There has been much astonishment, in the aftermath of the Sony leak, that its principal victims, senior executives would you believe, were foolish enough to write so frankly in workplace emails. “Inappropriate” is a word favoured by the obedient, primmer-sounding type of work emailer, as well as by an apologetic Amy Pascal. What kind of irresponsible idiot, nowadays, does not self-censor? Maybe, after a succession of cautionary events, workplace discretion is more advanced in the UK. Put together, Leveson, the News International hacking cases and internal surveillance at the post-Savile BBC have done much to the discourage the punctilious worker from recording anything in an email, a text or even in a draft, that she wouldn’t mind being used, one day, as a standard text for trainee diplomats.
It may be some consolation for the Sony executives that, however bad things might look, at least the hackers don’t appear to have unearthed any unsent private love letters, like Rebekah Brooks’s legendary draft. Unless that’s why The Interview was finally cancelled. Written for her colleague, Andy Coulson – later, of course, to become a trusted Downing Street employee – the internal News International love letter remains, for some of us, the highlight, out of so many, of the trial of Brooks, and a gloriously instructive advance on her Leveson texts, including “yes he Cam!”, and “Brilliant speech. I cried twice”. And just as the rest of us watched and learned from her folly, it seems a fair guess that Cameron no longer writes lol-suffixed texts about horse-riding, in the old, Chipping Norton patois: “Fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”
The tone of many of the Sony emails, with their hysterical “Noooooos” and “Kill me please. Immediately”, takes one back to a distant time, pre-Leveson, pre-Twitter and pretty much, pre-grown-up texting, when emailing through the day seemed, when it wasn’t done for efficiency or simple amusement, an excellent substitute for mid-office phone conversations.
And so it was that I once surprised an earlier CEO of the Guardian, who had just emailed some all-staff update on the company’s progress, with a snarky and disrespectfully phrased, but mercifully brief, response meant for another person, on another matter. Although I still remember the relief that it did not, by some miracle, feature gross insults or foul language, I never enjoyed emailing quite as much after that.
Not that private conversations, or even ultra-private handwritten notes now look much more secure. Just when it seemed that internal proceedings of News International could not delight us any longer, someone yet to be identified supplied Vanity Fair, and thereby the world, with a note in which the then Mrs Rupert Murdoch, Wendi Deng, appeared to anatomise her passion for Tony Blair. “He has such good body and he has really really good legs Butt ... And he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage...”
Even taking into account the very natural hostility that exists towards both Murdoch and Blair, the general indifference to Ms Deng’s privacy issues, as this surprise insight into her prose style mesmerised those who believed she had risen through News Corp on merit, was in sharp contrast to, say, public concern for violated celebrities such as Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan.
All celebrity private lives, we have learned, are not equal. Like Sarah Palin, whose leaked emails became the subject of a Guardian crowd-sourcing exercise, and Donald Sterling, whose racist jibes were illicitly recorded, Deng is surely entitled to ask why her media shaming was not, at least as much as the Sony executives’ treatment, described “morally treasonous”, to use Aaron Sorkin’s phrase.
More recently, none of a cab-driver’s taping of the obliviously ranting David Mellor; the release, by her ex-lover, of a Ukip candidate’s romantic texts; and Kerry Smith’s Ukip martyrdom, after transcripts of old phone calls were published, has inspired even measurable indignation, including at the Hacked Off website, where prosecution of journalists remains a priority. It could be argued, in fact, that renewed evidence of a Mellor or a Ukip candidate’s gittishness has less of a public interest defence than the revelation that some Sony executives swap racist pleasantries.
Again, a lot of women are interested to know that the Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence was paid less than any of the men in Silver Linings Playbook, and that, out of the 17 Sony executives paid more than $1m, only one is a woman. But to Judd Apatow, and, judging by debate on this website, to many readers, the media’s promulgation of this illicitly obtained material is up there with releasing nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence.
Even if there were any way of harmonising these polarised, subject-related reactions to invasions of privacy beyond the basic rule – it’s fine if they’re ugly, foreign or politically swivel-eyed – the internet, as Leveson ignominiously failed to register, has made effective enforcement impossible. Supposing local data legislation or our shiny new press body were to enforce as much respect for Mellor’s or Deng’s or Smith’s personal lives as is demanded for Sorkin’s or Kate Middleton’s, that protection, while it might make the victims’ local life easier, would extend only as far as the nearest search engine.
Creative freedom may not be the only form of expression threatened by the hacking and abject capitulation at Sony; the criticism of its executives, for not bitching more discreetly, indicates that everyday, private emails are already agreed to be suitable targets for neutering. It is not OK to call Angelina Jolie a “minimally talented spoiled brat”, even where the observation might be non-controversial. Admittedly, unlike the Stasi-like gagging that was once, absurdly, predicted as the inevitable outcome of political correctness gone mad, usually by people who thought everyone else had an inner Enoch Powell, the requirement to be tactful, suave, appropriate – and respectful about Brangelina at all times – is less oppressive than joylessly unrevealing.
Most workplace emailers, are not, at a guess, struggling with an urge to shout “golliwog”, think up slavery gags or to place on record their passion for Blair, Coulson, or similar. But many of the leaked emails give the unusual impression of people being open with one another – think of sleepless Mr Clooney, promising to do better; Rudin’s angry “you’ve behaved abominably”; Sorkin, speculating in private to Maureen Dowd on the relative difficulty of various roles – that must become ever rarer in the era of random surveillance, outrage and restrictive codes of employee conduct.
The threat of hacking and employer reprimands, along with the fashion for surreptitious filming, the risk of being recorded doing or saying something uploadworthy (even if it helps to stamp out inappropriate episodes of Candy Crush): all have an inhibiting effect on private self-expression and engagement, and not only on people who like going ape in taxis.
