News of the World dies before finest hour

It’s ironic, and James Murdoch wouldn’t be smiling. As the news comes in that Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif are pronounced guilty in the spot fixing case, News of the World, which conducted the sting that led to their conviction, closed down on 6 July, 2011 thanks to the mobile hacking scandal. [caption id=“attachment_121513” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The News of the World was arguably the only organisation with the means and the modus operandi to snare the perpetrators of a fix. AFP”]  [/caption] To make matters worse, the newspaper was in the red to the extent of more than 100,000 pounds in this connection, being the direct costs attendant to the sting. “The News of the World lost £104,300 in cash that it paid to the agent at the centre of the Pakistan spot-fixing allegations, a court has heard. Mazhar Mahmood, the former NoW investigations editor known as the fake sheikh, paid £140,000 in cash in a suitcase to the cricketers’ agent Mazhar Majeed, the jury hearing the spot-fixing trial at Southwark crown court heard.The money, which the prosecution said followed an initial £10,000 cash payment, was intended as a deposit to prove Mahmood’s supposed commitment to fixing events at cricket matches,” reported the Guardian. Butt and Asif are just the last to be caught by NoTW. Famously, they had caught Sarah Ferguson on tape, taking half a million pounds for access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, in 2010. A month before ‘Fergiegate’, as this sting became known, NoTW had, in another famous sting, shown snooker champion John Higgins and his agent, Pat Mooney apparently agreeing to fix the outcome of snooker matches. Sting operations have been a common tool in the UK print media to ‘create’ exclusive stories and, as a consequence, differentiate themselves from competition and the tabloids have been the leaders in the game – and News of the World the leader of the pack. Their secret weapon was Mazhar Mahmood, the investigative reporter whose stings have reportedly been responsible for over 200 convictions – perhaps because of which his image is close to impossible to find even in this digital age. “Mahmood works secretively, rarely going into the News International offices. Written into Mahmood’s contract was a clause stating that his photograph would never be published in the newspaper. If he featured in photos that accompanied his stories, his face was always concealed and a silhouette used next to his byline,” says a Wikipedia entry, obviously made before the demise of News of the World. What makes News of the World a hero as far as spot fixing is concerned and a villain in the mobile hacking scandal? It’s easy to understand the difference in the context of a case that we know well in India – the cash for votes scam. “The (Delhi High) Court considered it to be the fundamental duty of an ordinary citizen under Article 51A(b), 51A(h) & 51A(j) to expose such practices prevailing in the system and thus for this purpose any such act or operation conducted, with the intention of doing public good is justified,” reported Legal Services India. The spot fixing sting is seen by the public and the judiciary as having been made with the intention of ‘doing public good’; the mobile hacking scandal did no public good, and only served to boost the newspaper’s revenues. The mobile scam forced the News of the World to shut down barely three months ago; today, their sting into the spot-fixing scam has done cricket – and all fans of cricket – yeoman service. The defunct paper is praised across the world with, sometimes gushing, and sometimes grudging, praise. The Guardian’s is neither – it tells the facts as they are: “But there will also be widespread acceptance that none of the frequently jaw-dropping allegations that eventually came to light in an ICC tribunal or a London courtroom would ever have been made public were it not for a newspaper that was closed down this year in the wake of widespread public revulsion over phone hacking. The News of the World was arguably the only organisation with the means and the modus operandi to snare the perpetrators of a fix of the type that had long been suspected but never proved.” For the News of the World and for James Murdoch, it’s like a golfer scoring a hole-in-one at a par four that he cannot celebrate.