Alan Rusbringer during an interview with NDTV's Sreenivasan Jain
One of the world's most celebrated editors, Alan Rusbridger talks to NDTV's Sreenivasan Jain in a freewheeling interview on the state of the media. Rusbridger, who just stepped down after heading the Guardian for 20 years, takes us inside some of the papers biggest scoops: the Snowden revelations, WikiLeaks and the phone hacking scandal.
NDTV: Hello and welcome to this NDTV exclusive. At a time when it appears that the media itself is making news more often than not, whether it's to do with media ethics or media ownership or freedom of speech, we are very lucky to have someone visiting us in India to make sense of it all, Alan Rusbridger, one of the most legendary contemporary editors in the world. He has edited the Guardian for 20 years and has just stepped down and he is here at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, where he is going to be in residence for about a couple of weeks. Thank you very much indeed for talking to us.
Alan Rusbridger: Very pleased to be here, thank you very much for having me.
NDTV: Just to give some of our viewers an idea of how iconic you are, when you finally resigned it was breaking news on the BBC. I don't know if you saw that?
Alan Rusbridger: Well it's a funny thing being an editor, I mean my instinct normally as a journalist is to stay behind the camera as it were, and I have never really sought the limelight and I am more comfortable there as an editor, particularly if you are going to do high profile stories.
NDTV: But you know, to go to the stories that made the Guardian so remarkable in these past 20 years, and which also made you this iconic figure, Snowden is the story that continues to have this contemporary resonance for all over the world including here.You were actually just holding a class on that and we were sitting, and one of the interesting questions that came up was a more basic, a fundamental question, before I get a little more in to the story, it was just about when he actually approached you via Glenn Greenwald, about trusting him.
Alan Rusbridger: So, as well as Glenn Greenwald who was working for us but was a freelance, and Laura Poitras who was filming this, I wanted somebody in the room who I completely trusted and I sent a reporter called Ewen MacAskill, and he was 60 years old, he had done everything, and I needed to know that Ewen trusted him and Ewen rang me up and he had this code phrase. He rang me up and said that, "the Guinness is good" and that was his way of saying that 'yeah, I think this guy is who he says he is, I think we can trust him." I was obviously not in the room, I was 10,000 miles away...
NDTV: The 'Guiness is good' ?!
Alan Rusbridger: Yes, 'Guinness is good' that was the prearranged...it sounds silly and melodramatic to ave code words, but we didn't know who was going to be listening. He was in communist China, we thought we had to be careful.
NDTV: But you know the story broke and there was the inevitable backlash. A section of the British press itself went after you. The Daily Mail, I believe, was the strongest and actually called you a paper that has helped Britain's enemies. Ex bosses at the GCHQ, which is the British equivalent of the NSA, said that this is the most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever. Did you feel at any point that any of those disclosures was actually a possible threat to national security, national safety?
Alan Rusbridger: Well I don't think so. I know that people in the intelligence world say 'yes' and I have met people in the intelligence world who say 'no'. I met high ranking government officials, both from America and from the UK who say 'you caused no damage', and people who say, 'you did cause damage.' It's impossible to tell because the people who were claiming the damage never asked specific about the damage you claimed.
NDTV: It's sort of vague...
Alan Rusbridger: It's vague. You've got blood on your hands, you did this you did that, but they won't come out and say, it was that particular story or that particular detail. So that makes it very easy for people in government and on the official side to always frighten journalists off, often say you must have never do this, and it seems essential to me that journalist have the ability to stand aside and behave as responsibly as they can, but in the end use their judgement about what the national interest is because the only alternative is that journalists hand that to government and say, you can be the only people who decide what the national interest is. And if we did that we would be betraying 200 years of what journalism stands for
NDTV: In fact, you got your own patriotism question by British politicians
Alan Rusbridger: I did, I had to go and explain myself in front of the House of Commons, which itself was a curious thing.
NDTV: To put it mildly...
Alan Rusbridger: If you believe that journalism is not the same as politics, that we are a separate state, the fourth estate, but nevertheless I went along to talk to the House of Commons.
NDTV: Keith Vaz asked you a direct question
Alan Rusbridger: Keith Vaz, who was the Chairman of the committee, he said, "I love my country, do you?" And the implication behind that question, I think was, are you on Britain's side? How can you be doing this journalism and still claim that you are a patriot and my answer to that, I mean I was surprised, I think when I re-look at the footage, there's a moment of shock on my face to be asked this question. And my answer was "I love my country and the Britain that I love is the Britain of liberty, the Britain of free speech and the Britain where we are free to ask these questions without been locked up or having our fingernails pulled out, that is about freedom. That is how I define the Britain that I love, the values that I care about.
NDTV: But obviously you didn't have your fingernails pulled out, but was there a lot of pressure, because you have written about the fact that you actually had officials from the intelligence agencies come in and actually destroy some of the hard drives at the Guardian office.
Alan Rusbridger: Well there was a surreal moment where the cabinet secretary, that is the person who works directly to the Prime Minister, who came in on the Prime Minister's behalf and on the second one of these conversations, it was apparent that he was going to stop us whether by sending in the police or going to law, we didn't know. But he was absolutely explicit about that, 'we will not let this go on,' and I said, 'Well we are intending to go on publishing but as it happens we can publish this equally well from London or from New York. It doesn't matter to us." And he said, "well we insist that, in that case, that your machines in London are destroyed." And I wasn't going to let the British state destroy our machines and so I said, "well we'll destroy them but you have to be clear that this is going to make no difference to the story." But for whatever reason we went through this rather peculiarly pointless thing of buying a lot of drills and hammers and going down in to the basement of the Guardian and destroying data that was already in New York.
NDTV: But apart from that, were there phone calls, were there threats, was there any of the stuff that you expect with a story like this?
Alan Rusbridger: Yes, ther was intensive pressure including going to the owners of the Guardian and I was in a very blessed position, I felt, because the Guardian is owned by a trust. And it is written in to the articles of the trust that the trust cannot interfere with the editor, so all these distinguished MPs went to the trust and said, "you have got to stop him" and the trust was able to say, "look I am very sorry but we are not even allowed to discuss that with him."
NDTV: That is remarkable. You're right, that is a very fortunate and unusual arrangement, not too many papers or mediahouses have that.
Alan Rusbridger: Almost none
NDTV: This is the Scott Trust, set up historically...
Alan Rusbridger: This is the Scott Trust. This is an amazing thing where the Scott family which own the Guardian, who could have been rich, gave way their interest and they put the Guardian in to a trust and then they built a company around it so that it had enough money to publish, but at the heart of it is this thing that the editor of the Guardian is in this extraordinary position of being completed insulated. Nobody can nobble him. I was incredibly lucky and I know that.
NDTV: And you are actually going to be heading the Scott Trust shortly. I want to come back to the question of ownership in just a second, but I also wanted to ask about the trade-off when you do stories, because you had actually this amazing run - you had Snowden and Greenwald and of course then you had the whole Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks breaks as well, which also did come with consequences for those who were the whistleblowers at the heart of it, but in terms of the benefits, would you say that things changed because of those stories?
Alan Rusbridger: With Snowden this extraordinary thing happened that the Congressman who published, who promoted the patriot act after 9/11, which allowed surveillance of people, was the person who was most horrified by Snowden. He said, "that's not what I am intended." So it was he who went to Congress and said, "look we got to stop this" and equally the American courts have said that this is not only illegal, its unconstitutional. So things have happened that the law has changed in America and there has been a broad debate in Europe and around the world, so I think it would be very hard for governments to turn around and say that there was no public interest in publishing this. I think that would be almost impossible to...
NDTV: Some of these whistleblowers who've approached you seem to be somewhat peeved by you or by the Guardian. You must have seen the day that you resigned, you tweeted saying that you felt a sense of sadness and then there was a tweet from the Wikileaks account saying, 'what about sadness for Julian Assange who has been incarcerated for 5 years, someone who you promised that you would protect?'
Alan Rusbridger: Well, I have always said to Julian that if there is any question of any of the work that we did together ever been tested anywhere, in any court anywhere in the world, I would be there at his side. I stand by the work we did together and I think we did fine work together. I mean Julian Assange is not in the Ecuadorian embassy because of the work that we did. He is there because of allegations involving sexual misconduct in Sweden. So that's got nothing to do with the Guardian. I don't know what happened between him and those women but that is for him to sort out with the Swedish authorities. But I know he feels sore about that and I think that's an issue...the Swedish issue is different from the journalistic issue. That is something he has to sort out.
NDTV: And also with Snowden, it was finally Wikileaks which sort of arranged for his being taken to Russia. Again there was a sort of suggestion there that it should have been your responsibility or the Guardian's responsibility to have ensured some sort of protection for him. Is that a fair criticism?
Alan Rusbridger: Well, I didn't think there is a criticism. Ewen MacAskill, our reporter, spoke to Snowden to make sure that he was completely aware of the consequences what he was going to do. He was. It was Edward Snowden who decided that he would work with Wikileaks to try to escape from Hong Kong, but I have been to see Edward Snowden twice in Moscow. I was with him a month ago in Moscow and I can promise you that he has got no complaints about the Guardian treatment. He is absolutely happy with the way he is treated, and so if people who are claiming to speak on his behalf, they are talking rubbish.
NDTV: The other big story that got you in to trouble was the phone hacking story which began with the front page splash that the News of the World had hacked the phone of a young woman who had gone missing. Now again in hindsight if you look at the repercussions of that story, you were right to argue that it held to account this very large news corporation that was almost running rogue, but the fact that a lot of journalists got sacked, people lost their jobs. Where would you stand on that debate?
Alan Rusbridger: Well I think that story was completely defensible. This was the biggest news organisation in the world and I think News Corp. International, Rupert Murdoch, he has got papers all around the world, television stations and film interests and this company in Britain was out of control. That's the kindest explanation, because if it wasn't out of control then Rupert Murdoch is himself in deep trouble, but his argument is that "I had no idea this was going on, and my senior executives had no idea, the editors had no idea."
NDTV: Do you buy that argument?
Alan Rusbridger: Well, the courts have held that Rebekka Brooks was innocent but held Andy Coulson guilty. So you've got one editor guilty and one editor not guilty but whatever it was, here was a company which owned 40% of the British press that was out of control. And that had implications way beyond just journalism because what the story was as always it's the cover up, it's not just the story. And what became clear was the police and the regulator and politicians and actually other journalists, didn't want to go near this story. They were frightened of this organisation and so you've got this very bad thing in a democracy with a media company that was going through people's private lives on an industrial scale, breaking the law everyday, it was apparently out of control so there was no stop on this. They were paying hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds to private investigators to troll through people's... so obviously, politicians become frightened of this company. Simultaneously this company wanted more rights, they wanted to get the green light to buy this TV company here and other things. So it was a very toxic situation and I got absolutely no regrets about writing about that.
NDTV: Even though, as I said, that it resulted in a very large number of journalists being sacked. Piers Morgan had actually tweeted saying that The Guardian has jailed more journalists than Putin, Mao and Stalin put together.
Alan Rusbridger: Do I need to dignify that with a comment? I mean that's an ignorant and a stupid thing to say. But, who closed down the News of the World? I mean was it The Guardian or was it Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch now says he panicked. It was his decision. I don't think he should have closed down the News of the World, I think he should have dealt with it. And then all these Sun journalists that have gone to jail, that was not a result of The Guardian, that was because the Murdoch organisation handed over, unforgivably in my view, millions and millions of emails which the police went through and which betrayed their sources and the fact that they have been paying all these public officials money. Now, if people have gone to jail and I actually no Sun journalists have been jailed for that, it is mostly the sources who have been jailed, that is Rupert Murdoch's fault, not anything that The Guardian has done.
NDTV: But then where does one draw the line as far as regulation is concerned? Because that's a debate we're grappling with here in India as well and one that we haven't resolved. One talks of self-regulation, but clearly in this particular case that didn't work, but that is ultimately the road forward, is it, you think? And what sort of mechanism ought to be in place to be effective?
Alan Rusbridger: Well I think what became apparent through our work was that wasn't any regulation.
NDTV: There was notionally supposed to be some sort of a watchdog...
Alan Rusbridger: There was something called a Press Complaints Commission and it was apparent that this wasn't a regulator, it was a mediation service and it was run by the industry and it was very weak. And everyone came out and said that we acknowledge that now, and we'll set up something stronger.
NDTV: Is there something stronger now?
Alan Rusbridger: Well we have something stronger and it remains to be tested how strong it is or how independent it is. To my mind let's not call itself regulation, let's call it independent regulation.
NDTV: Let me ask you the other big question about which again you've been seen as fairly instrumental in, which is of course making the shift to digital and The Guardian ahead of that curve by many other newspapers, several years ago. Now I was just looking at some recent numbers that your switch to digital is so strong that you have about 180,000 readers in print and your readership has hit around 7 million globally, are those figures about right?
Alan Rusbridger: That's very broadly the number of people a day who come to The Guardian.
NDTV: Okay, but you're still not going down the paywall route, because you want to expand aggressively? I've been hearing you say that. How do you make money then?
Alan Rusbridger: Well this year we will earn... when we took this decision, there was a kind of fork in the road about 5 years ago and some people were saying you got to put a complete pay wall around everything, and The Times of London went down that route, and other people were saying the way the world works now where there is information that is that the permeable walls between what we call journalism and the whole information ecostructure that exists, you are barmy to try and wall off journalism from that. We went down the very open route and last year, where people were saying you are never going to make any money out of that, we made 80 million this year, 80 million pounds that is. This year we think we are going to make a 100 million pounds.
NDTV: Is that profit or is that revenue?
Alan Rusbridger: This is revenue, but people say that you'll learn sense. The real world is about dollars and the internet is about sense.
NDTV: And you're earning this how?
Alan Rusbridger: Through advertising.
NDTV: Just through advertising?
Alan Rusbridger: Advertising and sponsorship, but it's nearly all through advertising.
NDTV: Wow, so you're getting that sort of size of numbers with online advertising.
Alan Rusbridger: Yeah, because all the advertising is going to shift to digital in the end. I mean there's going to be some left in print but there's going to be a huge switch and I very much wanted The Guardian to have a large global, digital audience that would be there ready to take these advertising pounds and dollars when they came, which as it turns out, they have.
NDTV: Tell me how it operated for you as an editor, because you have this huge sea of content that you are now dealing with across platforms, did you actually get hands on involved with editing pieces, limited number of pieces? How did you select the pieces?
Alan Rusbridger: Less and less is the answer because for a start there used to be this wonderful world in which you only had print, you only had words on paper and you only had one deadline. So you had time to think, you published at around 9 o' clock at night, everything went up to that point. Now if you're not beginning your day at 7 o' clock in the morning, when people get out of their beds and reach for their mobile phones, and you're not there, and you're not updating, then they are going to go somewhere else. In fact we're publishing around the clock, we're publishing from Australia, we're publishing from America, so the job of editing changes. You can't possibly be across all this, so you look at the most significant stories. Snowden stories, I did edit very closely
NDTV: Those you edited personally?
Alan Rusbridger: Yes, but you are also as an editor you are a strategist, you've got to understand this digital world or understand the people who understand it. You got to be talking to technologists, you got to be thinking about the new economic model, you got to bring everybody with you, you got to persuade the board that this is the right thing to be doing. So the job becomes much more complicated and the day of sitting out there with a green eye shade, reading, coffee, with a barrel, those days are gone.
NDTV: Last question, are you going to miss the action, are you already missing the action?
Alan Rusbridger: It's very strange. On my first day not editing somebody said that you are going to have the lion of your life. Instead of which I was listening to the radio, because I could never sleep as an editor, and I heard some story and I leapt out of bed and tweeted it at 5 o' clock in the morning, then I thought I am going to have to deal with this. So I've got his kind of strange thing where ...it was part of the point of coming to India. I thought let's get out of the UK, let's do something completely different.
NDTV: Has your tweeting come down as a result?
Alan Rusbridger: My tweeting has gone right down, my emails have gone down and I'm having a lovely time here in Chennai with incredibly bright students who are the journalists of the future. And we are having incredibly stimulating discussions about what journalism is, and that's a very nice way of coming out of editing and preparing for a future life.
NDTV: Well they are very lucky indeed to have a chance to have you talk to them, but thank you so much for being here and for talking to us and all the very best with the many many things that you are still planning to do
Alan Rusbridger: Thank you. Good to meet you.