BBC have known about phone hacking for years
2011-12-21 | Filed Under Communications |
The BBC was fully aware that hacking into people’s answerphone messages was a widespread journalistic practice as long ago as 1997.
If proof is needed, just watch this clip from the pilot episode of Jonathan Creek called ‘The Wrestler’s Tomb’ – produced by the BBC’s own in-house entertainment department, and aired on 10th May 1997.
In the episode, Caroline Quentin plays the role of a freelance investigative journalist called Maddie Magellan. In one scene she taps into the answerphone of a character she is investigating, by entering combinations of the possible message retrieval code until she gets the right one.
For activities such as this to make it to a drama series, it has to have been pretty widespread and well-known. Hacking into phone messages (albeit mobile ones) is at the heart of the current furore. Which makes all the denials we are hearing during the Leveson Inquiry seem like complete hypocrisy. It seems to me that it’s time for the BBC – and David Renwick (who conceived and wrote the series) - to explain where they got the idea from and how widespread the practice was. After all, we’re talking 14 years ago.
I wonder how many of the 9.31 million* people viewing the episode thought they were watching something that was wrong, let alone that would lead to the demise of The News of the World.
(*and that’s just the first airing of this episode, which has also been aired on several PBS stations in the U.S. and on BBC America, as well as countless repeats on Watch in the UK. Which begs the question as to whether there isn’t a touch of hypocrisy in the public’s surprise and outrage at such practices.)
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