Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
Back in 2005, the News of the World won just about every award the industry could bestow - including the biggest of them all, Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards. As editor of Press Gazette, which organised those awards, I was given rare interview access to the usually-secretive newspaper's top executive team, including the only interview with editor Andy Coulson.
Now Press Gazette has exhumed from its archive (thanks to former deputy editor Jon Slattery) the lengthy piece that I wrote. In the light of the recent return of the phone-hacking hoo-ha, and Coulson's current discomfort, it makes interesting re-reading.
For me, one key passage comes from the interview with chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck, discussing his scoop on David Beckham's affair with Rebecca Loos.
After explaining that Loos wouldn't initially come clean, he says: "To produce the Beckham story, I had to find every piece of the jigsaw. People supplied me with evidence in terms of telephone numbers, SIM cards, text messages, which proved so damning against Beckham in the end."
Now I have no desire to fan the flames of this any further - Coulson already paid his price by resigning his editorship, after all. But acquiring SIM cards and text messages of two people who weren't playing ball with an investigation? To some, that might that sound suspiciously similar to phone hacking.
An interesting read, especially given the latest allegations. The passage about the Rebecca Loos scoop stood out for me as well. There's a few snippets in the piece that hint at something shady, but its very wink wink, nudge nudge.
Personally, I find it hard to believe that Coulson wouldn't have known about this going on.
Coulson says in your article that he would discuss a story quite thoroughly before publishing it. Surely the question of where the journalist got their information from would crop up at some point?
But of course we have the claims and counter-claims, and no 'smoking gun' at the moment.
Also, what do you make of Chris Bryant's claim that this sort of thing is 'endemic' across the media? The clip of him on Sky News today is pretty funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDYalpZhG_8