The Media Column: 'Should newspapers really be in the rewards business?'

As I watched TV news bulletins from the small market-town of Soham over the weekend, I found an irritating distraction on screen. Every time someone was giving their thoughts about the awful disappearance of the two girls, a pull-out poster from The Sun was visible in the background, stuck up in a shop window. Instead of concentrating on this wretched story, I found myself wondering why it wasn't a poster from the Express or Star that was in camera-shot. The Sun had offered a £150,000 reward for information leading directly to the capture and conviction of anyone involved in the girls' disappearance. But Express Newspapers had offered £1m, the biggest reward ever offered by a newspaper.

And then, even more distracting, I found myself thinking of Victoria Beckham and wondering how Richard Desmond, who could not afford to pay as much as Associated Newspapers for his friend Beckham's book serialisation, could afford the £1m reward. And if he could afford a much higher reward than News International's, how had The Sun outmanoeuvred him on shop-window space?

It was all very confusing. And that is not to make light of any aspect of this deeply disturbing case. Quite the reverse. It is to wonder how appropriate it is for newspapers to be in the rewards business. Both newspaper groups claim to have the co-operation of the police. But Detective Superintendent David Hankins said: "If it prompts those people who have got some genuine information, then I'll welcome it. The downside is, we will get pranks and people who are using the opportunity in the hope they'll get some of that money. It will send officers off on wild-goose chases."

There are many past examples of rewards offered by tabloids, though remarkably few of pay-outs. Research on The Guardian's website showed that since 1996, The Sun has made eight separate offers, worth £815,000 in total, but has not parted with any cash. The News of the World made two biggish pay-outs ­ in 1991 and 1993.

One of those was £175,000, the biggest reward in newspaper history, paid to Sue Aoke, the ex-wife of Michael Sams, who kidnapped and killed the Birmingham estate-agent Stephanie Slater. Ms Aoke recognised his voice on the Crimewatch programme.

The Guardian has questioned the ethics of not paying the police officers in a case. The policeman who identified Barry George as a suspect in the Jill Dando case, for example, could not claim the £100,000 offered by the Daily Mail.

To my mind, to pay him would have been wrong. If police officers are to be rewarded for helping to secure a conviction, then why not the prosecuting barrister, the judge and the jury? Why, indeed, should an investigative reporter who helps to secure an arrest not claim a reward from his or her own paper? That, I suspect, is something at which Mr Desmond might draw the line.

No, if rewards have to be offered, it is fair enough for newspapers to limit them to ordinary members of the public. But are newspapers really saying that the public are not sufficiently motivated to report to the police anything likely to lead to the capture of a child-abductor unless they have the lure of large sums of money?

That would be a shocking indictment of their readerships by Express Newspapers and News International. Yet, if you take away that motivation, all that is left is the publicity and profit motive. Certainly, that has been well served in this case. The Express and Star splashed on their reward offer. The editor of the Sunday Express was interviewed on television news. The Sun has its pull-out posters, now seen well beyond Cambridgeshire.

I cannot bring myself to condemn out of hand newspapers' reward offers. It is just possible that a reward may provoke someone into an act of citizenship that would not otherwise have been considered. But such offers leave a slightly odd taste in the mouth. The police have mixed feelings about them; they smack of self-aggrandisement and they look too much like weapons in a circulation battle that should be fought at another time, in another place.

d.lister@independent.co.uk

David Aaronovitch is away