[/caption]Michael Cosgrove- It is both ironic and salutary that Britain has finally been obliged to confront the incestuous high-level relationships which have polluted its public life for decades because of a vulgar press scandal, but I am counting on America to help with the cleanup effort.
The current press/politicians/police relationship scandal in Britain didn't begin with last week's revelations concerning the News of the World's hacking of murdered teenager Milly Dowler's phone, or its payments to police for stories, or it's tapping of Afghanistan war widows' phones, or its tapping of 7/7 bombing victims' relatives. It had already been going on for many years, in the form of entrapment tactics, financial enticements, the settling of political scores and - most of all - fear of Rupert Murdoch.
Murdoch owns a substantial part of the British press and his press is so powerful that it is able to reach parts of the world that other presses don't reach. His press speaks to all of Britain in one way or another. He owns The Times and the Sun and he was the owner of the now defunct News of the World.
But for all the scandal his press has published, some of the blame must also be laid against British politicians, the British police, and the British press.
Former Prime minister Gordon Brown is outraged - as are we all - that The Sun published details of his dying child's last days. But why is he only telling us this now that the paper's owner - Murdoch - is in a weakened position? Why, if he was so upset at the time, did he subsequently invite The Sun's editor Rebekah Brooks (later to become News of the World editor), who had callously phoned him to say that the paper was publishing the story the next day against his wishes, to his wedding a short while later?
Why did Britain's Liberal party kowtow to Murdoch's monopoly for years only to see its current leader and deputy PM Nick Clegg pathetically bleat in parliament today with cowardly bravado and on the back of facile public approval that Murdoch and Brooks should be "frogmarched" to a parliamentary hearing if neccesary? Why is Prime minister David Cameron less willing today to discuss his horse-riding jaunts with Brooks, who was editor of the News of the World when it hacked Milly Dowler's phone as well as those of the terrorist victims? Why did the police drop the first inquiry into the phone-hacking allegations without exploiting all the evidence?
And why was the press allowed to exploit the Milly Dowler voicemail hacks as well as the other hacks? Why was the press able to hire "blaggers" - imitators who phone or email banks and other sources in order to obtain information on politicians and other personalities - in order to get a handle on them? And why didn't the so-called 'clean' papers tell us what they knew?
There has been a lot of soul-searching in Britain this last week about the relationships between the press, politicans and the police. It's not a pretty sight and the knives are out.
But the press is already beginning to sound warning bells about a possible backlash consisting of more control over press methods. Having freed the genie and denounced the demons the British are, ironically, at a pivotal point concerning press methods and there is already an air of "uh-oh, what have we done here?"
This is where America steps in. Britain will fudge and bluster and talk legalese and lord-knows-what-else for years before it eradicates the rogue elements in its midst, but I trust America to do better and quicker and uphold one of its most fiercely- defended and upheld traditions - that of a fair and independent press which will not tolerate the cozy arrangements between press and power that are to be found in Europe and of which, as a European, I am frankly ashamed.
To put it clearly, if Britain can't face up to Murdoch, I believe that America can. If the current FBI investigation into allegations that News of the World journalists tried to hack into the phones of American victims of the 9/11 attacks in New York demonstrates that they did, or that Fox News or any other of his many American outlets has indulged in tactics such as those used by the News of the World, for any purpose, I have every confidence that America will quickly force Murdoch to either toe the line or sell out and get into some other business. Used cars for example.
