandal:

"... There was, however, one bit of evidence he [Nick Davies, at the Graun's appearance before the Culture committee last week] omitted. A file seized by the Information Committee from private investigator Steve Whittamore in 2003, which was later obtained by lawyers for Professional Footballers' Association boss Gordon Taylor, included a personal request for Whittamore to trace someone's address via his phone number. The request came from Rebekah Wade when she was editor of the News of the Screws.

Davies was asked to keep quiet about this by the man who accompanied him to the committee hearing, Grauniad editor Alan Rusbridger, who feared that the skirmishes between the Grauniad and News International would turn into all-out war if there were any mention of the flame-haired weirdo who has now become NI's chief executive.

This may also be why the Guardian has yet to reveal that the secret payment of £700,000 in damages and costs to buy the silence of Gordon Taylor was not a mere executive order. It was decided by the directors of News Group Newspapers Ltd, the NI subsidary which owns the Sun and the Screws, at their board meeting on 10 June last year. If their involvement were revealed, it could cause grave embarrassment for the directors of News Group Newspapers Ltd - not least one James Murdoch."

The latter more or less came out yesterday, when we learned that James Murdoch had known about the settlement and agreed with it. The Wade revelation is though entirely new, and while there is no indication that Wade was using Whittamore for anything specifically illegal, it is an example that editors at the Screws knew about the "dark arts" and even personally used them. That makes it all the more ridiculous that both Andy Coulson and Tom Crone were so ignorant about what was happening all around them. It's also surprising that Wade herself was so tenacious in accusing the Graun of being "deliberately misleading" when they had such information on her; either she knew they wouldn't dare use it, as PE suggests, or shedecided to try to tough it out. Either that, or she didn't know.

By far the best comment on yesterday's reprise of Manuel from Fawlty Towers was from Peter Burden, who also interpreted their body language.