A culture of secrecy does police no favours
Senior officers treat the media with hostility, but freedom of the press is in the interests of everyone
It was astonishingly poorly timed. On the day that Field Marshal Lord Bramall passed away – a man whose later years were overshadowed by a police investigation that was shocking not just in its unfairness but in its paranoid secrecy – Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu stood up to defend the police’s role in attempting to silence journalists.
You may remember Basu, the “national lead” officer for counter‑terrorism. Earlier this year he caused controversy when he threatened to prosecute journalists over the leak of a series of cables sent from our embassy in Washington.
The cables, which described the Trump administration as
“dysfunctional”, were undeniably embarrassing. Their release arguably harmed the Government’s interests overseas and they led to the resignation of our then ambassador, Sir Kim Darroch. But none of these things justified threatening the journalists who exposed them. It is not the job of officers to put the squeeze on journalists pursuing stories that are inconvenient to their political masters.
Basu’s remarks were rightly met with widespread condemnation. Boris Johnson, at the time campaigning to become Tory leader, responded by saying that pursuing journalists through the courts would have a “chilling effect” on democracy.
Yet Basu doesn’t seem to have learnt his lesson. In a speech to the Society of Editors, delivered on Tuesday, he said: “Knowing what I know now, would I do it again? The answer is yes.” He went on to add the lame caveat that he would have gone about things “differently” – by which he meant only that instead of making a public statement, he might have made private phone calls to various newspaper editors. One could argue that shadowy private threats are even more chilling than a public statement.
A measure of how little he appreciates his mistake came later in the speech when he argued for a new plan to limit the activities of journalists. We need to consider, he suggested, a new set of guidelines to govern how journalists report terrorist attacks.
The intention may be pure – for example, to avoid inadvertently glorifying attackers – but the unintended consequences could be dire. If we start reporting terror attacks only within strict guidelines it is easy to see how vital elements of the story, such as the suspected motivation of the attacker or the effectiveness of the response of the authorities, could quickly become off‑ limits. The impact on public awareness and government policy of covering up such information is obvious.
The implication of Basu’s comments is that the police still seem to think they have a problem with too much transparency. It used to be that journalists could develop relationships with police officers and build trust with each other. Now – largely since the Leveson inquiry and attempts by campaigners against press freedom to shackle reporters – police forces employ press officers who behave as if their purpose is to stop, rather than facilitate, the flow of information.
The problem for the police – and one of the reasons why their public standing has been damaged in recent years – is that, in reality, they are far too opaque, which leads only to suspicion.
In the case of Lord Bramall, the victim of a grotesque lie by Carl Beech, he was treated with utter contempt by the police. Operation Midland, the investigation, was shrouded in secrecy. Only when the press began to dig did the entire edifice collapse. When the Henriques report into the fiasco was released, it was heavily redacted and a fuller version was only put out recently. How does that – which smacks of a cover‑up – help public trust?
Senior police officers are exposed to arguments about the importance of press freedom. I know that, because I have made them myself, lecturing at the Police Staff College in Bramshill. But many still seem to end up behaving as if journalists are a threat to national security, rather than individuals equally deserving of protection under the law and who have a role to play in informing their readers about stories that are in the public interest.
I only hope that senior officers can wake up and see the mistakes they’re making. If Basu is anything to go by, I wouldn’t put money on it.
follow Stephen Pollard on Twitter @stephenpollard; read more at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion