Can the British tabloids ever recover from the News of the World phone hacking scandal?

And is it possible for a Christian to work in the tabloids?

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

LAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) -- As the news for Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation gets worse for by the day, I wonder if the British tabloids can ever go back to the many unethical practices they have used for so many years to bring the British public their scandal-laced breakfast read.

The British tabloids

It was a week ago that 80-year-old Murdoch shocked the newspaper world in the UK but shutting down the 168-year-old News of the World which the media baron had bought in 1969 as a foundation for his British media kingdom. He also purchased The Sun, at the time a left-leading political paper, and turned it into a huge circulation sex-ridden scandal sheet. However, he also bought the prestigious London Times and Sunday Times.

For years, the News of the World got away with all kind of questionable schemes to get their exclusives, but it all came to a head with a series damaging disclosures of phone hacking, the worst of which was that it had illegally intercepted the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in 2002.

Since then, almost every day, there were more shocking new disclosures and allegations of hacking and other journalistic dirty tricks that were alleged to have spread to other Murdoch papers in Britain, including The Sun and The Sunday Times.

Finally, today (Wednesday, July 13, 2011) Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation announced that it was pulling out of its $12 billion bid to buy complete control of the satellite giant British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB).

It was said that the Beatles enjoyed reading the tabloids. Here they are reading the Sunday Mirror, a paper that Dan Wooding once worked for

News Corp deputy chairman Chase Carey said the bid had become "too difficult to progress in this climate."

The BBC wrote, "The move came just before MPs debated a motion supported by all major parties calling on Mr. Murdoch to scrap the bid. The motion was approved without a vote."

On Friday of last week, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced details of a public inquiry into phone hacking and media regulation.

Having worked as a stringer for the News of the World and later a senior reporter with both the Sunday People (now The People) and the Sunday Mirror, I witnessed firsthand (and sometimes to my shame) participated in some of tactics of the British tabloid media.

In fact, while I was with the Sunday People, I was on the receiving end of the News of the World's dirty tricks. In those days in Fleet Street (the British newspaper Mecca), we only worked a four-day week and so I spent one day a week helping a missionary society with their publicity. This had gone on for several years and they even once sent me to Calcutta to interview Mother Teresa for them which I did during my vacation time.

The last edition of the News of the World

Then I received a phone call at the Sunday People from a reporter from the News of the World who told me that he was writing a story about my freelance activities and he gleefully added, "Wooding, you will probably get fired when the story comes out!"

I immediately went to my bosses at the paper and told them about this situation and they said they couldn't see any harm being done by me helping a Christian organization in my "spare time."

The story ran and I kept my job, much to the chagrin of the News of the World reporter who had tried so hard to wreck the career of a journalistic colleague.

Then there were amazing times when I witnessed reporters from rival tabloids actually fighting over subjects they wanted to interview and on one occasion, a reporter crashed his car into that of a rival reporter to stop him getting a story.

On another occasion, one of our reporters was sent into the Children of God commune in Bromley, London, to pose as a "convert" so he could get the dirt on the cult. After a time, our crime reporter was sent in to "rescue" rescue him and then that featured on the front page that Sunday and it wasn't long before the Children of God moved on.

It was normal practice for reporters to pose as someone else with a secret tape recorder hidden away to record the unsuspecting victim who would often spill the beans not realizing that this would be used in a scandalous story about them.

I went into the tabloids as a born-again Christian wanting to use them as a medium to spread the "Good News" and, in the early days, I was given free rein to write up evangelical stories.

Sir Cliff Richard

Like the time that pop singer (Sir) Cliff Richard had gone to Bangladesh for Tear Fund, a British Charity, and came back so shattered with what he had witnessed that he announced via my interview with him that he was giving up his career as a singer to become a missionary. (He later changed his mind after being persuaded that he could do more good by using his talents to raise funds to help the poor of this world.)

On another occasion, I did a story about the Arts Centre Group (ACG) in London that had been formed to help Christians working in the arts, entertainment and media fields. (I was a founder member of this group and for a time headed their journalists section.) In fact, I am still a member.

I did a positive story about it called "Where the stars come to pray," in which interviewed several Christian entertainers and the story was well received, especially by some of my friends who confessed that they normally would read a tabloid, but had done so on this occasion just to see the story.

However, as the time passed, I got more and more tangled up in some of the more questionable tactics of my colleagues and began to lose my faith in Christ. To make matters worse, I also began receiving death threats from terrorists and gangsters and also Norma, my wife, was threatened.

Dan Wooding pictured on his last day at the Sunday People where he is being presented with a going away gift by the then editor, Geoff Pinnington

As a way to dim my conscience, I began drinking heavily in our local journalist's pub called "The Stab in the Back" and it all changed one night when Ray Barnett, a dear Irish-Canadian friend, came to see me in the bar and challenged me about my life in the tabloids and asked me to re-commit my life to Jesus and leave my Fleet Street career and go with him to Uganda to write "Uganda Holocaust", a book about the 300,000 Christians of that country that were murdered during the eight years of misrule of Idi Amin, who had just fled the country.

That was the turning point of my life and I did quit my job and began a whole new career as a voice for the persecuted of the world.

Looking back now and strange as it may seem, my time in the British tabloids was a blessing in disguise as it was there I learned how to interview people, write strong headlines and easy to read stories.

Can a Christian work for the tabloids? That is a difficult question to answer as the ethical challenges are immense and without a prayer group behind you, you have a good chance of slipping, as I did.

During my period in the tabloids, I was often told by my Christian friends that they were not praying for me, but rather "praying me out of Fleet Street." What a depressing attitude.

Can the British tabloids ever be the same after the News of the World debacle? Well, I would think that there are many journalist and their bosses who will now think twice about using devious methods to acquire their stories, but still their circulations are all plummeting and so I wouldn't be surprised if some will carry on with their questionable methods in the hope that they don't get caught.

I am hoping that things will be cleaned up over in the UK press, but I am not holding my breath!

Note: If you would like to read more about Dan Wooding's life story in the tabloids, it's all there in his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth." You can purchase a copy by going to: http://www.assist-ministries.com/feedbkdan/indexbook1.htm

Dan Wooding, 70, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 47 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. He now hosts the weekly "Front Page Radio" show on KWVE in Southern California which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on Calvary Chapel Radio UK. Besides this, Wooding is a host for His Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 200 countries. You can follow Dan on Facebook under his name there or at ASSIST News Service. He is the author of some 44 books. Two of the latest include his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, press this link. Wooding, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, has also recently released his first novel "Red Dagger" which is available this link.