The State Journalism Is In: Edward Snowden and the British Press

The State Journalism is in: Edward Snowden and the British Press.

Julian Petley

Abstract

This article examines the reactions on the part of the government and much of the British national press to Edward Snowden’s revelations in the Guardian about massive surveillance by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the National Security Agency (NSA). It argues that the revelations were politically embarrassing as opposed to damaging to national security, and that although the government could be expected to adopt a hostile attitude to the Guardian, it might appear strange that papers such as the Sun, Mail and Telegraph did likewise, effectively backing calls for the paper to be prosecuted. However, such a stance is surprising only if one regards such papers as conforming to a ‘Fourth Estate’ model of journalism, and the article argues that they, along with most of the rest of the British national press, are actually a key part of the Establishment rather than a watchdog over it. It is therefore entirely unsurprising that when the government and the security services declare that a particular example of journalistic activity endangers ‘national security’ or damages the ‘national interest’, most newspapers accept this judgement without demur, and act accordingly.

Key Words

Snowden; Guardian; Rusbridger; national security; GCHQ.

‘There’s no Need to Write Any More’

In June 2013 Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger was contacted by someone whom he describes as ‘a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister’. There followed two meetings in which the official demanded the return or destruction of all the National Security Agency (NSA)material leaked by Edward Snowden on which the paper was working. According to Rusbridger: ‘The tone was steely, if cordial, but there was an implicit threat that others within government and Whitehall favoured afar more draconian approach’. The following month he received a phone call from the ‘centre of government’ telling him:‘You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back’. Other meetings followed with shadowy Whitehall figures, in which the same demand was repeated. At one of these, Rusbridger was told: ‘You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more’. This is chilling enough, but even more so is revelation that:

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK.

And so it was that on Saturday 20 July, in a deserted basement of the paper’s offices, a senior editor and a Guardian computer expert smashed up the hard drives and memory chips on which the encrypted files leaked by Snowden had been stored. They were watched by technicians from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who took notes and photographs, but who left empty-handed, one of them joking that ‘we can call off the black helicopters’ (

‘Promoting a Political or Ideological Cause’

On Sunday 18 August, David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who had written a series of stories based on Snowden’s revelations, was held for almost nine hours (the maximum amount of time permitted by law) by UK authorities as he passed through Heathrow on his way home to Rio de Janeiro. He was questioned under the Terrorism Act 2000, the highly controversial section 7 of which allows police officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals at ports, airports and border areas. He was eventually released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

The legality of the police action was queried both by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, and condemned as being without legal basis by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer. In November Miranda launcheda challenge in the High Court. At the time of writing this is continuing, but it has already flushed into the open a particularly disturbing aspect of his detention, namely that the document used to request it stated that ‘the disclosure or threat of disclosure [of the material that he was carrying] is designed to influence a government, and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism and as such we request that the subject is examined under schedule 7’. AsShamiChakrabarti, director of Liberty, exclaimed: ‘The express admission that politics motivated the detention of David Miranda should shame police and legislators alike. It's not just the schedule 7 detention power that needs urgent overhaul, but a definition of terrorism that should chill the blood of any democrat’ ( Nonetheless, when Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, Scotland Yard’s head of counter-terrorism, appeared before the Commons Home Affairs select committee on 13 December, she revealed that the police were still combing through the material seized from Miranda in order to ascertain whether any offences may have been committed under the Official Secrets or Terrorism Acts.

Catch-22

In the meantime there had been no let-up in the political pressure on and threats against the Guardian. Indeed, on 20 August the Independent had revealed that Rusbridger’s emissary from the ‘centre of government’ had been none other than Britain’s most senior civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, and that the approach took place with the explicit approval of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Foreign Secretary William Hague.

At prime minister’s questions, on 16 October, the former defence secretary Liam Fox askedCameron:

May we have a full and transparent assessment of whether the Guardian’s involvement in the Snowden affair has damaged Britain’s national security? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is bizarre that from some the hacking of a celebrity phone demands a prosecution, whereas leaving the British people and their security personnel more vulnerable is seen as opening a debate?

As we shall see, this was by no means the first time that the phone-hacking hare had been set running during the Snowden affair, but what is interesting here is that Cameron’s reply (a) shows that the Guardian had been put in a Catch- 22 situation by agreeing to destroy the computers; and (b) appears to encourage one or more select committees to investigate whether the Guardian had broken the law:

I commend my right hon. Friend for raising the issue. I think the plain fact is that what has happened has damaged national security, and in many ways the Guardian itself admitted that when, having been asked politely by my national security adviser and Cabinet Secretary to destroy the files that it had, it went ahead and destroyed those files. It knows that what it is dealing with is dangerous for national security. I think that it is up to Select Committees in the House to examine the issue if they wish to do so, and to make further recommendations. (

‘McCarthyite Scaremongering’

In a debate on 22 October, Julian Smith, Conservative MP for Skipton and Rippon, launched a lengthy, innuendo-laden and inaccuracy-strewn attack on the Guardian. In it Smith paidhandsome tribute to ‘our ex-colleague, Louise Mensch, who through her blog, social media and [Sun] columns has ensured that this major national security issue has been kept alive throughout’. Mensch was to replay the compliment in her Sun column, 13 November, (of which more below),in which she referred to ‘brave MP Julian Smith’. The speech was described by Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, as ‘a piece of McCarthyite scaremongering’ which ‘disgraces Parliament’. According to Smith, the subject of the debate was ‘to highlight where the Guardian has crossed the line between responsible journalism and seriously risking our national security and the lives of those who seek to protect us’. Such charges are highly contentious, but they informed the entirety of Smith’s speech, at the end of which he stated that:

The Terrorism Act is clear about the illegality of communicating information about our intelligence staff and, specifically, GCHQ. The Official Secrets Act is equally clear about the illegality of communicating classified information that the recipient knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, to be to the detriment of national security. Last week, I wrote to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to ask him to investigate whether the Guardian has breached those two Acts. I urge the Minister to do everything possible to ensure that the police expedite their investigation.

In response, James Brokenshire, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, agreed that the Guardian’s reporting of the Snowden material had done ‘huge damage to national security’ and echoed Cameron in claiming that ‘in many ways, the Guardian admitted that when it agreed to destroy files when asked to by the Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood’. However, he also added that ‘it is obviously not for Ministers to direct the police to arrest or investigate anyone … It is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether a crime has been committed and what action to take’. ( They cannot have been left in much doubt, however, by this and numerous other political interventions, about what actions the government would distinctly prefer them to take.

DA-Notices

Smith cropped up again on 28 October when he asked Cameron: ‘Following this morning’s revelations in the Sun[sic] on the impact of the Snowden leaks, is it not time for any newspaper that may have crossed the line on national security to come forward and voluntarily work with the Government to mitigate further risks to our citizens?’ Cameron’s response was, to all intents and purposes, to suggest that if the Guardian didn’t censor itself, the government would take on the task:

We have a free press and it is very important that the press feels it is not pre-censored in what it writes. The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain how damaging some of these things can be. That is why the Guardian destroyed some of the information on disks it had, although it has now printed further damaging material. I do not want to have to use injunctions, D notices or other, tougher measures; it is much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. However, if they do not demonstrate some social responsibility, it will be very difficult for the Government to stand back and not to act. (

Finally, in this inevitably highly selective review of political pressure on the Guardian,one cannot ignore the remarkable spectacle of Rusbridger being hauled before the Home Affairs select committee as part of its enquiry into counter-terrorism. As Roy Greenslade pointed out on 3 December:

What was remarkable is that the whole thing happened at all. With the British press having obtained the right to its freedom from political control in the 17th century, here was parliament calling a newspaper to account for exercising that freedom. Why, I kept asking myself, was an editor being required to explain himself to MPs? What makes them think they have the right to do so? Do they act for the people or against them? (

That said, the questioning of Rusbridgerby Paul Flynn and the Labour MP for Walsall North, David Winnick,did give Rusbridger an excellent opportunity to make his case. In particular he repeatedly pointed out that, contrary to the impression given by much of the press, the Guardian had not identified anyone named in the NSA files. Furthermore, he also revealed that the DA-notice committee had not raised any concerns about the published material. ( This is particularly important in the light of Cameron’s ill-informed remark about D notices quoted above.

DA-Notices are issued by the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC) which operates a voluntary code between the media and UK Government departments which have responsibilities for national security. According to the DPBAC, the Committee and its Notices are ‘a means of providing advice and guidance to the media about defence and counter-terrorist information the publication of which would be damaging to national security. The system is voluntary, it has no legal authority and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned’ ( although it should be noted that Geoffrey Robertson and Andrew Nicolcondemn it as ‘a form of censorship by wink and nudge, by threat and through the complicity of media executives’ (2008: 657).

On 7 November the Committee met and discussed, among other matters, the Snowden affair. The minutes of this part of the meeting at worth quoting at some length, not least as they appear to have received no media coverage at all:

Although views were diverse it was agreed that 99% of the media remained committed to the DA Notice System. It was, however, important to distinguish between embarrassment and genuine concerns for national security. The Vice-Chairman [Air Vice-Marshal Vallance] felt that much of the material published by the Guardian fell into the former category. They also understood that the Guardian’s initial unwillingness to engage was due to a misunderstanding of the DA Notice Code and in particular its commitment to confidentiality. The Editor feared that if he shared details of his story with the secretariat it might potentially attract an injunction . Education was required on both sides; the PM’s remarks on 28 October being an example of misunderstanding on the Government side of how the system operated. He recommended an approach to No 10 offering a briefing on the DA Notice System. The Vice-Chairman went on to say that this lack of understanding seemed to highlight a greater malaise on the official side where there was worrying evidence of disengagement. For example, the DPBAC Chairman [Jon Thompson, Permanent Under Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence] had not attended the last two meetings, no Cabinet Office representative was present and the Home Office and FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] principals had both sent representatives. By contrast, the Media Side were well represented and its members made significant efforts to attend. (

‘Statutory Control’ of the Press

During this period, British newspapers had loudly and incessantly complained, as indeed they had done from the start of the announcement of the Leveson Inquiry in July 2011, about the danger of, as they saw it, ‘statutory control’ of the press. They might, therefore, have been expected to spring swiftly and vociferously to the Guardian’s defence. Instead, the Mail, Sun and Telegraph, along with the weekly Spectator, did their absolute utmost to undermine the paper and to bolster the government’s case. And even those titles which did not join the attack considerably underplayed both the significance of Snowden’s revelations and the impropriety of the government’s pressure on the Guardian.

It is possible to distinguish a number of separate themes in the press campaign against the Guardian and on behalf of the government, which I will now deal with in turn.

Payback

The first concerns pure and simple payback for the Guardian’s phone-hacking revelations and the resultant Leveson inquiry. An early example occurs in a Mailarticleby Stephen Glover on 21 August, headed ‘That Murky Arrest Troubles Me. But the Guardian’s in Murky Waters Where Those Who Love Their Country Should not Venture’. It concludes thus:

I also can't help wondering whether the officers didn't feel emboldened to throw their weight about partly in consequence of the Leveson Report, which has virtually severed relations between journalists and the police. The Guardian, of course, is almost single-handedly responsible for Leveson because of its later debunked allegation that the News of the World deleted the voicemails of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Nor can I help pointing out the newspaper that has shed copious tears for Mr Miranda, held for nine hours, had no such concerns over the interrogation of dozens of red-top journalists. Some were arrested at dawn in front of their families, deprived of their computers for months and released on bail. Charges won't be brought against some of them. Others will end up in court. But even the most culpable among them never attempted to damage their country. With friends like Edward Snowden, and employees such as Glenn Greenwald, that is what the Guardian is in danger of doing.

Two days later, aMail editorial entitled ‘Whiff of Hypocrisy?’ argued that ‘press freedom is an essential right in any democratic society, but along with rights come responsibilities. The Guardian continues to be vociferous in its demands for police to pursue tabloid journalists suspected of acting illegally. Is the paper so arrogant and hypocritical as to believe it is itself above the law?’ ( The following day the same line was taken by the Spectator in an article headed ‘The Guardian Didn’t Care When Murdoch’s Journalists Were Arrested. So Why the Hysteria Now?’ This stated that: