Guardian’s David Leigh used phone hacking

The phone hacking scandal, which has laid low News International and forced an investigation at Trinity Mirror, has been doggedly pursued for years by the Guardian - so it might surprise some to learn that the paper's own investigations editor David Leigh admitted in 2006 to having listened to people's voicemails.

That was probably the thinking behind the publication by the Metro today of a story based on a five-year-old article Leigh wrote for the Guardian reacting to the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman pleading guilty to phone hacking.

"I've used some of those questionable methods myself over the years," Leigh wrote. "I, too, once listened to the mobile phone messages of a corrupt arms company executive - the crime similar to that for which Goodman now faces the prospect of jail.

"The trick was a simple one," he continued. "The businessman in question had inadvertently left his pin code on a print-out and all that was needed was to dial straight into his voicemail." Leigh admits that "there is certainly a voyeuristic thrill in hearing another person's private messages."

It is not clear whether the incident occurred when Leigh was working for the Guardian. But some readers may well ask why it is legitimate for a Guardian editor to have listened to hacked voicemails when tabloid editors are being slated and prosecuted for doing just that.

The defence, as Leigh went on to state in his article, is one of public interest. "Unlike Goodman," he writes, "I was not interested in witless tittle-tattle about the royal family. I was looking for evidence of bribery and corruption."

Can such an argument really legitimise phone hacking? Richard Tait, former editor of Newsnight and ITN News, certainly thinks there's a case to be made. "Journalists have always argued, and have sometimes been supported in the courts, that there are occasions when they can break the rules if there's overwhelming public interest," he told The First Post last month.

Yet most phone-hacking cases that have come to light, Tait continued, simply aren't in this category. "They're not hacking people's phones because they know there's something of public interest to be discovered," he said. "They're hacking a phone on a fishing expedition."

Does David Leigh's apparent attempt to corroborate suspicion of malpractice fall into the former group? 

As well as admitting to listening to hacked voicemails, Leigh goes on to say he has used some of the other shady tactics investigative journalists tend to employ, including blagging. "The rule should be that deceptions, lies and stings should only be used as a last resort, and only when it is clearly in the public interest." he wrote. "And, as for actually breaking the law? Well, it is hard to keep on the right side of legality on all occasions."

George Brock, former managing editor at the Times, voiced similar sentiments when he talked to The First Post soon after the Milly Dowler story broke. "In general," he said, "plenty of important journalism operates at the margins of what might break the rules or even the law of the land."

The problem with defending phone hacking, he continued, is its undoubted illegality. "It is one thing to go up against rules that a regulator might have," Brock said. "It's really quite a different order of thing to knowingly break criminal law." To do so, an editor must be certain that they have a watertight public interest defence.

According to media lawyer and former Wikileaks legal advisor Mark Stephens, such a situation could mean a phone-hacking journalist avoids jail, despite breaking the law. "In order to undertake a criminal prosecution you have to satisfy two tests," he explained to The First Post. "One is that there's a better than 50 per cent chance of securing a conviction. Secondly, that it is also in the public interest to do so. Now, if someone could demonstrate that is not in the public interest then... a prosecution [of the journalist] wouldn't follow."

The specifics of David Leigh's phone-hacking incident are not publicly known, but the emergence of his admission highlights the blurry ethics that surround the issue of journalists accessing another's voicemails. ·