Rebekah Brooks: Don’t Blame Me, I’m A Victim Too!

That, I think, is what we are supposed to take away from the ridiculous statement News International’s Chief Executive has issued today. Surely the editor of the News of the World asks the occasional question about the provenance of the stories she chooses to publish? Apparently not. This being so a reasonable person might just be tempted to ask if Ms Brooks is a) telling the truth or b) any good at her job?

It’s surely one or the other but her defence appears to be, “It wasn’t me; I was just the clueless, hapless, innocent editor”. I am not sure how many parsnips this butters.

There are a couple of nice touches in her statement:

It is almost too horrific to believe that a professional journalist or even a freelance inquiry agent working on behalf of a member of the News of the World staff could behave in this way.

If the allegations are proved to be true then I can promise the strongest possible action will be taken as this company will not tolerate such disgraceful behaviour.

I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations.

That “almost” is good and so is the faux-shock of that “even a freelance inquiry agent” . But this also seems to be a telling indicator, surely, that these “inquiry agents” (a distinctly decorous term itself!) were not expected to adhere to the standards expected of a “professional journalist” and existed to do the dirty work demanded by the paper while granting the top brass some measure of plausible deniability. If this was not the case then the “even” in Brooks’ statement is redundant.

Indeed the “almost” in “almost too horrific” also lends abundant credibility to the allegations since Brooks’ own remarks make it clear such behaviour was far from inconceivable and, even, not quite “too horrific” at all. Parsing these matters is a fraught business and of course I take Brooks at her own word that we should “realise” it is “inconceivable” that she knew anything about any of this. Even so, I can’t help notice that asking her staff to “realise” all this is “inconceivable” is not actually quite the same thing as denying any and all knowledge of what was going on.

And if this happened in the Dowler case – as, again, has not yet been determined conclusively – then isn’t it more likely than not that it happened in other cases too? And if that is so then how likely is it that the News of the World was the only paper behaving in this fashion?

UPDATE: David Allen Green has more, including the observation that Brooks’ denial is all rather Clintonian…