MEDIA STUDIES
You too could be pictured and named in connection with heinous crimes — while innocent
STEPHEN GLOVER
0 n Friday, 21 November police `swooped' at 15 places in Britain in search of child pornography. They called at Sed- bergh School and Durham School, in both cases removing material which they described as suspicious. These raids domi- nated television and radio news that Friday, since which time we have heard little or nothing about them.
At 7.30 a.m. on 21 November, Wiltshire police, acting on behalf of the Metropolitan Police, raided at the vicarage at Donhead St Andrew, a small village lying on the Wiltshire-Dorset border. According to sev- eral newspaper accounts, magazines and videos were removed from the vicarage. What is interesting about this particular swoop is, firstly, that at least one reporter was on hand to witness it and, secondly, that the vicar of Donhead St Andrew, alone among all suspects in the 15 police raids carried out that day, was named by the press.
The following day, Saturday, the Western Daily Press ran a front-page story about the vicar. The Salisbury Journal and the Yeovil- based Western Gazette also published prominent pieces. The next day, Sunday, the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Telegraph and the Independent on Sunday ran brief items in which the vicar of Donhead St Andrew was identified by name. The Express on Sunday carried a longer story on the top of page seven with pictures of the vicar, who was named, and his vicarage. Local BBC television and radio news, as well as Meridian television, also named him.
The vicar of Donhead St Andrew has subsequently been declared completely innocent by the police, though so far as I can tell only the Sunday Telegraph, among the nationals that originally printed the story, has been decent enough to set the record straight. The police say that nothing they took away was remotely incriminating. The man is blameless. Yet his name and picture have appeared in local and national newspapers, and on the principle that there is no smoke without fire his reputation has been damaged. Though his parishioners are said to be united in their support of him, some of them are almost bound to view him in a slightly different light. I am not naming the vicar for fear of inflicting fur- ther injury.
This case illustrates the conspiratorial relationship that can exist between the newspapers and the police, and the result- ing harm that can befall any one of us. For not only were one or more reporters mirac- ulously present when the police swooped on the vicarage at Donhead St Andrew. According to parishioners, reporters were seen in the village the previous afternoon asking for directions to the vicarage (which is rather hidden away) on the grounds that they were interested in church security. If the police were the only people in the world who knew that a raid was imminent, it would seem to follow that they must have alerted local reporters in the belief that newspapers would welcome a grandstand view in a 'dirty vicar' story.
However, Wiltshire police deny they made any such invitation. The Bishop of Salisbury, the Right Reverend Dr David Stancliffe, has issued a statement deploring the treatment of the vicar but accepting that the Wiltshire police were not at fault. `I hope that I shall be told', he says, 'who was responsible [for leaking the news of the raid] and why such action was thought appropriate.' According to one school of thought, it was the Metropolitan Police who tipped off the press. If this is so, Dr Stancliffe may, alas, discover that a distant diocesan bishop does not strike very much fear into their hearts.
But we cannot merely blame the police. Local and national newspapers were wrong to publicise the vicar's name when there was not a shred of evidence against him. Four teachers, one from Sedbergh School, were interviewed by the police following the raids but none of their names was men- tioned by the press. So why identify the vicar of Donhead St Andrew? Because, either out of incompetence or malice, the police offered him on a platter. Newspa- pers chose to throw away their sense of jus- tice in a scramble for a juicy story, and the nationals, with the exception of the Sunday Telegraph, failed to put matters right when the vicar was exonerated. No wonder so many people loathe and fear the press.
Co-operation with the police is common, particularly in the case of local newspapers, which sometimes work almost hand in glove with the boys in blue. One notorious national example was the arrest of Kevin Maxwell at the crack of dawn when news- papermen were miraculously present. Nine times out of ten we don't complain when an obvious crook is fingered in this way. But of course it could happen to any of us, and to our parents or children, just as it did to the vicar of Donhead St Andrew. All that is needed is someone to make an untrue but damaging allegation (as there is reason to believe may have occurred in this case) and you too could find your name and photo- graph in the Express on Sunday in connec- tion with heinous offences of which you are wholly innocent.
Readers may be wondering what is happening in the Victoria Brittain affair since I last alluded to it in my column of 25 October. Aficionados will recall that on 3 October John Willis, a former director of programmes for Channel 4, was appointed by Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, to look into the affair. Mr Willis has now been at his labours for nearly two months, and one cannot but wonder what he is brewing up. I am told that his enquiries are nearing their completion, and that before very long — possibly even before the year is out — his report, or at any rate a shortened version of it, will appear in the Guardian.
Meanwhile, in a ranting article in the New Statesman, Paul Foot has attacked me and defended his old friend and fellow ide- ologue, Victoria Brittain. As I last wrote at any length about the affair on 11 October, one may ask what took him so long, but I suppose one should not complain. It is a rather boobyish piece, full of inaccuracies (Mr Foot claims, for example, that I was once foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph) and colourful smears. Mr Foot even chal- lenges me to a public debate. I tend to think that journalists should respond with their pens rather than their larynxes, and once Mr Willis's report has seen the light of day that is exactly what I shall do.
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