In recent weeks the public have been forced to piece together the increasingly complicated details of the ‘cash for honours’ scandal, as the controversy intensified.
The evening of March 9 saw the BBC being prevented from publishing an investigative report on the matter, thanks to a High Court injunction requested by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith.
The request to prevent the BBC from running their piece was claimed to have come from the Met Police, as it was feared that the revelations it supposedly contained would hinder their investigations.
An injunction was also attempted against the Guardian on the following Monday when they moved to publish their own version of the story; this was rejected, however, as throughout the weekend the majority of the report’s details had leaked into the public domain.
The Guardian had already gone to print on Monday evening when the injunction was requested, with the editor excusing his actions as “the kind of risk [they] normally take.”
So what power exactly does the UK media hold over politicians? If both the BBC and the Guardian can circumvent injunctions instigated for ‘political’ reasons by the country’s highest ranking lawyer, then what does this say for reporting of political facts today?
It’s true that the media can have a negative impact on legal cases. Just look at the Hutton Inquiry of 2004, in which the BBC’s news department was heavily criticised for its role in reporting on the controversial government dossier that made the case for invasion of Iraq.
Since then there have been stricter controls in place to prevent the same happening again. But this event also caused massive distrust in the government, which has meant the public has come to rely on the media, as highlighted in recent months.
The cash for honours affair is just another in a long line of scandals for the Labour government which have undermined its authority. If then the media is relied upon instead, should it be censored in the way it was a few weeks ago?
The injunction itself has raised questions concerning the role of the Attorney General. The position is appointed by the Prime Minister, which of course runs the risk of political bias.
Yet journalistic freedom still prevailed with the fall of the injunctions, perhaps signalling a victory for media power.
Current affairs today are widely consumed through a variety of mediums, not simply newspapers and television as it was ten years ago. News websites and 24-hour TV channels are some of the most popular means of keeping up-to-date, fuelling the need for ‘news on demand’.
An investigative report such as the BBC’s may not have raised such a commotion in a less current affairs-based culture. There are growing concerns that the public demand for such reporting could further encourage irresponsible journalism.
The question is whether the public themselves are able to judge what should and should not be aired, and at what point journalists should begin to exercise restraint.
The relationship between politics and the media has, of course, always been a tenuous one. Politicians are always wary of journalists and vice versa, and a delicate friendship exists between the two groups, based on the politicians’ need to keep journalists on side and the journalists’ ability to make or break careers.
Freedom of the press is integral to democracy in this country, and attempts at censorship such as those against the BBC and the Guardian are direct threats to this. But we need to ask ourselves how much we want or even need to know about government affairs.
If the knowledge contained in certain reports is such that the effectiveness of our police and government is threatened by releasing them, then maybe censorship is the best option.
