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.
03 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
Crossposted at Hacked Off
What lies behind the Daily Mail’s assault on Hugh Grant? Could it be conventional piety? Hardly: have you looked at Mail Online lately? It is an artful mix of soft porn and celebrity gossip of the kind which, just a few years ago, the Mail itself would have dismissed as morally corrosive.
Is the paper living in a dream world of Downton Abbey values? Maybe, but look at this story. Delightfully illustrated and just a week old, it shows a Daily Mail that, far from being judgemental, is aware, cheeky and relaxed, even in the face of evidence of mass adultery.
Or could it be that Amanda Platell has some personal objection to Hugh Grant? She would not need one, for her article carries all the hallmarks of Glenda Slagg morality. Imagine that her instructions had been to whip up hatred against the mother in this case rather than the father. She could have done so with exactly the same passion and apparent conviction, simply substituting arentyasickofher for arentyasickofhim.
The Mail’s great broadside against Grant has nothing to do with morality and nothing to do with the perils of fatherhood outside wedlock. It is simply an act of intimidation.
The actor has been a prominent critic of privacy intrusion by the press and the Mail has chosen to make an example of him. It is saying to any prominent person who challenges the press: if you speak out, this is what we will do to you.
One of the most vivid insights into the culture of the old News of the World was a conversation from 2002 that happily was recorded for posterity. “That is what we do,” a news editor told a reporter, “we go out and destroy other people’s lives.”
The Mail plays the same game, and its technique in this case is wilful distortion. Take three facts and from those facts derive a dozen assumptions, all of which fit your agenda. From those assumptions weave a narrative as demeaning as can be contrived, and then pile the outrage on top. Never mind that the same three facts could provide the foundation of five entirely different narratives, leading to entirely different perspectives on those involved.
Platell doesn’t know the truth about Hugh Grant’s relationships and the Mail doesn’t either, but that does not matter: they have constructed a story that serves their purpose.
Just at this moment, with the Leveson inquiry set to start taking evidence and the joint parliamentary committee on privacy in full flow, the Mail is desperate to blunt the message that the unregulated mas-circulation press — the press that gave us hacking, the McCann case, the Christopher Jefferies case and so many others — is a threat to the health of our society.
Hugh Grant is a Leveson witness, so it makes him a target. And at the same time the treatment doled out to him serves notice, not only on anyone else with opinions the Mail does not like but also on everyone involved in both of those inquiries, that they can be dealt with the same way.
In their high-minded moments, papers like the Mail present themselves as champions of free expression, yet this is how they deal with those who disagree with them. And they have the nerve to call other people hypocrites.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London and is a founder of Hacked Off. He tweets at @BrianCathcart
21 Oct 11 | Leveson Inquiry
Cross-posted at Hacked Off
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, has joined the debate about press reform with a speech warning of the risk of throwing the baby of freedom of expression out with the bathwater of cruel and unfair journalism. Things are not as bad as they may seem, he implied. Self-regulation in the form of the Press Complaints Commission has not failed, though it “might be strengthened”. The really serious problems, where they arise, can continue to be left to the law.
The plea for freedom of expression was eloquent and clearly heartfelt, though hardly controversial. Is there any serious participant in this debate who does not believe in the value of freedom of expression, or anybody who believes it should be placed at hazard when addressing the problems before the Leveson inquiry? Here, Lord Judge is pushing at an open door.
His arguments about the status quo, by contrast, are largely wrong-headed. Two stand out. The first is that the courts are successful in restricting serious wrongdoing and the second relates to the role and faults of the PCC. Let us look at them.
Lord Judge says this:
“First, crime is crime. If and when crime is committed by reporters with or without the support and encouragement of an editor, it should be investigated, and if on the available evidence there is a reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution, he or they are prosecuted. We do not say that the General Medical Council and self-regulation have failed when, as sometimes happens, a doctor sexually molests one or more of his patients, or like Dr Shipman murders them.”
Later he repeats the point:
“We must remember, that whatever lies ahead, the ordinary law of the land will continue. Crime will be crime.”
The Lord Chief Justice is saying that we can rely on the courts to deal with serious wrongdoing perpetrated in the name of journalism, just as it delivered justice and deterrence in the case of Harold Shipman. But can we? What if the courts had convicted and sentenced Shipman and he had emerged from jail to commit the same crime again? And what if, after a second conviction, he reoffended a third time? We would wonder then about the effectiveness of the courts.
This is what is happening in relation to the most cruel and unfair journalism we see today. In the cases of Robert Murat, Kate and Gerry McCann, the so-called Tapas Seven and Christopher Jefferies, victims of the grossest press cruelty went to court and won, yet the same group of papers went on to commit the same offences again, and again, and again. The law is not preventing this.
For another example, look at the libel record of the Express newspapers as compiled by Roy Greenslade and listed here. It is, as he remarks, an inglorious inventory, and the offences just go on and on.
Why is this serial offending happening? It is partly that the punishments available are no deterrent. The Express papers paid the McCanns £550,000 for well over 100 libels. That is around £5,000 each. Eight papers are reportedto have paid Christopher Jefferies around £500,000 for three days of outrageous character assassination: that is some £20,000 per paper per day (in the otherwise quiet New Year weekend). At these prices libel is good business.
To say that the ordinary law of the land will continue, as Lord Judge does, is therefore no reassurance for future victims of false, cruel and unfair journalism. Crime may be crime, but for the tabloid press this crime pays, and for the victims (just ask them) the scars remain forever.
Turning to the PCC, the Lord Chief Justice points out in his speech:
“Membership is not obligatory. The Commission has no investigative power. In reality it has no disciplinary power. When it works, as most of the time it does, it is because the press itself is prepared to comply with its rulings, not because it is under legal compulsion to do so. Its main role, and I do not seek to diminish it with faint praise, is to provide a sort of ombudsman/mediation service between the newspaper and an individual group which is aggrieved by an article. It cannot award compensation. To criticise the PCC for failing to exercise powers it does not have is rather like criticising a judge who passes what appears to be a lenient sentence, when his power to pass a longer sentence is curtailed.”
The problem here is not with the critics but the advocates. The press has always characterised the PCC as a regulator or self-regulator, even though, as Lord Judge says, it has never fulfilled that function. Editors and proprietors have made this claim repeatedly over the years because they want the public to believe the industry is regulated when it is not. This is a confidence trick, a trick which has helped to shelter the kind of newsroom culture that gives us serial libelling by the Express and the hacking of the voicemails of Milly Dowler, Sara Payne and Shaun Russell.
It is true that the PCC does valuable complaints work and that whatever new dispensation emerges after Leveson, someone will need to do that work. It is also true, however, that the leadership of the PCC over the years has been complicit in the confidence trick and those people have some responsibilities to acknowledge.
Here it is worth noting a factual error made by Lord Judge. He cannot be blamed for the error because it is a common one, which the PCC has never been at pains to correct. In fact the PCC commissioners do have investigative power; they just choose not to use it. Article 53.1A of the PCC Articles of Association states:
“It shall also be the function of Commission to consider and pronounce on issues relating to the Code of Practice which the Commission, in its absolute discretion considers to be in the public interests.”
That is a clear mandate to examine infringements of the code without waiting for a complaint by a directly affected party — a mandate the commissioners failed to fulfil, for example, throughout the whole year of the Madeleine McCann affair, as flagrant breaches of the code occurred every day. It is a depressing and revealing irony that when, in a very rare instance, they did exercise this power, in the case of phone hacking, they used their authority to exonerate the News of the World and turn the blame on the Guardian.
An important point which also does not seem to be understood by Lord Judge relates to what happens after something goes wrong. Any regulator worthy of the name will conduct post mortems to establish the facts, where responsibilities lie and what lessons should be learned. If the press had been regulated, or effectively self-regulated, such post mortems would have occurred after each of the scandals listed above, with the consequence (one would hope) that the later scandals might not have occurred. As a result, the burden on Lord Judge’s courts might have been lighter and their relative impotence in newspaper libel matters less exposed.
The PCC, while it does good but limited mediation work, has never done this kind of work. Instead it has functioned as a figleaf for press misconduct. It has had no obvious impact on ethical standards in the national tabloid press and it stood by as an unregulated industry slid into its present state of disrepute.
Lord Judge say he would prefer press self-regulation with a “strengthened” and “more powerful” PCC that is not a “toothless tiger”. It must be “all-inclusive”, with authority “over the entire newspaper industry”. And like everybody else he does not want political interference or censorship. How to square these circles is a difficult problem with which Lord Justice Leveson, his panel and many other interested parties are already wrestling. Welcome to the debate, your lordship.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University and is a founder of Hacked Off. He tweets at@BrianCathcart
