This post first appeared in The DIstinctive Dispatch newsletter on 12 January.
As I write, Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw’s evidence to the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal is leading the news.
Mr Bradshaw investigated and helped convict some sub-postmasters wrongly accused of false accounting and fraud.
Terse, evasive, and lacking contrition, his testimony encapsulated the failings consistently writ large across this scandal.
It came a day after the government took the extraordinary step of confirming its intention to pass legislation to exonerate hundreds of sub-postmasters whose lives were trashed by a once-treasured institution. This is because the outcry following ITV’s four-part dramatisation of the scandal in Mr Bates vs The Post Office bounced the government into responding.
The inquiry will take until next year to get to the bottom of the issues that created this disaster. But it’s already clear that ethical, leadership and governance failings played a part alongside dodgy tech. And it’s troubling to hear about PR executives’ role in working with lawyers to create a ‘narrative’ and lines to rebut concerns, as evidence about problems with the IT system piled high.
Even today, with the scandal leading the news for more than a week, the Post Office has offered little more to address the public concerns than a limp statement saying it’s ‘very sorry’. BBC radio journalists sounded almost apologetic reading it out. Postmasters in the studio sounded incredulous hearing it.
Why ethical comms matters
Last week, I had an exchange on X with someone who said they’d advised Post Office’s comms team in a previous role. His posts disappear automatically, so I can’t quote them directly.
To paraphrase from memory, his posts suggested that a key failing stemmed from a motivation to protect the Post Office and its reputation, rather than doing what I termed ‘the right thing.’
Doing what’s right is, of course, subjective. But it sits within legal, ethical and professional frameworks like the CIPR’s Code of Conduct, which guide our role. The inquiry will examine the extent to which this scandal’s protagonists breached these standards.
It also highlights that, even though it’s taken 20 years of campaigning and investigative reporting to get to this point, spin won’t get you out of a crisis created by poor conduct.
After years holding the line with certainty, those responsible for the scandal are feeling the uncomfortable glare of public scrutiny. Their efforts to protect the Post Office’s reputation, and their own, stand in tatters.
There’s much to learn from this sorry episode, even if Mr Bradshaw’s perfunctory evidence suggested otherwise.
The Post Office scandal is a human tragedy on an epic scale, while presenting glimmers of hope. With all the pressure facing the industry, it’s a timely reminder of public interest journalism’s vital role in getting to facts. It shows how human storytelling can galvanise opinion.
And it’s a harsh demonstration that honesty, and the absence of it, matters.