02 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
Over the past ten days, Lord Justice Leveson has been overseeing an Inquiry that resembles more a daytime chat show than the first public examination into the standards and ethics of the British press in thirty years.
There have been some memorable moments: ex-Formula 1 boss Max Mosley claiming Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre was “completely naive about sex”; we learned Hugh Grant‘s middle name is Mungo; and on two occasions — to the horror of the the press gallery —Leveson admitted he had not read the morning papers.
But the comedy gold of the Inquiry surely came from Paul McMullan. Those watching sat agog as the News of the World deputy features editor ran through his life as a tabloid hack. He told us stories of pretending to be “Brad the rent boy” to expose a priest — “there’s two of us, in our underpants, running through a nunnery at midnight after getting the priest…it was such fun” — he admitted he “loved giving chase” to celebrities (“fun” before Princess Diana died, he said); he had tried and failed to hack David Beckham’s phone; he claimed “circulation defines the public interest”; and, in a quote he’ll now forever be associated with, affirmed that “privacy is for paedos.”
Then there was his solemn regret for having discovered actor Denholm Elliott’s homeless and drug-addicted daughter begging outside Chalk Farm tube station, took her to his flat, photographed her topless and turned it into a News of the World splash. She later killed herself.
Blend these two and you get an Inquiry that has been a cocktail of surreal, intense, sometimes hilarious, and at other times haunting.
In the first week of evidence, it was at times impossible not to feel a sense of guilt for being a journalist, as witnesses gave example after damning example of press intrusion, harassment and, in some cases, indefensible and vile exploitation. In a raw, 30-minute account, the Dowlers recounted the moment they managed to get through to their missing daughter Milly’s voicemail, leading them to believe she was alive. It was only nine years later, this year, that they were told the reason they had managed to was because Milly’s voicemail messages had been hacked and deleted to make room for new messages to come through. She was almost certainly dead at the time.
How bizarre it was to have that chilling testimony juxtaposed with Hugh Grant’s lengthy afternoon account of press intrusion, sprinkled with his wit and movie-star charm.
As the first week drew to a close, paparazzi emerged as the villains. Sienna Miller described being chased down her street by 10 photographers —- “take away the cameras,” she said, “and you’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman”. Sheryl Gascoigne recalled driving to a police station to chase off a paparazzo who was following her, only to be told nothing could be done. JK Rowling had more than one tale of being long-lensed while out with her family, with her daughter, then aged eight, being snapped in her swimsuit. These photos were later printed in OK! magazine. An image, she said, “can spread around the world like a virus”.
It was hard not to sympathise with the witnesses as they doled out story after story of questionable press standards, reminding us of the worst of the trade to which we belong and have cultivated, seemingly limitless in its desire to get just one shot.
This reminder turned into guilt with the stories of ordinary people. The pain of the McCanns was almost palpable: a couple, desperate in the search for their missing daughter, being accused in the papers more than once of killing her and freezing her body. The wrongly arrested Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies described how, in a matter of days, the British media’s distorted coverage had “vilified” him and left him “effectively under house arrest.” And there was the haunting revelation by the Watsons, whose remaining son had killed himself and was found clutching copies of the articles that had, they said, defamed their murdered daughter.
That the Dowlers in particular remained balanced, conceding that the press had been helpful in spreading information about their missing daughter, made the tabloid pill an even more bitter one to swallow.
As journalists took to the witness box, we were been doled out sizeable home truths about the British press, elements of which Alastair Campbell deemed “putrid”. He slammed the Daily Mail for a “culture of negativity”, where speed and ideology reign supreme. Former tabloid hack Richard Peppiatt portrayed a tabloid culture of bullying, fabrication and agenda-setting more intent on delivering impact than seeking truth. And then there was McMullan, who revealed his editors did indeed know about phone hacking and were “scum” for denying it.
The PCC was criticised throughout the Inquiry, notably for its failure to investigate phone hacking in 2009 or mitigate in the coverage doled out to the McCanns. JK Rowling called the regulator “a wrist-slapping exercise at best”. Libel was also repeatedly highlighted as something for the “rich”.
Various solutions that were offered included a public interest advisory body to help guide reporters; a regulator with the power to issue fines and impose sanctions; and a league table of newspapers to see which ones adhered to a code of conduct. A cheaper and more accessible system in which it would be possible for libel or privacy cases to heard in county courts, not just the high court, was also suggested. Unsurprisingly, Max Mosley championed a policy of prior notification to warn people before publishing stories exposing their private lives.
The past ten days of revelations, criticisms and potential solutions hammered home the quandary Leveson has on his hands: how to avoid infringing free speech — “the cornerstone of democracy”, to quote Hugh Grant — while finding ways to restrain further bad behaviour in the British press. Listening to Nick Davies’ account alone, recounting a history of rigorous and meticulous reporting, we were reminded that it was an act of brilliant journalism that exposed an act of putrid journalism; and it is of credit to this Inquiry that it is giving those on the receiving end a rare platform to criticise the redtops.
But there is far more to come. Before Christmas we will hear from the former information commissioner, a solicitor for phone hacking victims, and News International. In the new year editors and proprietors will take to the witness box to face the accusations of unethical behaviour they have received.
McMullan may have set the entertainment bar high, but what will go on in court 73 is set to be no less intense than ten days just passed.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
24 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
A litany of complaints and revelations at the Leveson Inquiry today concentrated on the contentious issue of the level of privacy those in the public eye can reasonably maintain.
It was a marathon session, and in a sobering testimony that took up much of the afternoon, Harry Potter author JK Rowling said she felt “under siege” by the press, listing a slew of incidents in which she and her family had been covertly photographed and followed by reporters.
She accused the press of putting her family under surveillance for their “amusement”, noting how photographers had camped outside her home. After a photo had been published of her house number and street name, Rowling was forced to move, saying it was “untenable” to stay at that address.
Rowling said protecting her children’s privacy was crucial. “A child, no matter who their parents are, deserves privacy”, she said, adding that she and her husband had gone to great lengths to prevent their children from being photographed or targeted.
She spoke of feeling “invaded” having found a note in her daughter’s schoolbag addressed to her from a journalist. On another occasion, a reporter had contacted her daughter’s school, telling the headmaster the girl had upset other pupils by telling them Harry Potter dies in the final book. Rowling said her daughter had not done so, and was made out to be a “bully”. Photographs of her daughter, then aged eight, in a swimming costume also appeared in OK! magazine.
Rowling passionately defended the occasions when she had spoken openly about her personal life. “Our cultural life would be greatly diminished if creative people not allowed to say where they received inspiration,” she said, noting that she had openly discussed having suffered from depression, and had received letters of support in return.
Ex-Formula 1 boss Max Mosley, who sued the News of the World in 2009 for breach of privacy, also gave evidence today, reiterating his staunch campaign for reform in celebrity privacy laws.
Mosley was at the centre of a 2008 News of the World splash which falsely reported him taking part in a “sick Nazi orgy” with five prostitutes.
He said that when he challenged the story, “the entire resources of News International were deployed to destroy me.” He described that, when he took the paper to court, their response to send a film of him taking part in an alleged sado-masochistic orgy to the governing body of world motorsport, the FIA. He then launched legal action against the tabloid, receiving £60,000 in damages for breach of privacy.
During his lengthy account, he dismissed the Sun headline ‘The Day Freedom Got Spanked’ in response to his case as “typical of gutter press.” Responding to Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s accusation of Mosley being “guilty of unimaginable depravity,” the ex-motorsport boss said “it reflects badly on his [Dacre’s] imagination.”
Mosley reaffirmed his case for newspapers adopting a prior-notification policy to warn people before publishing stories exposing their private lives. “Once information is made public, it can never be made private again,” he said. “The only effective remedy is to stop it becoming public.” In May 2011, Mosley lost his bid impose a legal duty of prior notification, with the European Court of Human Rights ruling that such a system would have a “chilling effect” on the press.
Mosley also veered into the contentious territory of policing content online, noting that search engines such as Google “could stop a story appearing, but don’t or won’t as a matter of principle.”
“The really dangerous thing is the search engines,” he said, to which Leveson responded: “That’s part of the problem.”
Mosley is currently taking litigation action in 22 countries and suing Google in France and Germany. He added he is considering bringing proceedings against the search engine in California in an attempt to remove certain search results.
Also appearing today was actress Sienna Miller, who described how she had been verbally abused and spat at by photographers, who had on occasion chased her down the street. “I felt like I was living in some sort of video game,” she said, noting that the press intrusion and surveillance left her in a state of “complete anxiety and paranoia.”
Miller, who has taken out a court order against the paparazzi, revealed she had accused friends and family of having leaked stories to the press. She later learned she and her friends had been victims of phone (and in Miller’s own case, email) hacking, and that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire had “created a project” under her name. “It’s unfathomable to feel like they [the press] can justify doing this,” she said.
Her lawyer, Mark Thomson, was also in the witness box today, primarily discussing regulation. He accused the Press Complaints Commission of wearing “too many hats”, and that an improved body “with a few extra teeth” would not work.
He said an effective regulator would need to deal with all news gatherers, including freelance photographers. As for the grey area of regulating content online, Thomson said: “bloggers are best ignored until they reach a critical mass of attention in the newspapers.”
He added that redtops and tabloids do not want the PCC to be effective. “As long as it exists, this kind of activity will go on, he said.”
The Inquiry will continue on Monday, with evidence from Chris Jefferies, Anne Diamond, Charlotte Church, Jane Winter and Ian Hurst.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
23 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The father of missing toddler Madeleine McCann called for change in the British press at the Leveson Inquiry today, saying that a “commercial imperative is not acceptable.”
In a powerful reminder of some of British media’s darkest days, Gerry McCann, with counsel to the Inquiry Robert Jay QC, ran through a series of Daily Express and Daily Star articles from September 2007 to January 2008 insinuating that he and his wife, Kate, had killed or sold their daughter, who went missing in Portugal in May 2007.
One headline read, “It was her blood in parents’ hire car, new DNA tests report”. Kate McCann said this was untrue.
Jay said there were about 25 similar stories over a three to four month period implying the McCanns had hidden their daughter’s corpse in the car. Another article was built around a Portuguese story that quoted a police officer saying he did not know if Madeleine was dead or alive. His quotation of “probably dead” turned into the headline “She’s Dead” on the front page of The Mirror, McCann said.
David Sherborne, the lawyer representing core participant victims, last week called the red tops’ treatment of the McCanns a “national scandal.”
Describing legal action as a “last resort”, the McCanns accepted £550,000 in damages and apology from Express Newspapers in March 2008 for what the publisher admitted were “entirely untrue” and “defamatory” articles. The damages were donated to the fund set up to find the toddler.
Gerry McCann, while conceding the press had been useful on occasions of appeals launched to help find his daughter, said that the “tremendous speculation” in reports that followed his daughter’s disappearance was unhelpful. “It’s crass and insensitive to say that engaging with the media to find our daughter meant the press could do what they liked,” he said.
Questions remain as to how the News of the World gained access to copies of Kate McCann’s diaries that she had written to her missing daughter. McCann revealed that the journal had been taken in the police clear-out of their holiday apartment in Portugal, and it was later deemed by Portuguese police as of no use to the investigation.
McCann said the paper’s printing of her diary in its entirety and without her knowledge showed “no respect for me as a grieving mother or as a human being, or for my daughter”. She added the experience left her feeling “totally violated.”
Wrapping up his testimony, Gerry McCann said that “lives are being harmed” on daily basis by stories that are distorted or factually incorrect. Of holding journalists to account, he said, “if they are repeat offenders they should lose their privilege of practising.”
Earlier in the day, solicitor Mark Lewis said that when journalists talk about press freedom, “it’s not freedom of the press they want, it’s freedom to do what they like.”
Lewis, who represents the Dowler family and was recently revealed as having been under surveillance by a private investigator hired by the News of the World, spoke out against statutory regulation of the press. He said that self-regulation “should be what journalists do and newspapers do themselves, not the PCC.”
He also warned of a “reverse chilling effect” if people cannot afford legal fees to bring a claim forward to stop certain information about them being printed.
Voicing his support for libel reform, Lewis advocated a cheaper and more accessible system in which it would be possible for libel or privacy cases to heard in county courts and not just the high court.
“Libel is something for the very rich,” he said, arguing against merely abolishing conditional fee agreements — in which fees are only payable in the case of a favourable results — would lead to people not being able to bring cases forward.
Also giving evidence today was journalist Tom Rowland, who argued that defamation lawyers acted as a “quality control mechanism”. He added that it was “wrong” to say that “having lawyers at your elbow inhibits press freedom”.
Sheryl Gascoigne, ex-wife of footballer Paul Gascoigne, also called for improved journalistic standards. While conceding media attention “comes with the territory” of being married to a celebrity, Gascoigne took issue with inaccurate reporting. “If you’re going to print anything about me, just make sure it’s factual,” she said.
She added, “the onus is on you as the victim to prove your innocence, not the journalist to prove what he has printed is true.”
She gave a detailed account of her experience of press intrusion, noting that papparazzi had camped outside her home, and that one photographer followed her as she drove to a police station to try to escape from him. Heavily pregnant at the time, Gascoigne was told by the police that they were not able to take action unless the photographer had touched her.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with anonymous evidence to be heard first from “HJK”, for which the court will be closed to press and public. Sienna Miller, JK Rowling, Max Mosley and Mark Thomson will follow.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
21 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
Actor Hugh Grant linked the Mail on Sunday to phone hacking today as he and other witnesses gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, starting what is set to be a week-long attack on the practices of the tabloid press.
In his marathon account, he spoke of a 2007 story in the paper that claimed his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks due to his late night calls with a “plummy voiced” studio executive. Grant said the only way the paper could have sourced the story was through accessing his voicemail, and that he “would love to hear what their source was if it wasn’t phone hacking.”
He also told the Inquiry about a chance encounter with Paul McMullen, former features editor at the News of the World, who “boasted” about hacking at the paper.
A spokesman for the Mail on Sunday said this afternoon: “Mr Grant’s allegations are mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media.” Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Mail, has consistently denied that any of its staff were involved with hacking.
Grant went into detail about a slew of other incidents. He noted how he and his girlfriends had been “chased at speed” by papparazzi, the Sun and Daily Express had invaded his privacy by publishing details of his medical records, and that the life of the mother of his newborn baby had “been made hell” due to press intrusion. He also alleged that the Daily Mail paid £125,000 to the ex-lover of the child’s mother for photos of her.
Grant said the “licence the tabloid press has had to steal British citizens’ privacy for profit” was a “scandal that weak governments for too long have allowed to pass.”
In their brief but raw account this morning, the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler spoke of the moment they believed their daughter was picking up and deleting her voicemail messages. Sally Dowler said, “it clicked through on to her voicemail so I heard her voice and [said] ‘she’s picked up her voicemail Bob! She’s alive!’.”
Milly’s voicemail had been hacked into and her messages deleted, making room for new ones to be left. Sally Dowler said she did not sleep for three nights when she was told of the interception this year.
The Dowlers also described a walk they took seven weeks after their daughter had gone missing to retrace her steps, a photo of which was featured in the News of the World. The Dowlers believed it was a result of photographers being tipped off after their own phones had been hacked. “How did they know we would be doing that walk on that day,” Sally Dowler asked. She called the photo an “intrusion” into the family’s private moment of grief.
Of the press attention that followed Milly’s disappearance, Sally added that the family had to “train” themselves not to answer questions. “Someone would come up to you when you least expect[ed] it,” she said.
The Dowlers added that the press had been a “double-edged sword”, noting the efforts made by the papers to spread information about Milly’s disappearance.
They said they would leave it to the Inquiry to make decisions, but wanted the extent of hacking to be exposed. Bob Dowler said he hoped News International and other media organisations would “look very carefully” at how they procure information for stories. “Obviously the ramifications are very much greater than just an obvious story in the press,” he added.
Journalist Joan Smith also gave evidence. She discovered her phone had been hacked around six weeks after the daughter of her partner, Labour MP Denis MacShane, had been killed in a skydiving accident in 2004. She revealed that detectives had shown her notes taken by Glenn Mulcaire earlier this year, which listed her name, address and phone numbers.
She attacked tabloid culture as “so remorseless” that those involved have “lost any sense that they’re dealing with human beings.”
She said she did not consider herself a celebrity. “You don’t have to be incredibly famous to be a target for their intrusion,” she said, adding later that the press interest in her came from her relationship with MacShane.
Smith was keen to defend freedom of expression, noting that she opposed state regulation and the licensing of journalists. She added that there needed to be a “successor body to PCC (Press Complaints Commission) that isn’t dominated by editors.”
Media lawyer Graham Shear also attacked the redtops, calling the industry a “business model which has become dependent on titillating and sensationalist stories.”
He said his clients began to suspect they were under surveillance in 2004, when “stray facts” known to few began to appear in the press. Several would clients would change their mobile telephone numbers two or three times a year, he added.
He spoke of “orchestrated” attempts to persuade clients to pay off kiss and tell girls, and noted the reluctance of press to contact him and his clients prior to publishing, preferring to pay any damages for breaches of privacy afterwards. He also described the £60,000 in damages paid by the News of the World to Formula 1 boss Max Mosley for privacy invasion as a “very gentle parking fine”.
The hearing continues tomorrow, with evidence from Steve Coogan, Elle Macpherson’s former business adviser Mary-Ellen Field, ex-footballer Garry Flitcroft, and Margaret Watson, mother of murder victim Diane Watson.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
