A possible conversation in Wapping?

T. - "Jim, sorry to barge in on you at such short notice Old Boy - but we appear to have something of a sticky legal problem, a somewhat giant, very sticky problem in fact, with the soccer guy phone-hacking thing. Both Col and I need to talk to you about it tout suite. In a nutshell if we don't settle we're in deep shit. And I mean deep and I mean shit."

J - "Jesus! I thought we'd nailed that one down with the Goodman, Mulcaire result". Whose fault is this? What are we talking here - how much is this going to cost me?"

T. - "That's a good question Jim and it isn't all about the money. There's a good chance that there's proof we were hacking a lot ..... a great number of .... everyone we've ever done a story on ... phone ... right Col."

C. - "Grunt." (Col nods).

J. - "Fuck! You're supposed to have put this one to bed already. How! Why did this happen?"

T. - "There appears to be some, let's say hard to avoid, stuff  that came up in the Goodman trial that leads straight to us hacking the soccer guy's phone - and his lawyers have it. There's other names too. If this one goes to trial who knows where it'll end up. We don't want this in open court. We need to shut it down completely before it takes all of us, and the company, with it."

J. - "How do we make this go away - before Daddy finds out?"

C. - "We don't. He already knows - I spoke with Less last night and he told him - I had to, Less's fingerprints are all over this and he's got to keep your dad safe from infection. The word is we're to carry the can on this one. So either we make it go away or we fall on our swords."

J. - "What the fuck Col you should have brought this to me first. No way I'm falling on any fucking sword. You two on the other hand...."

T. - "It ain't that simple Jim - you're in this too - up to your neck. It's been going on for years under what might be described as your watch and as the present boss it's your problem - your dad has been seriously advised not to get involved so he can't help us here. They're not letting this one cross the Atlantic. The ball is in your court, but let me give you some gentle advice - if we go down then so do you."

C. - "I only did what I was told."

J. & T. - "Shut up Col."

J. - "OK, OK, let's sort this out - what do we do - who do I blame?"

T. - "We have got to look at the bigger picture here Jim. We've got to keep the rest of the company, especially America and your BSkyB deal, out of this. So we make the soccer guy an offer he can't refuse and structure a settlement that buys his silence - tight as a drum."

C. - "Is that legal?"

J. & T. - "Shut up Col."

J. - "Sounds like a plan to me. But never mind all this how do I stay clean? I'm not going down just because a bunch of my company's best hacks are criminals - even if we did encourage them to keep up the good work. Shit, fuck, bollocks, bloody newspapers. If this screws up my plans to get the rest of BSkyB I'll have all your asses in a sling. Keep me out of this - I'll leave the country if I have to." (stomping noises)

T. - "Well so long as we haven't told you directly what stuff came out in the Goodman trial and we don't show you anything the soccer guy's lawyers have sent us you might get away with claiming you know nothing about it. Bit of a stretch though as all this came out in open court and as the head of the company you might reasonably be expected to know a bit about it. So have a look anyway ..... see what I mean. But if we settle we might be able to put an end to the problem. In that case I can't say any more about it and you'll just have to do what I tell you. Trust me - I've no intention of doing time over this. And that is where it could end up if we're not careful" (sniff)

J. - "I can have another dinner with the PM - that'll keep me out of the Clink - you guys on the other hand...here, take this back. I haven't seen it. Is there another way? One where we can get out of this permanently with my and the company's reputation intact ... without paying a fortune."

C. - "Don't think so. When I spoke with our outside counsel he said that this is one of the biggest smoking guns he'd ever seen."

J. & T. - "Shut up Col."

T. - "I'm sure the soccer guy's lawyers are open to ... will recommend ...a settlement ... but at a price - in this case a very - eye-watering - high price if we are going to get his silence on the matter - permanent silence that is. The good news is nobody outside this room needs to know the details - you can sign-off on a million quid without telling anyone - apart from lawyers who can't tell anyone anyway - oh and the non-disclosure terms are tighter than a fish's asshole. We're good at that - tie 'em up in legal knots."

J. - "How much - a million quid?" (choking sounds)

T. - "Well he could, at best, expect a couple of hundred thousand all up if he wins - if we sweeten it by half a million he should go for it and put an end to any possible fall-out later if it went to trial. All in all I'd say that was a bargain given where this could lead if the amount of our phone hacking, which Col has unfortunately turned up, were to come out - never mind the rest of the skeletons we know are buried around this company- you could even end up appearing before Parliament. Let's be frank Jim - it's a disaster and we need some disaster management right now. Pay the man as much as it takes. I'll go back with an offer and you sign the cheque - no questions."

C. - "Tell him again about the others ... more ...probably a lot more ...as well"

J.- "Others... lot more"( high pitched scream).

T. - "Yup - calm down Jim - we'll have to pay them all out ... every last one of them. It'll amount to quite a lot of money by the end of it - we may also want to short circuit, or at least limit, the bad publicity by devising a way of paying them without them ever getting close to a court. Of course there will be those that will want their day in court and they'll be even more expensive to silence - perish the thought. It is my considered opinion and that of everyone else I have consulted that we are in for a painful and public legal colostomy if we don't sort this out now. If you are familiar with the phrase - tear a new asshole - you might get a picture of where this is heading. But, let's face it while we might not have right on our side we do have the money."

J. - " Fuck me and the horse I rode in on. Will that do the trick?"

T. - "Worked before. I'm running the old confusion trick and shot stuff off to lawyers with specific instructions to limit their scope of enquiry. And we're busy pretending to investigate ourselves - except fucking Col here didn't realise it was only pretend. That'll create a smoke screen and maybe buy us enough time for this to go away. We'll announce victory and it could be all over in a year - with luck and without anyone paying too much attention that is. We have enough people inside the Met to know the police have packed in their investigation - the plastic bags are stuck in a stairwell - and we'll make sure it stays that way. We have more than enough influence in Number 10 to keep the politicians off our back. And we'll hack the phones of any politician... anyone ... that might get close to exposing this. All those expensive meals and slumber parties haven't gone to waste Jim - by the way, given the circumstances, you might want to have a few more of them. We live in hope".

C. - "I don't think we can just eat, drink and sleep our way out of this even if we do buy the soccer guy's permanent silence."

J. & T. - "Shut up Col."

J. - "Hope, what do you mean hope! (shrill) Just do what it takes so long as it doesn't spoil my BSkyB deal - drop a few of the usual threats around - let them know they're in for a very, very ugly fight. We'll show them who's in charge here. We can take the whole ungrateful pack of them down and they know it - we're owed plenty by enough of them to make it go away - at least I think we are - they'll come grovelling back. Anyway, let me think about this ..... I couldn't give a rat's ass about the newspapers. If we have to we'll close them all down. They're not worth the paper they're printed on. I'll pay the money and If that doesn't do the trick and we need a sacrifice I'll give them one. I've wanted to get rid of those bloody things for years except Dad......."

T. - "In that case we'd better make up a list of those we're prepared to shoot to extricate ourselves from this mess. We need a sacrifice game plan."

J. - "Start at the bottom and work up - stop just before it gets to me. Leave Becky off the list - dad likes her - but, be sure to put both your names on it. Now fuck-off while I arrange a trip to Chequers."

"Don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management.

Your recent justification of the moral status quo ante begs the question as to how and why we're surrounded by illegality that is accepted as usual and that everyone involved claims to know nothing about it. What's worse is that they think we believe they knew nothing.

After the recent Gilbert & Sullivan theatre at the Palace of Westminster, leaving aside any examination of the veracity of the answers given to the questions at issue, the striking feature is that all these folk, to a man and woman, are guilty of mind-boggling, credulity-straining, if not criminal lack of knowledge of the goings on within the organisations they ran. It appears that Ignorance is so widespread that the only conclusion is that it isn't coincidental but that it is deliberate. What we witnessed was wall-to-wall denial based upon a claimed total lack of knowledge around a series of major events, occurring over a number of years, within their senior managerial remit. How does this happen? Enter the "Don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management. While this school of management is widespread in it's influence and adherence it is of particular importance when it comes to the application of editorial standards in the media.

The fundamental tenet of the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management is Deniability. This permits senior management to avoid the repercussions of actions taken by employees under their control by claiming that they didn't know what they were up to if that action were to later come back to bite them on the ass. While I haven't heard the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" refrain often I've heard it more than once. Let's take a simple example - the bribing of government officials. On occasion, in pursuit of a news story, it is necessary to get into a country that actively doesn't desire your presence. This leads to the need to by-pass the usual immigration and customs formalities by "inducing" the local government employees, officially tasked with keeping you out, to assist your entry into the country. Unfortunately once in a country in this manner the exercise must be repeated to get out of it. When filling in an expense report for this variety of assignment it is advisable to describe these payments as "Immigration Fee" or "Customs Clearance" rather than "Bribes". All News organisations have rules about bribing people and illegal behaviour but also recognise that exigent circumstances prevent strict adherence to them if the story justifies them. Management knows you can't pop-in unnoticed on a tourist visa with 20 boxes of camera equipment - but nobody asks "How'd you do it".  There'd be a lot of stories you'd never get if this wasn't the case. It is reasonably clear that "liberating" a motor vehicle, as is sometimes required in a war zone, to allow movement to and around the story won't influence the content of the story but simply enable it's coverage. After this it gets a bit more subtle. When does it become payment for the content of the story itself? 

What we see with the News Of The World/News International denial of any knowledge of wrongdoing is a good example of the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management in practice where blindingly obvious illegal behaviour is ignored in pursuit of a news story. Usually this is on a case by case basis justified by "In the Public Interest" circumstances but what happens if this becomes enshrined in the ethos of the news company as a common means to get stories. It is a trickle-down phenomenon. If it is clear the boss doesn't want to, or legally can't, know what is actually going on so as to maintain deniability then you act out a charade where the boss knows that you know that he knows but can not actually be told. This rapidly becomes you telling the Boss "you don't want to know". If the Boss is happy about this then so are you and your need to know diminishes creating the tacit company wide belief that nobody important will do anything about it even if you told them - so its all OK. In such an environment illegality spreads and becomes standard operating practice - condoned by senior management's complicity in "Don't tell me  - I don't want to know".

There is of course the paper trail-blocking device of inserting an intermediary between the invoice presented to and approved by the manager and the final recipient of the payment - via a third party, usually a "stringer" - allowing the manager to deny that they paid for anything illegal. So the "I have never paid for illegally gained information" claim can be maintained by keeping payments at "arms length".

Now, while Journalism is presently on the receiving end of justifiable outrage, we need not look far afield for examples of similar illegal behaviour in a wide variety of Corporate and Financial activities where bribery and corruption are not unheard of. Again the "don't tell me - I don't want to know" school of management enables senior management to avoid guilt, job expulsion and possible criminal prosecution by claiming their total ignorance of any malfeasance while sacrificing a few implicated, but usually well compensated, staff in penance along with paying, without prejudice, a small fine. This even though it is common knowledge that bribery and corruption - in all its many guises - are the only way to achieve a satisfactory business outcome.

This culture has created an inchoate, trust free, seemingly all-pervading version of management that permits those in a position of ultimate accountability and responsibility to assume neither.

Corruption

You appear to be floating around on the top of this ocean of corruption holding the conviction that if your head is above it then you're not a part of the problem - a sort of reverse Ostrich. We all play a part either by accepting that's the way it is or ignoring it and thereby participating in and endorsing it. Pragmatism is no excuse for moral turpitude here.

Corruption and Trust are inextricable from one another so the belief that trust can be re-established without first removing systemic corruption is fallacious - although, rather than this being the corruption of a system it may well be a system of corruption - and when the whole system is corrupt then the the whole system has to go.

Your observation that "honesty in its undiluted form is not necessarily a characteristic which is good for business" would lead one to conclude that under the present "House Rules" honesty is of limited importance so long as an awareness of these "rules" works "perfectly adequately" in your favour. Here we have a conundrum - you can trust corruption. These self-serving "rules" have been the Modi Operandi of Corporations, Financiers and Politicians, abetted by the Media, until it all started to unravel at the onset of it's greatest achievement; the Global Financial Crisis. There have been a few years of "hide the pea" games by the primary beneficiary "elites" - those that see themselves as somehow above the common human rut - but the problem is too big for sleight of hand. This has led to the undignified spectacle of the former participating rats leaving the sinking ship in feigned surprise and indignation to join a recently established Glee Club of the Innocent. Leaving behind those carrying too much baggage to drown.

Given that the whole system appears endemically corrupt it isn't Equitable (I realise this is not one of the "House Rules") to apportion different levels of corruption among participating countries - such as Germany is more corrupt than the UK and both are less corrupt than Italy - once established as corrupt to any degree this is simple hypocrisy (which is one of the "House Rules"). Although what appears to be happening now is that an expensive prostitute has turned on her cheaper colleagues. Understandably there is some resistance to transfer her "top-end" money to one that has caught the Clap and is in danger going out of business. It is not that they want to get out of the game but that they want those that spoil it for them out. Unfortunately this can not be achieved in comfort while in the same profession.

So we're left with the question of whether to weed or plough. Given the damage done to the instruments of democratic government by the present systemic corruption, and the resulting broad loss of public trust this has engendered, that the existing system should remain mostly intact doesn't look like a very positive outcome. While we're focused on the corruption within the media, police and politics we are ignoring - as best we can given the approaching Global Debt Crisis - that other fundamental causative agent that constitutes this corrupt system - Finance. It can be deduced from our present predicament that this agency, having blackmailed sovereign nations into near bankruptcy to provide for their survival, are deserving of the same opprobrium, legal investigation, oversight, regulation and penalties.

If we continue to labour under the conviction that the system is fine, because those that work it to their advantage are able to thrive, and it is only those that are caught with overtly dirty-hands that need punished then we are destined to repeat history. The problems are structural not operational. Honesty, transparency, accountability and responsibility within a system based upon an acceptable level of corruption will not make an iota of difference to the underlying absence of trust.

What will have been resolved if all we do, as a result of systemic scandal, is put Humpty Dumpty back together again?

Rupert made me do it.

The Irish, Portuguese and Greeks are now officially Junk. They shouldn't take it too badly though as this has been announced by the exact same rating agencies that greatly assisted in the creation of the Global Financial Crisis in the first place - and they didn't say the same thing about themselves. I advise immediate default and a good scandal to divert the public attention away from all-pervading poverty.

The Brits certainly have managed to dig one up that blames more or less everyone in a position of, obviously exceedingly misplaced, "trust" for more or less everything that has gone wrong over the last 40 years. A national "Mea Culpa" with all fingers pointed at Rupert - "he made me do it" - Murdoch. Without much doubt, even leaving Murdoch and kiddie-fiddling priests out of it, there are assuredly grounds for, at least, one of these scandals in Ireland too - the sooner the better.

Rupert has an ocean of misery ahead - protecting his US empire from a disgruntled, Fox News despising, Democratic Party majority in the Senate now clamouring for an investigation into the behaviour of his news outlets in the USA. All they'll need is for one of Murdoch's Aussie or Brit implanted editors to have engaged in, the now apparently usual, illegal tabloid behaviour and he's toast. As will be anyone called Murdoch in News Corp or indeed the whole of News Corpse itself. It can be assumed, under the US legislation, that if one of Murdoch's UK titles - beneficially owned by the US based News Corp - hacked a single US phone then there is no escaping a public execution. Let the timbrels roll.... Cue the FBI.

In reality it is actually bigger than Ben Hur with Politicians, Media and Police all in cahoots with Finance and Corporations to protect one another from scrutiny by avoiding the law. In the same way that Tax avoidance is legal while Tax evasion isn't this distinction was also applied to the business activities of the, so-called, Elites who could avoid adherence to the law through influence providing the assurance that the law wouldn't be applied in the first place or, if necessary, would be changed if it got in the way - before an attempt to evade the consequences of illegal behaviour might arise. Resulting in the belief that they were "above the law". 

Sadly, for the Elites, some of the less well-benefited politicians, media and police got fed-up paying the price of this cosy arrangement and, when the great unwashed populous showed signs of being fed-up with the same consequences - austerity, unemployment, eviscerated public services - saw an opportunity to kick the shit out of it in revenge. This has led to an unseemly rush straight to the back of the Queue of the Innocent by those, previously energetic participants, now fearing collateral damage from a scandal of their own making. If this means selling out a few erstwhile mates who happen to be amoral media proprietors, bent plods, sleazy journos or overly-ambitious pollies then so be it - anything to survive. They'll be eating their young next.

Which brings us to: What did they know? When did they know it? The two Watergate questions, that led to the convictions, soon to be asked of the British PM, the Metropolitan Police, Murdoch and his senior management. Once they can get past Murdoch's lawyers that is and put their hands on him - I assume that his corporate "domestiques" (to use a cycling term of art) will be fed into the grinder first. Not to leave out the shenanigans of assorted other newspapers and broadcasters - follow the money.

What is missing here is - where are the Bankers in this reinvigorated quest to punish illegality?

Since Journalism went from measuring news value to counting monetary value (or the lack of it) most other, especially moral and ethical, values went out of it too. This isn't limited solely to journalism - banking and corporate (including legal and accounting) practice and governance also abandoned morals and ethics in the pursuit of money. No surprise then that journalism reflected these, amoral, immoral, if not actually illegal, tendencies. Owned by participating oligopolies self-regulating journalism supported them - in fact celebrated and dispensed them - in pursuit of influence and wealth.

A very cosy and long-lived, self-serving, inter-relationship - Politics, Money, Media -  is now exposed and broken apart in Britain by the News International phone-hacking imbroglio.  Politicians can no longer be seen to approve of or accept support from a disgraced media, that peddles illegally gained influence, allowing some politicians to break free or, alternatively, into energetic denial - this is a bigger pivotal moment than we yet understand. 

Now how about applying the same extrapolation exercise to the influence that the financial industries flex to avoid the rule of law.

What we need is a continuing backlash that will see the same attention and outrage being shown to Finance and Banking. A closer look and possibly some charges, arrests and convictions might then stem from the behaviour of the financial institutions that, so far, have bought their way out of criminal charges with, tax-payer funded, bail-out money.

If politicians, the media and police are going to drop their shorts for an anal inspection of their machinations then so should the banks, hedge funds, traders, wheelers and dealers and their supposed regulators.

I'd also like to see the PR industry suitably reamed in this process - given that there are more of them dispensing information than journalists.