18 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
A provisional list of witnesses and hacking victims giving evidence next week in the Leveson Inquiry has been announced.
The schedule is as follows:
Monday 21 November
Bob Dowler
Sally Dowler
Hugh Grant
Graham Shear
Joan Smith
Tuesday 22 November
Steve Coogan
Mary-Ellen Field
Garry Flitcroft
Margaret Watson
Wednesday 23 November
Sheryl Gascoigne
Mark Lewis
Gerry McCann
Tom Rowland
Thursday 24 November
“HJK”
Sienna Miller
Max Mosley
JK Rowling
Mark Thomson
Monday 28 November
Charlotte Church
Anne Diamond
Ian Hurst
Chris Jefferies
Jane Winter
After David Sherborne’s scathing illustration of the British tabloids on Wednesday, next week’s sessions are expected to be even more damaging to the reputation of the press.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
16 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The solicitor representing hacking victims attacked Britain’s tabloid press today as he pledged to unmask the “tawdry journalistic trade” at the third hearing of the Leveson Inquiry.
David Sherborne, who is representing 51 core participant victims, gave a powerful and emotional account of how murdered teenager Milly Dowler’s phone was hacked by the News of the World. He called the act one of “cruelty and insensitivity” and said that Dowler’s parents will testify of the euphoria they felt when the deletion of their daughter’s messages meant they thought she was alive.
Sherborne questioned News International’s earlier claims that hacking was limited to one rogue reporter, adding that there was a cover-up at the newspaper over the extent of the practice, and that there was a concerted effort after the event to “conceal the ugly truth from surfacing.”
He said the paper’s former glory has been so “fatally befouled by its cultural dependency on the dark arts”, giving journalism a bad name.
But phone hacking was, Sherbone said, “just one symptom” of a disease afflicting Britain’s tabloid press. He called the red-tops’ treatment of the parents of Madeleine McCann, he little girl who went missing in Portugal in 2007, “a national scandal”. He noted that Kate McCann’s diary that was given to Portuguese police was published by the News of the World and left her feeling, in her husband’s words “mentally raped”.
He also attacked the reporting of the arrest of Christopher Jefferies, the landlord of murdered Bristol woman Joanna Yeates who was later released without charge and cleared of any involvment of any involvement in her death. Reading out a range of damning headlines referencing Jefferies, Sherborne accused the press of a “frenzied campaign to blacken his [Jefferies’] character, a frightening combination of smear, innuendo and complete fiction”,
Sherborne said such stories were printed to “make money, not solve crimes”, and that none of them had a public interest defence. Earlier this year, both the Daily Mirror and the Sun were fined for contempt of court for articles published about a suspect arrested on suspicion of Yeates’ murder.
The Dowler family, Gerry McCann and Jefferies will all give evidence to the Inquiry next week.
Sherborne also made the case for respect to individual privacy, saying it was “as much a mark of a tolerant and mature society as a free and forceful press.” He condemned tabloid culture of kiss-and-tell-stories, citing reporters’ invasions into the lives of JK Rowling, Charlotte Church, Max Mosley, Sheryl Gascoigne and Hugh Grant, all of whom will be giving evidence in the coming weeks.
In a recent development, Sherborne added that the mother of Hugh Grant’s child had received abusive phone calls because the actor had criticised the press. She was allegedly told to “tell Hugh Grant to shut the fuck up”. Sherborne said that last Friday he had to seek an emergency injunction on behalf of a woman who just had the actor’s baby, the real reason for which being the threats she had received.
Sherborne said he was calling for “real change.”
Earlier in the day, the National Union of Journalists’ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet painted a stark picture of journalistic life in the UK, with an omnipotent editor, a slew of relentless pressures, and “brutal” consequences for reporters who did not deliver stories. She said a culture of fear among journalists inhibited them defending fundamental and ethical principles, and that speaking out publicly was “simply not an option” for fear of losing their jobs.
Referring to one of the Inquiry’s key questions raised by Lord Justice Leveson earlier this week, Stanistreet argued that the protection of journalists by way of a trade union could help “guard the guardians” and promote ethical awareness.
Following her, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger made the case for a stronger Press Complaints Commission that must have the power to intervene, investigate meaningfully and impose significant sanctions. Unimpressed by how the PCC handled phone hacking, Rusbridger argued in favour of a press standards and mediation commission, a “one-stop shop” that is responsive, quick and cheap. He added that the industry needed to establish a public interest defence that could be agreed upon and argued for.
Leveson agreed on the value of a “mechanism being set up that benefits all”, but questioned how to persuade those who do not subscribe to the PCC that it is a sensible approach.
Sherborne, however, vowed that his victims’ evidence will show “how hopelessly inadequate this self-regulatory code is as a means of curbing the excesses of the press.”
While conceding he, his clients and Rusbridger may agree on strengthening the PCC, Sherborne also quoted a client who claimed that leaving the PCC in the hands of newspapers would be tantamount to “handing a police station over to the mafia.”
The Inquiry will continue with evidence from victims on 21 November.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
17 Jul 11 | Uncategorized
When a man of 80 making an apology invokes both his mother, who is 102, and his father, who has been dead for 58 years, he is probably entitled to a hearing. Rupert Murdoch is reported to have done just that, head in hands, in his meeting with the Dowlers. You would need a hard heart to be certain now that he is not sorry.
This has implications for the Commons media committee, which meets him on Tuesday and will have to avoid the appearance of monstering a sorry old man. The public respects penitence. It punished Rebekah Brooks for delaying hers for so long, but I suspect it will think Rupert Murdoch, remarkably, has earned himself the right to at least a little politeness.
It is different for James Murdoch, who has more specific and evidence-based questions to answer, questions based in large measure on material gathered by the committee itself. The key passages are from the committee hearing on 21 July 2009, and the questioning of Colin Myler, then editor of the News of the World, and Tom Crone, then legal manager for that paper and the Sun.
Crone explained that when lawyers for Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers’ Association produced two documents appearing to show that at least one and possibly three of the paper’s journalists knew Taylor’s phone had been hacked, both he (Crone) and the paper’s external lawyers immediately agreed they could no longer contest Taylor’s case against the paper for breach of privacy. Tom Watson MP asked the questions.
Watson: When did you tell Rupert Murdoch?
Crone: I did not tell Rupert Murdoch.
Myler: The sequence of events, Mr Watson, is very simple, and this is very clear: Mr Crone advised me, as the editor, what the legal advice was and it was to settle. Myself and Mr Crone then went to see James Murdoch and told him where we were with the situation. Mr Crone then continued with our outside lawyers the negotiation with Mr Taylor. Eventually a settlement was agreed. That was it.
Watson: So James Murdoch took the ultimate decision?
Myler: James Murdoch was advised of the situation and agreed with our legal advice that we should settle.
In subsequent written evidence the company confirmed that James Murdoch not only agreed they should settle, he also authorised the actual payment, although curiously neither the meeting nor the decision was minuted.
The settlement, it is well known, was for £700,000, which Watson described as “a huge amount of money”, and which is certainly far more than Taylor stood to win in the event of outright victory in court. Some reports have suggested that the damages element of the payment was £400,000 (the rest being costs), but that is still out of proportion. By way of comparison, Max Mosley won £60,000 in his privacy case against the same paper, and recently Sienna Miller extracted a reported £100,000 in her hacking suit.
Why pay several times over the odds? The explanation that comes most readily to mind is that it was to secure Mr Taylor’s silence, an explanation that receives support from Mr Taylor’s total silence on the matter since the day of the settlement.
So the committee will ask James Murdoch whether he paid Gordon Taylor £700,000 in an attempt to ensure that he did not talk about or show to anybody the documents which prompted the lawyers to recommend settling. And if that was not the objective, what could it have been?
Last week, in a televised interview on the day he announced the closure of the News of the World, James Murdoch shed a little more light on this: “The company paid out-of-court settlements approved by me. I now know that I did not have a complete picture when I did so. This was wrong and is a matter of serious regret.”
That is apparently his defence: that he ‘did not have a complete picture’ when he authorised this £700,000 payment. He made his decision, according to the company, “following discussions with Colin Myler and Tom Crone”, but he says he “did not have a complete picture”.
Crone left News International last week and Myler ceased to be editor of the News of the World with its closure. Both men, we can be sure, will testify under oath in due course before Lord Justice Leveson’s public inquiry about the picture they gave to the younger Murdoch. It is possible that Gordon Taylor and his lawyers will also do so. In short, James Murdoch (who will also face Leveson) knows that what he says about this to the select committee this week will ultimately be tested pretty rigorously against the evidence of others.
The committee will want to know a lot about that incomplete picture. It will ask how the picture could have been incomplete and yet still unpleasant enough to lead James Murdoch to authorise a payment toTaylorseveral times over the odds for a privacy case. What was missing?
Did Crone and Myler not tell him about the documents (which any normal reader would conclude demonstrated that, at the very least, knowledge of criminal phone hacking was spread more widely at the News of the World than the company was at that time admitting)? That would be an incomplete picture, but it begs the question: if they didn’t tell him, why did he think such a large payment was justified?
Did they tell him thatTaylor’s lawyers had got the documents from the police and did he reason that, if the police had taken no action over them the documents could not be evidence of criminality? That begs the same question: if that was the case, why would he have felt the need to authorise a payment of £700,000?
We could go on like this but it does not get any less suspicious. And then there is the murky business of the settlement with Max Clifford. Perhaps it is better to wait and hear what happens on Tuesday.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism atKingstonUniversityand tweets at @BrianCathcart
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