WSJ to the defense

The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal has drawn hoots of derision on Twitter from the Left since it first appeared last night, and it’s not hard to see why.  Drawing on the strategy of “the best defense is a good offense,” the WSJ attacks critics of the Murdoch empire for their “schadenfreude” over the expanding scandal of phone hacking by News International’s just-shuttered News of the World.  At times, their offense is inexpert at best:

At least three British investigations into phone-hacking and payments to police and others by the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid are underway, with 10 arrests so far. News Corp. and its executives have apologized profusely and are cooperating with authorities. Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than the hacking itself.

It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true. The understandable outrage in this case stems from the hacking of a noncelebrity, the murder victim Milly Dowler.

The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren’t attempting to influence public affairs, and don’t skew their coverage to do so, can’t stand a day’s scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician.

It seems the editors could use a good editor themselves. Coming as it does at the very beginning of the editorial, this string of non-sequiturs makes it difficult to continue, as the eye-rolling it induces creates at least a momentary impediment to vision.  A bungled investigation is almost never as “troubling” as the undeniably criminal activity that took place, especially if (as it seems) the criminal activity was part of a conspiracy by a corporation for competitive advantage.  Buying scoops and single-sourced articles might be bad practice, but they’re not illegal.  Politicians do want good press coverage — which benefits the press at least as much as the politicians, by the way — and the media influences public affairs, but those aren’t equivalent to hacking into phones and computers to get stores, not morally or legally.

To paraphrase Jules in Pulp Fiction, that’s not just not in the same ballpark — it’s not even the same sport.

One one gets past the self-serving non-sequiturs, however, there is an actual argument to be made.  They offer an impassioned defense of Les Hinton, the Journal’s publisher and CEO, who resigned from his post, which deserves to be read on its own.  They then argue, very effectively, that the same people baying for Murdoch blood at the moment had just been cheering for Bradley Manning and Wikileaks for doing essentially the same thing and calling it “journalism.”  The only real difference is in target selection.

The Journal then scolds some of its competitors for demanding government action against News International, warning them that they may not like the precedent it would set:

The political mob has been quick to call for a criminal probe into whether News Corp. executives violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with payments to British security or government officials in return for information used in news stories. Attorney General Eric Holder quickly obliged last week, without so much as a fare-thee-well to the First Amendment.

The foreign-bribery law has historically been enforced against companies attempting to obtain or retain government business. But U.S. officials have been attempting to extend their enforcement to include any payments that have nothing to do with foreign government procurement. This includes a case against a company that paid Haitian customs officials to let its goods pass through its notoriously inefficient docks, and the drug company Schering-Plough for contributions to a charitable foundation in Poland.

Applying this standard to British tabloids could turn payments made as part of traditional news-gathering into criminal acts. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t pay sources for information, but the practice is common elsewhere in the press, including in the U.S.

The last time the liberal press demanded a media prosecutor, it was to probe the late conservative columnist Robert Novak in pursuit of White House aide Scooter Libby. But the effort soon engulfed a reporter for the New York Times, which had led the posse to hang Novak and his sources. Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?

Let the British continue their investigation into the hacking at NotW, and if evidence arises that Murdoch’s American media outlets engaged in the same conduct, then investigate that as well.  Demanding exotic prosecutions based on stretching statutes to the breaking point should threaten anyone working in the First Amendment sphere.  It’s too bad that the Journal didn’t just stick with that argument today, because it’s a valuable reminder that government regulation of media won’t solve any ills, but instead will introduce a lot of new and much more malignant problems.  Unfortunately, they buried the lede.