Hack OR Hacker ?
What kind of journalist are you? BY JONATHAN HOLMES Int ro
Go horse riding with Dave
Break out in a cold sweat
Most of your staff are in jail: youʼre beginning to regret those ʻVoicemail and Vodkaʼ parties. Now Operation Weeting is knocking at your door. How do you respond? Burn your diary
Tuck a £20 into the constableʼs top pocket
Oh-oh, inquiry time. Lord Leveson requests the pleasure of your company. How do you act?
Humble
Press regulation revolution is in the air, and itʼs time for some heads to roll. Who are you going to blame? One lone journalist/ Two lone journalists/ Three lone journalists, more!
Bad Mouth the author
Donʼt blame the player, blame the game
Design: Dutch Holland. Photographs: Getty; Rex Fetures/Alastair Pullen, the Guardian
“Did I pay who to keep quiet? Who’s Neville? I’m not sure I’m in the right room, is this the bathroom?” Despite controlling the world’s largest media empire, your indifference to how it works beggars belief. Still, once your grey-eyed son takes charge, News Corp will sell-off its publications for the copper in the walls.
Have you ever scrambled through a celebrityʼs bin?
Lord Leveson has descended from Mount Sinai with his commandments. Literally nobody understands them, but you know theyʼre an abomination. How do you respond?
Ignore him
Ignore him
Your celeb editor brings you a juicy story, but the source seems suspect. What questions do you ask?
Throw a Punch
Who is Tom Watson?
None, seems true
Kelvin MacKenzie
“What’s that? Go screw yourself.” The wide boy of Fleet Street, you walked into Leveson’s chamber like it was your local boozer. It’s amazing your shoulders fitted through. You print anything that ‘seems’ true. You not only didn’t know about hacking, but didn’t want to know. “Butt out Leveson, you four-eyed, hairless tabby cat!”
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I told you so
Yes
Hacked?
No
Yes
Blagged?
No
Yes
Slagged?
No
Yes
Hired dodgy private investigators?
No
Cackle
Tom Watson MP just delivered a 40 minute monologue, in iambic pentameter, calling you the devil incarnate. How do you respond?
Rupert Murdoch
“Privacy is for paedos”
Robert Jay QC keeps reading out incriminating chunks from your autobiography: A Blagger’ s Guide to Journalism. What do you say?
Gorilla arrogance
So itʼs phone hacking, but the fall outʼs manageable, as long as itʼs just celebrities. Everyone hates them. Whatʼs that? Milly who? Ah. How do you respond?
“While my paper did hack a dead girlʼs phone, they didnʼt delete any messages. Weʼre not monsters.”
How much will you pay me?
Paul McMullan
You’ve done it all, you’ve broken every PPC code. From rifling through bins to hacking phones, you are the worst-case scenario. You boast about your crimes like a low-rent James Bond baddie, glorying in the scandalised gasps of Guardian readers. You’ve now retired to become a pub landlord and pantomime villain.
Who, Steve? Steveʼs alright
No
Managed to look at yourself in the mirror without sobbing? No
Yes
Nick Davies
Like Cassandra, you saw it coming. You wrote the book on journalism’s dirty secrets (available in all good shops). Ratting on journalists has made you the Guardian’s centrefold and earned you an invite to Hugh Grant’s Dordogne villa. Just don’t expect anyone to talk to you at the Fleet Street Christmas party.