10 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The editor of the Independent has told the Leveson Inquiry that the paper’s reputation has been “severely damaged” following revelations that one of its star columnists, Johann Hari, had plagiarised articles.
Chris Blackhurst denied there had been a cover-up at the paper, noting that no-one had ever had any “inklings” or made complaints about the reporter, who is currently undertaking ethics training at Columbia and New York University at his own cost.
Blackhurst stressed that the “scandal” caused “enormous” and “profound” shock to himself and his colleages. Hari was publicly suspended without pay for four months last year, having confessed to inserting quotes from other published work into exclusive interviews.
Blackhurst added that an absence of complaints meant Hari did not believe he had been doing anything wrong, but noted that there are “plenty of journalists who haven’t had training but recognise the difference between right and wrong”.
Blackhurst said if it had been within his remit to pass the Hari case to the Press Complaints Commission for judgment, he would have done so.
Blackhurst said he was “profoundly against state intervention or state control of the media”, but reiterated his support for a more “proactive” body, possibly with statutory backing. He added he would “certainly advocate” the fining of newspapers for breaches.
Lord Justice Leveson responded that a balance needed to be found, noting, “when you’re writing something you’re doing nothing more than exercising right to free speech.”
Praising the News of the World for exposing match-fixing in cricket, and the Daily Mail’s controversial coverage of then-suspects in the Stephen Lawrence murder case, Blackhurst said he would be “very worried if the outcome of this Inquiry was an ability of this industry to investigate to be curtailed.” Leveson agreed such a result must be avoided.
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09 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Th editor of the Sun has called for a “level playing field” between the press and the internet at the Leveson Inquiry today.
Dominic Mohan, who joined the paper in 1996 and has been its editor since 2009, said the combination of an over-regulated press with an unregulated internet was a “very, very worrying thought”.
Mohan said that at the moment, “it feels like every story has to be considered in terms of the Bribery Act, privacy, the PCC.” He added that statutory regulation filled him with “fear” and revealed that he had had discussions with a senior executive at the paper over appointing an ombudsman to deal with readers’ complaints. He said it could be “useful in terms of self-regulation”.
Mohan said the Inquiry itself may have made him more cautious about publishing certain stories. He reiterated that he had “seen mistakes made” at the tabloid and was keen to learn from them. He said his staff will be advised on language use regarding issues such as HIV/AIDS, gypsies and travellers later this year.
He added that, since the Press Complain Commission’s adjudication on a story by the Sun about singer Charlotte Church‘s pregnancy — published before Mohan became editor — he has “not run stories on females under 12 weeks pregnant”.
A new system on paying sources requiring four signatures from managers was instituted in September 2011, which Mohan called “sensible” and “good governance” following the closure of the News of the World after phone hacking revelations.
Earlier in the day, The Sun’s head of legal called prior notification “absolutely correct journalism”, adding that it can go some way in avoiding libel by informing “the other side” of a story before publication.
Justin Walford told the Leveson Inquiry he could not recall an occasion when it was in the public interest to not inform someone of a story involving them.
Ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley, who sued the News of the World for breach of privacy in 2008, has also championed the cause. Yet he lost his bid impose a legal duty of prior notification last May, with the European Court of Human Rights ruling that such a system would have a ”chilling effect” on the press.
Walford described his own role at the tabloid as “risk assessment”, noting that he would deal with legal issues in the following day’s paper, but that it was the editor who would make the ultimate decision of whether running a certain story would be worth the risk.
The hearing continues tomorrow, with evidence from editors of the FT, the Independent and the Telegraph.
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09 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
The Sun’s royal editor has revealed that over half of the paparazzi photos of royals that the paper receives are not published because of ethical considerations.
Duncan Larcombe told the Leveson Inquiry that this was due to concerns over breaches of privacy and the Press Complains Commission code, he rejected any suggestion that Clarence House put the newspaper under pressure not to run certain photographs.
He told the Inquiry that the Sun turned down photos of the royals stolen from Pippa Middleton’s car in 2009, the tipsters asked for £25,000 for the images.
Distancing himself from former editor Kelvin Mackenzie’s “lob it in” approach, Larcombe said that “it doesn’t work like that on royal stories” or on Fleet Street. He said it was particularly important to “get it 100 per cent right” with such stories.
However he admitted that the internet was “the elephant in the room”, many photos rejected by mainstream outlets finding their way online.
Larcombe added that every member of the public was a “potential paparazzo” in the age of camera phones, claiming that Prince Harry had little privacy unless he was “hiding in one of his castles”.
The Sun’s picture editor John Edwards told the Inquiry that more photos were now coming in from members of the public, though the majority of the 15-20,000 images the paper is offered per week still come from agencies.
Discussing pictures of a heavily pregnant Lily Allen shopping in London, Edwards said they were not published after a request from the singer’s agent’s request, despite Allen appearing happy to be shot in the photos. He added that there were celebrities that the paper would be reluctant to use photos of, such as Sienna Miller, due to their past experiences with the paparazzi.
When asked about the intense press coverage of the McCanns, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in May 2007, Edwards said he had “tremendous sympathy” for the couple, who returned to a media scrum outside their home in Leicestershire after Madeleine’s disappearance.
“We got it spot on in Portugal, but may not have been so good when it came back to Leicestershire,” Edwards said.
20 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The former TV editor of the News of the World has told the Leveson Inquiry how she “fell out of love” with the industry after being asked to write an untrue story about a celebrity being cheated on by her partner.
Sharon Marshall, now a television critic for ITV’s This Morning, said she could not stay on at the News of the World, stating she had been asked to breach the PCC code over the story. It involved a pregnant celebrity whose partner had allegedly been unfaithful, though Marshall discovered the photo evidence supplied was two years old.
“Morally, it wasn’t going to happen,” Marshall said of the story, which she refused to carry out. “I made sure I killed it.”
She then resigned from the paper despite being asked to stay on. The individual who asked her to write the story, she said, remained in their job.
She described the “tough” and competitive enviroment at the tabloid. “You literally didn’t know what the person next to you was doing.” She described editorial meetings with line managers where she would be asked what she had done to stand up a story, but not about sources.
She said she was “not involved in any direct conversation” in which she was asked to work unethically, adding that she did not see any evidence of unethical behaviour with vast majority of those she worked for.
She denied a bullying culture at the tabloids, but said that “some editors are less than idyllic.”
The Inquiry also heard extracts of Marshall’s book, Tabloid Girl, which detailed her career at the redtops. Lord Justice Leveson asked if the book was “a true story”, as its cover read. Marshall repeated that the text was filled with “heightened reality” and “a bit of topspin”.
“I was writing something somebody told me in the pub,” she told the Inquiry, adding that she did not have “hard evidence” for the stories because she was not “writing a witness statement.”
“I intended it to be a good yarn,” she said.
When Leveson questioned if “topspin” meant “lying”, Marshall said that she would call it “colour”. She later said one example of it was a part of the book in which she described how she “gatecrashed” celebrity weddings.
Another story she recounted involved her being asked to travel to Rhyl to find someone who would back up a kiss and tell story about a member of the band Steps. Marshall admitted an advert for the story, with the pre-ordained headline “My five, six, seven times a night with Steps girl”, was running before the story was written.
During a slightly tense back and forth between Marshall, Leveson and Inquiry counsel, David Barr, a defensive Marshall admitted she “shouldn’t have allowed” the book’s cover to read “a true story”, but repeated that the text involved “dramatisation”.
She concluded that the maxim her book ends with — “fuck the facts…just file” — was not one that the entire industry tabloid worked by. “It’s a few individuals,” she said. “Bad apples.”
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