Tonight at 9pm, ITV launches The Hack, a major new drama about the phone-hacking scandal. With a heavyweight cast including David Tennant, Robert Carlyle, Toby Jones, Steve Pemberton, Dougray Scott, Eve Myles, and Adrian Lester, it’s one of the most high-profile drama launches of the autumn.
And yet the build-up has felt muted in some corners of the press. A drama of this scale would normally attract widespread previews and features.
Think back to Mr Bates vs The Post Office: rightly lauded and given extensive prominence across the media, with outlets competing to champion the victims’ cause. By contrast, The Hack, made by the same production team, has seen nothing like the same enthusiasm from the news publishers whose own conduct the drama brings into focus.
Big drama, small headlines
Some mainstream press coverage has appeared in the lead-up to the show’s premiere, but it’s been limited. Beyond The Guardian – which broke the story in the first place and features heavily in the series – The i Paper, The Independent, and The Standard, there’s been little else. The BBC has reported on it, and ITV, of course, has promoted its own production. However, from much of the national press, and particularly News UK, there has been only silence.
While Daily Mail and Telegraph readers will see the show highlighted in their TV listings today, readers of The Sun and The Times, two of the UK’s largest newspapers, will struggle to find any information beyond its place in the schedule. Instead, the papers have chosen to highlight a fictional detective duo and an exposé on the fake essay writing industry, rather than the very real scandal of phone hacking.
And that silence has power. It is not the mark of fearless journalism, but of self-protection – the press shielding its paymasters rather than confronting its own record. The contrast with Mr Bates is striking – newspapers that competed to stand up for sub-postmasters are now turning away from victims of press harm. The contradiction between the fearless reporting of Nick Davies and Alan Rusbridger then, and the industry’s muted response now – amid long-standing concerns about the influence of ownership on editorial independence – couldn’t be starker.
Leveson, the PRP, and unfinished business
The phone-hacking scandal didn’t just expose individual wrongdoing; it laid bare systemic failures. Those failures led to the Leveson Inquiry, which investigated the culture, ethics and practices of the press. One of its legacies is the Press Recognition Panel (PRP), established in 2014 by Royal Charter to assess whether press regulators meet the independence and effectiveness criteria Leveson recommended – a role we continue to carry out today.
But more than a decade on, the system remains incomplete. One regulator, Impress, has been recognised by the PRP, but the largest press body, IPSO, hasn’t sought recognition. That means most of the national press continues to operate outside the model proposed by Leveson.
Why The Hack matters now
The drama is a timely reminder that press harm isn’t just a historical phenomenon. Phone hacking was one form of abuse of power – and let’s not forget some cases are still moving through the courts. But intrusive practices, misinformation, harmful narratives, and a lack of meaningful redress remain live issues.
The Hack shows what happens when journalism strays from its purpose, and those who might hold it to account are either complicit or look the other way. What happened then is more than just a history lesson – it’s a warning we can’t afford to ignore.
Looking forward
We don’t yet know how The Hack will resonate in the weeks to come. But we do know this: the victims whose stories it dramatises, and others like them today, deserve the same compassion, coverage, and systemic change as the victims of other scandals.
The Government has a role to play here too. Labour supported the post-Leveson system of independent press regulation right up until it entered office – and has since promised to do better by victims of historical injustices. Delivering on those pledges means upholding the framework for genuinely independent regulation that already exists.
The real question is this: if the press is reluctant to afford victims that space, and the government is unwilling to defend the system designed to guarantee accountability, who will?
The Hack is a stark reminder that when accountability fails, real people pay the price. That’s why fearless investigative journalism and truly independent oversight – free from both government and industry control – are more vital than ever.
Image: ITV
