When did you last read a ‘council screwed up’ headline in a local authority free sheet? Real democracy needs rather more than self-serving editorial which blurs the distinctions between fact and comment, says Claire Fox

The recent revelations about the despicable antics of certain journalists working at the News of the World newspaper have shaken many inside – and outside – the media.

However, I think it’s worth taking a step back lest the ‘Hackgate’ firestorm gets out of hand. There is a danger that the understandable disgust over hacking into a murdered child’s phone, might lead to a backlash which will sanitise and over-regulate the media.

Of course, the recent scandals surrounding journalism have excited a fair amount of schadenfreude in political circles. After all, it was a morally self-righteous media which seemed to wallow in exposing the expenses scandal that did much to damage the reputation of all politicians.

Meanwhile, local councils are frequently deluged with costly and time-consuming Freedom of Information requests used by lazy, cynical journalists on fishing expeditions looking for any old story rather than pursuing a specific line of investigation.

So, it’s maybe understandable that those who run public services take satisfaction from watching sections of the ‘fourth estate’ having their own dirty washing exposed.

But before babies get thrown out with bath water, I think it’s worth launching a defence of hacks. Not phone hacking of course – illegal for good reason – but that older use of the term hack journalist, that is, those who sniff around asking awkward questions, investigating dirty secrets.

We should be wary of the growing consensus that ‘Grub Street’-like characters do too much prying, and that they should be witch-hunted out of the press. In fact, it is they who represent an essential ingredient of a free, democratic society.

Lest we forget, it was the ‘News of the Screws’ which exposed the-then leading politician, Jeffrey Archer, as a perjurer, and The Mirror’s and Private Eye’s Paul Foot who exposed the John Poulson scandal during the 1970s, which eventually led to the jailing of Newcastle City Council leader, T Dan Smith.

Of course, the caricatured seedy hack is not a saintly figure. A hack’s ‘art’ has always had an unsavoury side to it, from door-stepping to ambulance-chasing, from following up snippets of gossip to eavesdropping.

But the instinct to get the story at any cost, to be sceptical and prepared to snoop, and to use tips from disloyal friends and employees is exactly what allows journalists to uncover wrong-doing.

While broadsheets, TV’s Newsnight, and the political elite might be sniffy about whether it’s in the public interest to know the ins and outs of the relationships between celebrities such as Heather Mills and Paul McCartney, the broader point is that all investigative journalism involves underhand methods precisely because it involves finding out what others don’t want known.

It’s those instincts to pry and snoop which produce the best current affairs reporting, the most insightful documentaries, the most important exposes. And, for local democracy, it’s far more important to defend investigative journalism on behalf of the public than any number of new regulations about transparency.

Consider the alternative? Timid journalists who don’t nose around, who take the word of the council press officer as gospel, and who merely reprint municipal press releases, no questions asked. Of course, we know what that type of media might look like – rather too reminiscent of those taxpayer-funded council newspapers which have recently received a tongue-lashing from the communities secretary.

Eric Pickles may have been using hyperbole when denouncing ‘weekly town hall Pravdas’ – but then, he may just have a point. For residents to know what their local authority is doing, and to hold it to account, they need rather more than self-serving advertorials with questionable objectivity and a tendency to blur the lines between fact and comment.

While the political elite may point an accusing finger at the Murdoch Empire for attempting to monopolise media ownership and distorting the news agenda, less attention is paid to how local council newspapers have sucked in local advertising money that would otherwise go to commercial but independent newspapers, while producing ‘propaganda on the rates dressed up as reporting.’

If Mr Pickles is right about the dangers of political interference in a free press, maybe he needs to have a word with his boss. In PM David Cameron’s recent ‘clean-up the press’ pronouncements, he stated that it’s all very well for the media ‘to speak truth to power’ but it’s also important that ‘those in power can tell truth to the press’. Chilling. He seems to think it’s acceptable for politicians to dictate the ‘culture, the practice and the ethics of the British press’, but letting politicians or their oversight bodies decide what and who is investigated sounds like the ghost of Pravda writ large.

Actually, councils should be at the forefront of the campaign to defend independent journalism, as it’s the very bedrock of local democracy.

Some of our finest investigative journalists sharpened their teeth on regional and local newspapers which, even now, still act as crucial checks and balances on local abuses of power.

And real local democracy needs a range of opinions and the reality behind PR spin. When did you last read a ‘Council screwed up’ headline in a local authority free sheet?

Scrutiny from probing hacks can also be good for politicians and council officers. Forced to defend their actions and decisions, this external pressure brings policy to life, rather than leaving it stillborn under the deadening hand of a slick communications strategy.

Claire Fox is director of the Institute of Ideas