Hacking scandal: Guardian threatens press freedom

Has the Guardian taken leave of its senses? It is becoming clearer by the day that its almost pathological pursuit of the three-year-old News of the World hacking story is posing a serious threat to press freedom in Britain - and yet it continues to pursue it.

In the way that it has presented the hacking story - as a serious tabloid crime that the police must fully investigate - the Guardian has created an authoritarian, censorious climate, the consequences of which are likely to be far worse than anything Andy Coulson allegedly did while he was editing Rupert Murdoch's Sunday red-top.

The Guardian has helped to create a climate in which everyone from leading bobbies to opportunistic MPs can vent their spleen against the cocky tabloids, and by extension against the idea of press freedom itself. Is there no one at the Guardian who is willing to say at their morning editorial conference: "Guys, I think we've gone too far"?

The Guardian has been following this story for years. In July last year it reported that News of the World reporters had colluded with private investigators to tap into the mobile telephones of thousands of public figures, including politicians, footballers and celebs.

Yet there was little truly new in its "scoop", most of which was based on the transcripts and evidence from the trial of Clive Goodman, the NoW's former royal reporter, and Glen Mulcaire, a private investigator, who were jailed in January 2007 for plotting to intercept the voicemail messages of royal aides. It was that controversy which caused Coulson to resign his editorship, though he insisted, then as now, that he knew nothing of his reporters' dark practices. (Later, of course, he became chief spinner for David Cameron's Conservatives.)

Now, the New York Times seems to have uncovered something fairly new in the hacking scandal: it interviewed a former NoW reporter, Sean Hoare, who says Coulson was fully aware of the phone-tapping that was taking place at the News of the World. The fact that Hoare was sacked from the Sunday red-top over his problems with drugs and alcohol might, in some people's eyes, make him an unreliable witness - but this hasn't stopped the Guardian resuscitating its hacking obsession on the back of his claims.

In depicting Murdoch's tabloid as the crazed rottweiler of journalism, an untameable, slobbering beast that will do anything to sink its teeth into a story, the Guardian has implicitly - and also explicitly - invited figures of authority to demand more curbs on what tabloid journalists can and cannot do.

In the House of Commons yesterday, MPs - who have long feared the furious, populist attentions of the tabloid press - scented Murdoch's blood. Labour MP Tom Watson pontificated: "The barons of the media, with their red-topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle... They laugh at the law, they sneer at parliament, they have the power to hurt us and they do with gusto and precision."

But isn't it the job of journalists to "hurt" the powers-that-be - that is, investigate them, embarrass them, laugh at them if necessary? Anyone with a libertarian bone in his body should be worried when, in the words of today's Independent, the House of Commons "declares war" on the red tops.

Other MPs demanded tougher press laws, presumably to restrict the freedom of the tabloids to "sneer at parliament". Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes ominously warned that the tabloids are involved in "a whole sea of illegal and undesirable activity".

Note his marrying together of both "illegal" and "undesirable" activities - suggesting that this is not simply about dragging actual law-breaking hacks into the dock, but also about imposing a new moral straitjacket on the prickly press so that they only say the kind of things that a political prude like Hughes judges to be "desirable".

Echoing the Guardian itself, which has published numerous pieces about why the NoW investigations were not in the "public interest", Labour MP Chris Bryant said parliament should discuss "what kind of investigative journalism we want in his country".

Excuse me? It is not up to the authorities to define what is good and bad investigative journalism - that is for journalists and their publishers to decide. Their readers can cast judgment by either buying or not buying their papers. The Guardian's creation of a febrile anti-tabloid climate has created the semi-Stalinist situation where agents of the state believe they have the right to define what is "desirable" and "undesirable" journalism.

I'm not a fan of the News of the World or Andy Coulson. I don't much care what Prince Harry says on his mobile phone to Chelsey Watzername. But I would far rather have a "bad" free press - even if it involves hacks eavesdropping on celebrities - than have a "good" controlled press. ·