True crime dramas, in which nobody wins but the lawyers, are not the kind of films that made Hugh Grant famous. His starring role in the long-running legal action against the Sun newspaper for phone hacking instead proves that real life is far more flawed and frustrating than film.
After more than a decade of leading a campaign against what he called the “worst excesses of the oligarch-owned press”, Grant settled with Rupert Murdoch when offered such an “enormous” sum of money that to proceed would have seen him liable for even bigger costs.
Points of law are not the stuff of happy endings. A legal provision with the arcane title of “part 36”, designed to encourage parties to settle and therefore avoid lengthy trials, enables very wealthy men like Murdoch to make an offer that their opponents cannot refuse. All of which underlines the fact that civil courts, designed for two sides to settle over money, are not necessarily the best places for justice to be done when matters of principle are at stake.
Grant’s flinch at a cost of continuing he put at £10m is understandable. Yet it means the public won’t hear evidence of alleged burglary, and bugging cars and phones, as well as blagging medical records that Graham Johnson, a journalist whose work was cited by Grant, describes as “reading like a true crime book”. Nor will senior News Group executives be held accountable for other alleged misdemeanours.
Court time might have cost Murdoch some £1bn and counting, and the owners of Mirror Group Newspapers, Reach, so much that its business was seriously affected. Yet it has still left campaigners feeling as though justice is nowhere near being done. Even with Prince Harry and Doreen Lawrence continuing to press their respective cases against newspaper publishers, those set to be heard in early 2025, it is surely time to look again at other options.
Grant, who used a post on X (viewed more than half a million times in a few hours) to have a final word on what he refused to call “hush money”, is donating the settlement to press campaigners such as Hacked Off, which has long argued for a further inquiry into press standards and behaviour.
The campaign group is likely to use this money to urge for political reform. On social media, it warned politicians that support from “unregulated newspapers” would be “an electoral liability” in an election year. Grant retweeted this, adding “Yes @Keir_Starmer nb”.
Yet the chances of Starmer’s Labour party making a public stand on press reform in an election year in which it senses victory after 14 years, are slimmer than Grant becoming prime minister rather than playing the role cinematically. The Labour leader is understood to have indicated privately that he doesn’t see press reform as a priority.
Some of the Labour team see the battering Angela Rayner is taking in the press over her taxes as a typical warning sign from a newspaper industry that likes to flex its muscles in times of change. Yet Rayner is also thought to be unlikely to want to spearhead a campaign for tighter press reform.
That said, politicians in both houses as well as outside are looking at what can be done to draw a line under this seemingly never-ending saga. Everyone would benefit from improving press standards.
The most interesting whispers are those suggesting the formation of a sort of governance trust, a non-partisan body made up of genuine experts funded by the sort of fees currently lining the pockets of some of the UK’s richest lawyers. This body, which would have to include new voices and not those battle hardened on either the newspaper or campaign side, could not only consider the welter of evidence lodged in court but also act as a sort of truth and reconciliation process.
There could even be a charitable element, with funding for education and training in ethical behaviour. This may be sacrilege to many industry dinosaurs, but even they can’t credibly defend the status quo.
Many on both sides won’t agree with this sort of wishy-washy proposal. Some believe that only further criminal trials, where wrongdoing can lead to prison, will satisfy the sense of injustice. If there is more information set to come to light, with details of not just wrongdoing but lies to cover it up, then this may be the most sensible course. But where will it end?
In reaching agreement with Grant, News UK said: “It is in both parties’ financial interests not to progress to a costly trial.” It is definitely not in the interests of honest news journalists – or their readers – for owners with the biggest pockets to escape culpability by paying off the limited few grievants who are wealthy enough to go to court in the first place. But dire also is the prospect of another 10 years of civil litigation, in which newspapers go out of business and news providers without any ethical code or history of investigative journalism take over.
Celebrities from Sienna Miller to Grant may have stepped back from taking their cases to court, but if their actions give the thorny question of press standards new impetus and bring us closer to a decent solution – a big if – they will nevertheless have served the public good.
Jane Martinson is a Guardian columnist
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