The Biter Bitten? A Guardian Reporter’s Prayer

From the BBC Radio 4 news today and today’s Daily Telegraph comes word of the latest Guardian hypocrisy, that a senior Guardian journalist, Amelia Hill, has been questioned under caution* by the Metropolitan Police  in London in connection with the telephone hacking scandal.  According to the Daily Telegraph, she is thought to have published information based on leaks from an officer assigned to the inquiry into the News of the World’s voice mail hacking.

I cannot deny that Schadenfreude rules for me.  It appears that the Guardian, so eager and quick to point the finger at the News of the World, may itself be implicated in the very sleaze it condemns.  The biter seems to have been bitten.

But although the Guardian’s Teflon coating seems to be getting worn, note the following attempt to deflect from Dan Roberts, the paper’s national news editor, who tweeted that the developments were a “bleak day for journalism when (a) reporter behind vital hacking revelations is criminalised for doing her job”.   What on earth could he have meant – that the “bleak day for journalism” was because another Guardian reporter has been implicated in underhanded, possibly illegal and certainly unethical behaviour?

*Interviews under caution are conducted when the police would like to speak to a person about an arrestable offence.  Amelia Hill is likely to have received documentation along the following lines:

A Guardian Reporter’s Prayer:

Our Editor, which art in King’s Place

Rusbridger be thy name

Thy time has come

To be undone

For thy sins against the truth;

But give us this day thy latest excuse

That the readership may forgive our lies

As we forgive thy spin to us;

And lead us not into the arms of the Met

But deliver us from government enquiry;

For thine is the (ever-shrinking) kingdom,

The power and misplaced glory

But not for long

Amen

Related articles

• Guardian’s ethical problems pile up: Police question senior Guardian reporter over phone hacking leaks (cifwatch.com)
• Another interesting twist in the Guardian phone hacking scandal (cifwatch.com)
• Phone Hacking by Guardian reporters: How far does it go? (cifwatch.com)