The Sunday Times was the subject of heated criticism last month over its handling of a major government story. For those that missed it, the paper ran a front page splash, quoting anonymous government sources who claimed that British security operatives have been removed from the field after Russia and China hacked into the cache of files leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013.
Leading the charge against the paper was Glenn Greenwald, a security writer who, while working for the Guardian, played a lead role in publishing the Snowden files. Greenwald has described the journalists behind the story as “subservient stenographers to the government", criticising them for relying solely on anonymous sources. While it’s certainly concerning that the paper would publish such serious allegations and then admit that they don’t have the evidence to back them up, this is only the latest case of the press reporting spurious government claims without proper scrutiny.
Before looking at other examples, it’s worth going back to 2003, when the last big examination of the media’s treatment of politicians took place. Then, just as now, a major news organisation was coming under fire for its handling of a political story. In this instance, the BBC was engulfed in a scandal surrounding a report from defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan on the Today programme, which alleged that Tony Blair had intentionally misled parliament about Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. The subsequent inquiry by Lord Hutton found that the allegations were “unfounded”, leading to the resignation of the corporation’s chairman Gavyn Davies and Director-General Greg Dyke.
