Can't resist the sexism?
Rebekah Brooks whose trial for her role in the News of the World (NoW) phone hacking scandal is under way at the Old Bailey has become the public face of not just that scandal but all that ails Britain’s famously cocky, highly judgemental and stridently self-righteous media.
Although eight people, including her husband Charlie Brooks and Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief and an ex-NoW editor Andy Coulson, are on trial the entire media focus is on Ms Brooks dubbed “the flame-haired Queen of Fleet Street’’. That description is typical of her sexist portrayal in the media.
She is facing a string of pretty serious charges, including “conspiracy to intercept voicemails, conspiracy to cause misconduct in public office and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice”, but so are the seven other defendants. And at least two—Coulson, and Charlie, a close friend of Cameron from their days at Eton—are equally high profile. Charlie, a horse-trainer, used to ride with Cameron.
Yet, the media has singled her out as the (vampish) villain. The tone of reporting since the day she was first arrested in July 2011 (she was released; re-arrested and is now on bail) has been so slanted that in the public mind she is already “the ‘un who did it’’.
The rise of a state school-educated “skinny, hollow-eyed girl” (description provided by Tim Minogue, a former colleague) from the ranks of NoW’s secretarial pool to become its editor (Fleet Street’s youngest at the time) and then the chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s British media group News International has always been viewed through the prism of a glamorous young woman’s proximity to her boss.
There was much tittering and tangential comment when Murdoch declared his “total’’ support for her as he arrived in London in the summer of 2011 to take control of the crisis, and gesturing towards her replied “that one” when a reporter asked about his “number one priority’’. Even the venerable Reuters couldn’t resist noting that, “He later travelled across the city to his London home where he was joined by his embattled newspaper group chief executive Rebekah Brooks, and then crossed the road to a hotel with his arm around her (emphasis mine).’’
The dominant narrative around her meteoric rise and dramatic fall has tended to present her as a “ruthless’’ woman who used her female “charm’’ to get to the top. Here’s what The Daily Telegraph’s Richard Alleyne wrote about her the day she quit News International in July 2011: “The flame haired, 43-year-old’s ability to get the scoop and rise up the corporate ladder were down to a potent mix of ruthlessness and dazzling charm. That and an extraordinary ability to make friends in high places meant the guest list to her wedding two years ago read like a Who's Who of modern Britain. …The fact it took 12 days before she was finally let go from News International shows how far she has ingratiated herself into the Rupert Murdoch family.’’
Her appearance at the Leveson inquiry into media ethics, triggered by the hacking scandal, prompted a flurry of headlines about her looks, the way she “flashed’’ a smile at the judge or the inquiry counsel, the “giggles’’ in the audience over remarks she made about her “powerful’’ male friends. Rather than a story about phone hacking, it became a story about an attractive, high-profile woman’s close relationship with influential men, including her boss and prime minister Cameron.
In contrast, Coulson has been treated as though he is just incidental to the whole drama, a mere also-ran, though it was under his editorship that NoW was embroiled in one of the biggest hacking scandals and the paper’s royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed for hacking the phones of the royal family.
Media being media, it is the nature of the beast that it is attracted to glamour. A “flame-haired’’ woman’s picture on the front page sells the papers. But why drag her gender into her alleged wrongdoings? What has her sex got to do with her ethics as a journalist?
I am sure that if an obscure young man had risen from the ranks to reach the top of his profession he would have been applauded for it: how he overcame the odds etc; and a triumph of hard work and will over circumstances.
The truth is that, for all its liberalism, the British society remains deeply sexist (ask any female MP, journalist, businesswoman) and it goes right up to the top. Cameron was involved in a huge row after he patronisingly told a senior woman MP to “calm down, dear’’.
This piece is not a defence of Rebekah Brooks the accused in a criminal trial. The court will decide that. But let her gender not come in the way of facts or justice. Please.
A jury of nine women and three men is hearing the case which is expected to last up to six months. Needless to say nobody is waiting more keenly for Ms Brooks to give testimony than the media. And we know why.
(Hasan Suroor is The Hindu’s former UK correspondent)
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