Thought crime? We could all be guilty

Posted by Press Gazette on 10 August 2007 at 10:00
Tags: Journalism, Journalists, Law, Police and Criminal Evidence Act

Journalists working in the Thames Valley Police area fondly recall the days when they could phone up police officers and get stories, put out witness appeals, report crimes.

Nowadays they say they are effectively banned from talking to officers directly and must rely on a sparsely populated website – which is open to the public anyway – for the latest information.

They say the situation has gone from being one where journalists felt they were on the same team as police to one where police see journalists as the enemy.

The treatment of Sally Murrer, the 48-year-old mother of three and part-time local paper reporter arrested in May, suggests police relations with the media may have sunk to a new low. And her treatment has the potential to sour relations not just in Milton Keynes but nationwide.

Her contention is that she that all she has done is what thousands of local paper journalists do every day – talked to police officers and written stories.

She says she has been told that for the offence she has been accused of – aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office – it is in enough for her to have merely been told sensitive information without even writing a story.

For journalists to be held accountable for what they are told – even if they do not print a word of it – would be like a creating a new "thought crime" which would be almost impossible to avoid committing.

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Brown should act to lift restraints on journalism

Posted by Press Gazette on 1 June 2007 at 08:00
Tags: David Cameron, Freedom of Information, Gordon Brown, Journalism, Milton Keynes Citizen, NUJ, Police and Criminal Evidence Act, Sally Murrer, Tony Blair

When card-carrying NUJ member Gordon Brown takes up office in Number 10 Downing Street this month, he has one clear way he can create a point of difference with former PR man David Cameron and predecessor Tony Blair.

Through straight-talking and by putting an end to spin. This is something he has already hinted at, and it can only be hoped that Brown will also remember his roots, on Scottish Television in the early 1980s, and call a ceasefire in this Government’s often open hostility towards the press.

British journalism is already under threat like never before, because the internet is eroding much of its economic base. If Brown wants a press capable of more than live-blogging the latest episode of Big Brother, he might want to look at easing some of the constraints on serious journalism.

Like ditching the proposed Freedom of Information and Data Protection Regulations, which the Government has clearly signalled are aimed squarely at journalists and would greatly reduce our ability to use the Freedom of Information Act by massively increasing the number of requests thrown out on cost grounds.

He also needs to look at why the police are intimidating local newspaper journalists and locking them up in the cells as part of routine police enquiries. Milton Keynes Citizen reporter, and mum of three, Sally Murrer has had her life turned upside down after spending a night in the cells earlier this month because local cops didn’t like the fact that one of their number had apparently leaked her a story. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Government is currently reviewing the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and could make it even easier for police to seize journalists’ notebooks, computers and contact books.

A healthy body politic is impossible without good journalism and Brown would be well advised to remember that, for the sake of both his short-term popularity and the longterm public good.