In 2002 a 13 year old girl disappears from a London street one sunny afternoon. A pretty girl from a good family. What had happened to her? The kind of mystery that sells newspapers; the police are grateful for the publicity which helps to draw in witnesses.
In 2006 the suspicions of the Royal household are aroused by stories which appear in the press & seem to have been placed there by someone who has access to the voicemail messages left on mobile phones. These were stories about the young princes, William & Harry, whose mother’s death was widely believed to have been contributed to by the excessive interest of the tabloid press in her every doing. The police launch an enquiry, the royal correspondent of Britain’s best selling Sunday tabloid & a private investigator are charged, tried, & sentenced to jail.
A single rogue reporter, we are told.
Other celebrities think that the revelation about the vulnerability of voicemail explains how some of the upsetting & intrusive tabloid stories about them must have been obtained.
The police & the mobile phone companies take steps to protect voicemail.
There is no evidence that there have been other victims, we are told.
The police think that resources are better directed towards dealing with the threat of terror (in the wake of the tube bombings of 2005) & other serious crimes than in investigating claims about invasions of celebrity privacy.
The Guardian, a basically left liberal paper & competitor of the Murdoch press, starts an investigation of its own. Despite their efforts, the story does not fly.
It is surprising how in Britain sometimes, the death of a child can set off an emotional upheaval, often affecting the lives & livelihoods, careers & reputations of those in public life, far beyond the immediately bereaved.
James Bulger, Sarah Payne, Baby Peter, Millie Dowler.
The Guardian, despite its very best endeavours, could spark no wide concern with the News of the World ‘hacking scandal’ until, just two weeks ago, we were told that the voicemail messages on the mobile phone of the then-missing schoolgirl Millie Dowler had been accessed, & some of them deleted to make room for more.
This ‘news’, about something that happened nine years ago, really touched a nerve – both here & overseas. because of this we have already seen the closure of Britain’s best selling newspaper, the resignation of the two most senior (&, professionally, much admired) officers in the Metropolitan Police, the abandonment of a takeover. Who knows where it will end.
Many see in this situation a chance to refight old battles, settle old scores, change the media landscape.
Is this power of the death of a child something new in our society?
It has become almost a commonplace for someone to say, You don’t expect a child to die before its parents, almost as if this were some sort of law of nature. We have been warned that many of the current generation of children are likely to die before their parents unless they take note of all the advice on how to lose weight.
I really wonder sometimes how my great grandmother, who ‘had 11 and reared 8’, or my Nana, who lost her eldest son to the North Atlantic at the age of 19, or even Charles Darwin, would react to that?
