Now that's what I call journalism

The British media's reaction to Julian Assange and Wikileaks has veered between anger and contempt. (Partial exception: Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, who admitted on television that if he'd come into possession of the treasure trove of US files, he'd have published them). Assange doesn't seem to be a very nice man, but what really gets the media's collective goat is that he dares to describe himself as a "journalist". Apparently getting people to divulge all sorts of information to you and then publishing it falls short of the exalted standards expected of that profession.

Courtesy of the Daily Telegraph, we've seen a good example this week of the highly-principled activities of "real" journalists, namely, adopting bogus identities in an effort to entrap a minister of the Crown, in this particular case Vince Cable, the Business Minister.

This sort of thing is not new, of course, though it's generally the preserve of rather less self-important newspapers than the Telegraph. The News of the World has entrapped numerous personalities, including Sven-Goran Eriksson, using one of its staffers posing as a "fake Sheikh". However, the Telegraph has taken the whole tawdry process to new lows. Cable made some wildly inappropriate and negative comments to the undercover journalists about the Murdoch media empire, over which he has (or rather, had) regulatory oversight. Cable is (or rather, was) soon to make a decision on a takeover bid by Murdoch's News Corp. for its partly-owned subsidiary, BSkyB. Since the Telegraph opposes this takeover, it chose not to publish these comments in its initial reports on the interview with Cable.

This so shocked one Telegraph insider that he/she passed a full tape of the Cable interview on to Robert Peston at the BBC. Relations between the Beeb and the Murdoch empire are cordially poisonous, but Peston immediately broke the full story. Cue full-scale panic on Downing Street, with Cable hauled onto the carpet at No 10 and stripped of his powers of oversight over the media sector, including the still-pending BSkyB decision. The Telegraph, which seems never to have intended the full story to come out, has nevertheless seen fit today to allow one of its attack dogs, Simon Heffer, to write an opinion piece demanding to know why Cable has not been sacked from the Government!

Who are the winners and losers in all of this nonsense? The Telegraph is a loser on all counts, resorting to shady gutter-press tactics, attempting to hide the resulting story and then playing into the hands of its commercial rivals. The BBC has kept its integrity but must have reported the full story through gritted teeth, knowing that the chances of the BSkyB deal going through have just soared. Cable is a big loser, with his tenure in the government under question from all sides. And the Government as a whole is a loser, because no decision it now makes on the BSkyB deal will ever be seen as clean.

Sadly, the only real winner is Rupert Murdoch, who has gleefully watched his enemies circling their wagons and firing inwards. And I suppose we have to count Julian Assange as a winner too: compared to the "real" journalists on Fleet Street, he suddenly seems like a paragon of respectability and sound judgment.