The Hack is rare among films and television programs for showing journalists doing journalism to other journalists.

It shows how, over several years, Nick Davies of The Guardian in London revealed the extent of phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, including the revelation, co-written with Amelia Hill in 2011, that the tabloid newspaper had hacked the phone of a missing 13-year-old, Milly Dowler, later found to have been murdered.

It was this revelation that provoked an eruption of revulsion in the UK that led the then prime minister, David Cameron, to set up a wide-ranging inquiry headed by Justice Brian Leveson and to Murdoch, in a desperate attempt to quell public anger, closing the newspaper.

Where Davies is a classic, crusading, investigative journalist, phone hacking has become shorthand for the worst imaginable breach of media ethics. But The Hack both embraces the opportunity to explore journalism’s ethical dilemmas and crackles with outrage at the cynicism and cruelty of a media company that not only invaded people’s privacy, but determinedly covered up its actions for years.

The essence of the phone hacking scandal is obvious but the details surrounding it are complicated and not easily contained, even in a seven-part series. Rodney Tiffen has provided a timely recapitulation of the events and their meaning for _The Conversation_ which I would recommend reading before watching The Hack.

The dramatising of the events is made more complex by how they are entwined with a long-running, still unsolved case concerning a private investigator, Danny Morgan, who was brutally murdered in 1987.

Davies is played by David Tennant, who provides a finely drawn portrait of the investigative journalist, by turns a loner, prickly, tenacious, self-absorbed, idealistic and driven to rage by the behaviour of bullies.

The focal point of the series, Tennant is surrounded by a strong cast including Toby Jones as The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, Robert Carlyle as Dave Cook, Eve Myles as Jacqui Hames and Rose Leslie as phone hacking victims’ lawyer, Charlotte Harris.

Tennant often breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the camera, which is done partly to quicken exposition of what journalists call “background pars”, but also to draw the audience into his lonely world as he digs for information. Even as his newspaper publishes revelation after revelation, the rest of Fleet Street studiously ignores phone hacking and Murdoch’s empire seeks to discredit him and The Guardian.

It is only in the second last episode that the Dowler family is introduced, underscoring not only how long it took Davies to get to that point but also how history compresses the incremental nature of much journalism and, in so doing, obscures the difficulty of publishing information that people in power don’t want revealed.

To this end, in 2010 Rusbridger enlisted The New York Times to put its well-resourced newsroom to work investigating phone hacking, and to add pressure on the government and the Met. The American journalists persuaded a former entertainment journalist, Sean Hoare, to go on the record saying the former News of the World editor, Andy Coulson, had “actively encouraged” him to hack phones. It was a major development, leading to Coulson standing down from his role as communications director for prime minister Cameron.

Davies is torn between wanting to protect his ownership of the story and welcoming an ally. In a moment most journalists will recognise, during a direct address to the viewer, Tennant veers between praising The New York Times story and picking holes in it.

He argues with newsroom colleagues asking the necessarily hard questions about the veracity of his stories and incurs Rusbridger’s exasperation, if not his wrath, for blurring the line between investigating events to providing help to others investigating them. He does this both by drafting questions for members on parliamentary committees and co-ordinating with former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown to maximise pressure ahead of the government’s decision to allow Murdoch’s company to increase its stake to full ownership of the hugely profitable BSkyB satellite television network.

That the makers of The Hack lay out these events, allowing viewers to make up their own minds about them, is in start contrast to the secrecy practised by News in its newsgathering and its response to inquiries about it.

In a scene near the end of the series, Davies appears before the Leveson inquiry. His impassioned speech about the importance of journalism goes beyond the familiar aphorism usually attributed to Lord Northcliffe, that news is what someone, somewhere doesn’t want printed – all the rest is advertising.

That is true enough, says Tennant as Davies, but news is also “what someone is reluctant to tell". The most difficult, skilful work journalists do, he says, is “finding human sources and motivating them to reveal that news” because doing so could mean losing their job.

They could be beaten up or arrested or embarrassed or ashamed or hurt the people who love them. “It’s a very sensitive moment. You have to make these people safe. You have to make these people realise the truth is worth the risk.”

Conversely, hacking into someone’s phone cuts out “the human connection” between the journalist and their source. He says these so-called journalists didn’t find the truth. Instead:

They just stole. They took. And humanity was lost in that moment. Not only in the privacy that was invaded but in the stories that were told from it. Our papers became dishrags of distorted content. A set of rogue journalists working for a rogue corporation undermined the very tenets of journalism, the very tenets of truth-telling.

There is no doubt Davies did important work, but the bitter reality is that, 15 years later, the UK Government has not significantly improved media accountability. The news media industry, in the face of the worst scandal of media ethics in living memory, lobbied hard against the proposals recommended by Brian Leveson.

In 2018, the then Conservative Government decided not to go ahead with the second part of the Leveson inquiry whose terms of reference went to “the extent of unlawful or improper conduct” between police, politicians, public servants and the press, including Murdoch’s UK arm, News International, which was specifically named.

By telling the story of phone hacking and dramatising the human face of the disorienting, corrosive effect phone hacking has on people such as Jacqui Hames and the Dowler family, the program aims to fill the void left by the many expensive out-of-court settlements News has reached with victims. These have prevented the airing of wrenching personal testimony in court.

News Corp knows all too well the power of human storytelling, but prefers to hide or play down negative stories about itself from its audience. The settlements appear to have been written off as a cost of doing tabloid business.

Read Part 1 of this series from Matthew Ricketson:  Journos as heroes and villains - 'The Hack' reviewed - Part 1

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.