Urinal or conduit? Institutional information flow between the UK intelligence services and the news media

Abstract

Abstract:Since the 1990s, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5) have developed formal links with most major UK news organizations in an effort to improve the agencies' media presentation. This paper discusses the impact and inherent problems of these relationships, including whether the news media can have official, formal but nonattributable links with these agencies without compromising their role as the fourth estate.Utilizing epistemologies for crime reporting and news sources, this paper proposes an initial framework to analyze these institutional relationships. It also takes as a case study the controversy over whether the MI5 deliberately played down their prior knowledge of 7/7 suicide bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan. The author was one of the journalists briefed by MI5 on Khan and has here take the Khan controversy as a case study to investigate the Security Services' information flow and whether the agency misled, and indeed intended to mislead, the media and the public.

News, Agenda Building, and Intelligence Agencies

“…Yet, their relevance for studying intelligence agencies' role in this process is questionable, as secrecy, misdirection and disinformation make difficult establishing broad, causal agenda-building links (Bakir 2013 (Lashmar 2013, Wheelwright 2014; and researcher-generated public opinion polling or other means of audience measurement (totally absent). Lengthy declassification periods for intelligence-related matters (Dacre, Cannadine & Pilling 2009) explain why, with 11 articles, the historical approach is among the most popular of methods (Alwood 2007, Fletcher 1982, Granville 2004, Martin 1982, Masaharu 1999, Soley 1982, Spaulding 2009, Sussman 2007, Sweeney & Washburn 2014, Vaughan 2002.…”

“Russia Accuses Fleet Street”

“…Paul Lashmar has detailed the institutional links and some of the ways British journalists collaborate -or collude -with official contacts in the intelligence services (Lashmar 2013). The former home affairs editor of The Observer, David Rose, who was the paper's "accredited" intermediary with MI6, recalled that he was on the instructions of the MI6 contact to pretend that his meetings with him "never happened".…”

From Silence to Primary Definer: The Emergence of an Intelligence Lobby in the Public Sphere

“…The UK intelligence community became more sophisticated in their dealings with the news media through discrete arrangements with news organisations and appointing press officers for the first time (Bakir 2015;Dorril 2015). A number of journalists have documented the 'accredited journalist' system within major UK news organisations (Bright 2002;Rose 2007;Lashmar 2013). Keeble expresses concern over the influence of British intelligence on the news media in this way:…”