Hoxtonboy

So the full documentary is out. Whatever your view of ITV's investigation into Reform, and whatever you think of what it revealed, I think we need to recognise that this represents a significant escalation in the use of undercover journalism against a political party. I've spoken to people in broadcasting in recent days, about the precedents for this kind of investigation. They highlight that, in 2005, Channel 4's Dispatches infiltrated Labour's press office during the general election campaign. But that investigation was part of a wider but focused examination of the rise of "political spin," critically, with undercover reporters placed in all three major parties. A 2012 Sunday Times story also gets mentioned. Then, journalists secretly filmed Conservative Party treasurer Peter Cruddas in the cash-for-access scandal. Again, there, they were pursuing a very specific allegation of wrongdoing. What appears to be happening with Reform is something rather different. We've seen undercover filming of canvassers handing out leaflets, activists in pubs, councillors in their homes, parliamentary candidates in local meeting, junior press officers at their desks, senior officials at the Christmas party, and now even the party leader himself in the party office. Across successive general elections and by-elections, Channel 4 and now ITV have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and resources to covertly recording people associated with one political movement, at almost every level. Rather than investigating a specific allegation of wrongdoing, the approach now appears to be to put people under sustained clandestine surveillance and wait for something newsworthy to emerge. Whatever that might be. That's a very different proposition, and one I struggle to reconcile with the investigative journalism I was taught. Undercover methods were supposed to be exceptional. You had a specific lead, a serious matter of public interest to investigate, and good reasons why the information couldn't be obtained through conventional reporting. Here, that principle seems to have been turned on its head. To be clear, some of the comments made by Reform councillors and activists are genuinely appalling. I can see a legitimate public interest argument for broadcasting them. But I'm still struggling to understand what justified secretly filming the conversations inside Reform HQ and at their Christmas party, particularly those involving junior staff and what appeared to be an entirely legitimate internal discussion involving Nigel Farage. There's another problem I've discussed with journalists who have worked on undercover investigations. Once a broadcaster has committed months of work, substantial resources and considerable editorial effort to an investigation, there is inevitably pressure to produce something worth broadcasting. What happens when the undercover operation doesn't uncover the scandal you might have hoped for? I worry that the threshold for what constitutes a story starts to fall. Conversations that would ordinarily be considered unremarkable become national news simply because they were secretly recorded. And the presence of a party leader in the footage doesn't automatically make the conversation newsworthy, let alone justify the methods used to obtain it. The wider implications concern me even more. I cannot overstate the anxiety this kind of journalism will create among people working in politics, particularly younger staff. If taking a job in a political press office now means accepting that a colleague might be an undercover reporter, secretly recording your conversations for months, what does that do to the working environment? What does it do to trust? To the willingness of talented young people to enter politics? Or to the ability of political staff and journalists to engage with one another in good faith? And there is an obvious question about impartiality. The intensity of undercover scrutiny directed at Reform in recent years is striking. That doesn't mean Reform should be exempt from scrutiny. Quite the opposite. But it is reasonable to ask whether the same investigative methods and editorial thresholds are being applied across politics. Otherwise, people who support Reform, or simply want to work for the party, will understandably feel uniquely under attack and isolated from the "mainstream media" and "the establishment" I really worry about what that means for this political tribe (my political tribe), as well as the relationship between politics and the media, and ultimately for our democratic process. None of this excuses the disgraceful things some Reform-liked people have said. Nor does it mean undercover journalism cannot expose wrongdoing of genuine public interest. What we're witnessing appears to be a shift from investigating specific allegations of wrongdoing towards relentless covert scrutiny of an entire political movement, in the hope of discovering something worth broadcasting. Whatever your politics, I think we should be concerned about where this takes us. I hope I'm wrong about the consequences. But I suspect we're entering a new era in the relationship between journalists and political parties, and nobody really knows where it ends.