Abstract
Would the grandparents of investigative journalism have dared to hack phones in order to obtain the stories that made them famous? In 1885, “the grandfather”, William Thomas Stead, exposed the trade in child prostitution in London by negotiating the “purchase” of a 13-year-old girl. In 1887, “the grandmother”, Nellie Bly, exposed the brutal treatment of mentally ill patients in a New York asylum by feigning insanity.
Both investigations involved elaborate subterfuge. Both caused immediate sensations and made journalistic history. And both resulted in changes that were of undoubted lasting public benefit. One key difference was in the initial official response. Bly was feted and became a popular celebrity. Stead was jailed for three months, admittedly on a technicality, and thereafter courted unpopularity.
The outcome of their pioneering form of journalism had far-reaching implications. In Bly's case, her recommendations — increased funding, more sensitive treatment for the insane and thorough examinations before patients being confined—were enacted. In Stead's case, it helped to raise the age of consent as well as fairer legislation aimed at stopping the spread of venereal disease.
Investigator: William T Stead
My hunch is that Bly — she went on to indulge in journalistic stunts rather than serious feats of investigation — would never have contemplated breaking the law for journalistic reasons. Stead, however, was an altogether different character. He was a man on a mission and what shines through his journalism and, indeed, his life is a conviction that he was right about everything.
Stead was an anti-establishment evangelist who was imbued with what one of his obituarists called a “moral impetuosity”. Stirred by “great motives”, he was said to have exhibited “perilous gifts that made him the most vivid and brilliant journalist in England”. Not everyone agreed about that. Matthew Arnold was scathing about Stead's sensationalist approach, regarding him as a vulgar muckraker purveying “featherbrained” journalism. George Bernard Shaw, who worked for Stead, considered him “stupendously ignorant”. Even Gladstone, who had benefitted from Stead's fervent support when securing victory in the 1880 general election, later accused his former ally of having “done more harm to journalism than any individual ever known”.
This unpopularity with the literary and political elites was due in equal parts to the content of Stead's campaigns and to the methods he adopted. As the current scandal indicates, there is a link between trivial editorial content and questionable journalistic methodology. In Stead's case, it would be unfair to see the content of his campaigns as trivial (or featherbrained). Even if sometimes wayward, especially over his backing for imperialist adventures that appeared to contradict his desire for world peace, his domestic campaigning journalism was informed by a passionate concern for the underdog.
In a Victorian society undergoing rapid social change during the industrial revolution, it often meant representing the travails of the urban working class — and specifically women and children. That factor was obvious in his “Maiden Tribute” series of articles, about the sale of young girls for prostitution, and in his campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act, in which women, rather than men, were punished for the spread of venereal disease. His crusade to secure alimony for Mildred Langworthy from her errant millionaire husband also illustrates his unfashionable sympathy for the plight of women.
In modern journalistic parlance, we would regard Stead's campaigns as being “in the public interest” because he sought to right wrongs. So why did he attract so much criticism? In part, it was because he dared to use (and sometimes invented) journalistic devices that were designed to maximise public support, such as bold, eye-catching headlines and overly melodramatic copy in which he often inserted himself as a leading actor in the unfolding story. Allied to his immodest self-publicity, he also launched hyperbolic attacks on individuals in authority, casting them as villains of the piece. And it cannot be denied that he blatantly used sex to ramp up sales.
Having trawled through his journalistic output and the various biographies, I cannot find any example of him having knowingly broken the law. But I am also in no doubt that he would have done so if he felt it necessary. In other words, he would have been a hacker. That is not to disapprove—just the reverse. It is to reinforce a point that cannot be made often enough as the Leveson Inquiry contemplates what should be done to combat ethical shortcomings.
Hacking was not, of itself, the problem. It was the manner in which it was employed by the News of the World (too frequently, too indiscriminately and for no perceptible public benefit) that caused the crisis. Breaches of the law by journalists can be justified, at least in the court of public opinion, if they are committed for the right reasons. Stead went further still. He argued in his essay “Government by Journalism” that editors should supplant the elected lawmakers because newspapers were more democratic in theory and practice than parliament. “The Press is at once the eye and the ear and the tongue of the people,” he wrote. “It is the visible speech if not the voice of the democracy.” Stead, who died on the Titanic a century ago, could not have foreseen the way in which his pioneering of sensationalist journalism would develop.
My guess is that he would be hacked off that sensationalism eventually shed its public-interest raison d'ětre.