30 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Twenty-first century politicians have been “obsessed” with newspapers, the Leveson Inquiry heard this afternoon.
“Politics is now a mass media-dominated activity”, justice secretary Ken Clarke said, arguing that the press was now far more powerful than parliament and that many were put off by politics due to the level of exposure.
Clarke singled out former prime minister Gordon Brown as having been “utterly obsessed” by his relations with the media, adding that it “didn’t do him any good at all”. He said Margaret Thatcher “never read a newspaper from one week to the next” and implored his colleagues to pay no attention to the papers if they were upset by their content.
During his calm and measured session at the Inquiry, Clarke said newspaper editors and proprietors “can drive a weak government like a flock of sheep before them” when lobbying on certain topics, and he slammed the idea of currying favour with the press as a “waste of time”.
The politics of the last 15 years had been “dominated” by competition for support from the Sun newspaper, he added. “I don’t think the Sun ever had a significant effect on any election in my lifetime, though it was obviously thought by some to be important.”
He said he held the “more jaundiced view” that the paper and its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, were “good at changing sides when it’s obvious the horse they’re riding is about to collapse”.
He described New Labour as having introduced a level of “control-freakery”, adding that he knew of one journalist who was barred from the Treasury and told she would not be let in again because of stories she had written.
On the topic of criminal justice legislation, Clarke pointed the finger at the popular press, emphasising that newspaper campaigns were often based on partial accounts of high-profile cases. “If the tone of newspapers had been different in the last 20 years, we’d have 30,000 fewer prisoners,” he said, though he stressed this was not a “scientific” estimation.
He and Lord Justice Leveson discussed at length the future of press regulation, with Clarke admitting he was “deeply suspicious” of government control in a new system. Yet he added he did not have confidence in letting the press regulate itself, stressing that a regulator should be independent of both the industry and the government.
“I always thought PCC was a joke,” Clarke quipped. “I had some friends on it who tried to convince me otherwise. Completely useless.”
“I do think 99 per cent of people in this country genuinely believe in a free press,” he added, suggesting journalists were becoming “almost as sensitive as politicians” who thought no-one loved them anymore.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with evidence from culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.
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30 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Business secretary Vince Cable has said he had heard of “veiled threats” to his party connected with News Corp’s bid for full control of satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
“I had heard directly and indirectly that there had been veiled threats that my party would be done over in the News International press. I took those things seriously and I was very concerned,” Cable told the Leveson Inquiry this morning.
When asked about the source of the threats, Cable, who was initially in charge of adjudicating the bid, said he believed they came in conversations with News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel but could not be absolutely certain.
In his witness statement Cable said he received reports that several of his Lib Dem colleagues were approached by News Corp representatives “in a way I judged to be inappropriate”.
“This added a sense of being under siege from a well-organised operation,” he added. “Coming from a party that had hitherto been at best ignored by News International, this was a new and somewhat unsettling experience.”
Cable was removed from his role in judging News Corp’s £8 billion bid for BSkyB, launched in June 2010, after he told two undercover Telegraph reporters in December of the same year that he had “declared war” on Rupert Murdoch. His comments led to accusations he was biased against the media mogul.
Cable said he had “offloaded pent-up feelings” in language he would not normally use, and described the situation outside his constituency surgery at the time as a “near-riot”.
Cable wrote in his witness statement that his references to “war on Murdoch” were “making the point, no doubt rather hyperbolically, that l had no intention of being intimidated. Clearly, I should not have volunteered my unprompted opinion, even in a private, confidential conversation in a constituency surgery. I subsequently apologised.”
He also wrote that he was “concerned about the unhealthy political influence of some newspaper proprietors including the Murdochs”, but added this was “not a view about the particular circumstances of the BSkyB takeover.”
Cable outlined that there were plurality problems presented by at 100 per cent ownership of BSkyB, namely that the number outlets under different owners would have been reduced and the possibility of new owners replacing management who would have influenced the choice of editors.
News Corp’s bid for the takeover was dropped last summer following the phone hacking scandal.
The Inquiry continues this afternoon.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
29 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Education secretary Michael Gove gave a staunch defence of press freedom at the Leveson Inquiry today.
“By definition, free speech doesn’t mean anything unless some people are going to be offended some of the time,” Gove said, saying he was “unashamedly” allied with “those who say we should think very carefully about regulation.”
“The case for regulation needs to be made strongly before we curtail liberty,” Gove said, adding that he felt the existing laws of the land were sufficient to deal with miscreant reporters.
“The experience we have of regulation is that sometimes good intentions result in the curtailment of individual freedom and an unrealistic expectation of how individuals behave,” he said, noting that on occasion regulation had been sought to “deal with failures of character or morality”.
In a tense exchange with Lord Justice Leveson, Gove attacked what he saw as a “tendency to meet a particular crisis, scandal or horror with an inquiry”, and expressed his “fear for liberty” if principles of free speech were to be eroded with tougher regulation.
Leveson went head-to-head with Gove, a former Times leader writer, responding: “Mr Gove, I don’t need to be told about the importance of free speech. I really don’t.”
Gove has previously spoken of his fear that the Inquiry, launched last summer to examine press standards in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, had created a “chilling atmosphere towards freedom of expression”.
However he did not deny the judge’s suggestion of substantial public concern over questionable press behaviour, arguing that it had “pre-dated the last 50 years”.
Elsewhere in his evidence, which he peppered with references to the Roman republic and quotations in Latin, Gove was unapologetic about his contacts with other media figures, stressing he tried to exercise “appropriate judgment on all occasions”. He referred to Rupert Murdoch as “one of the most impressive and significant figures” of the last half-century, and said it was “fascinating” to meet media proprietors Viscount Rothermere and Richard Desmond.
Discussing a 19 May 2010 dinner with Murdoch, ex-News International CEO Rebekah Brooks and others at Murdoch’s flat shortly after the formation of the coalition government, Gove said the group discussed education. He added that he had no recollection of discussing Murdoch-owned News Corp’s bid for full control of satellite broadcaster BSkyB at a June 2010 lunch with NI executives, adding that no-one had told him of the bid before its launch later that month.
Asked by counsel Robert Jay QC why the public held politicians and journalists in low esteem, Gove chirped: “‘Twas ever thus.”
Also speaking today was home secretary Theresa May MP, who discussed interim guidance issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) on media-police relations, which were based on “a shift to a blanket non-acceptability” of anything other than “light refreshments and trivial and inexpensive gifts”.
May said the guidance, which ACPO says aim to provide “common sense” principles for officers to follow, would provide greater clarity and consistency about press-police relations, rather than having a “chilling effect”.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with evidence from justice secretary Ken Clarke and business secretary Vince Cable.
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28 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Tony Blair defended his infamous courting of the press at the Leveson Inquiry today, describing it as a “strategic decision” to avoid the wrath of British media groups.
Blair, prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said he was not afraid of taking on the media, but was aware that if he did so he would be mired in a “long protracted battle that will shove everything else to the side.”
During his day-long evidence, which was interrupted by a protester breaking into the courtroom and branding him a “war criminal”, Blair said as a political leader he decided he would “manage that relationship [with the press] and not confront it.”
He repeatedly cited the Daily Mail as attacking him and his family “very effectively”, and slammed the “full-frontal” attacks launched on senior politicians by some sections of the press as “an abuse of power”
“If you fail to manage major forces in the media, the consequences are harsh,” Blair said, adding later that his sole piece of advice to any political leader would be to have a “solid media operation”.
“With any of these media groups, you fall out with them and you watch out,” he said, “because it is literally relentless and unremitting once that happens.”
Blair outlined to the Inquiry, which is currently examining relations between politicians and the press, that ties between the two would inevitably involve “closeness”. These would become unhealthy, he said, “when you were so acutely aware of the power exercised that you got into a situation where it became essential and crucial to have that interaction.”
He said the “imbalance of power” in the relationship was more problematic than the closeness.
However, he defended himself and his party as having “responded” to a phenomenon of media-political closeness than having created it, conceding later that they were “sometimes guilty of ascribing to them [the press] a power that they do not really have.”
His close ties with media mogul Rupert Murdoch are well-documented, with the Murdoch-owned Sun famously backing the Labour party ahead of its landslide win in the 1997 general election. Blair famously flew out to Hayman Island, Australia in 1995 to address Murdoch and News Corp executives, and in 2010 became godfather of Murdoch’s daughter.
When Lord Justice Leveson put it to Blair that the 1995 trip was a “charm offensive”, Blair defended it as a “deliberate” attempt to elicit the support of the Murdoch titles.
“My minimum objective was to stop them tearing us to pieces. My maximum objective was to try and get their support,” he said.
Quizzed about whether the prospect of needing to meet Murdoch in January 1997 had “angered” him, as suggested in Alastair Campbell’s diaries, Blair agreed this was his view and was how he would define the “unhealthy” part of the press-politicians relationship. Such meetings mattered, Blair said, “because the consequence of not getting it right was so severe.”
Yet he stressed he did not “feel under pressure from commercial interests from the Murdoch press or from anybody else”, and denied there were any express or implied deals with him or any other media group.
Blair added that policy was never changed during his time in government as a result of Murdoch, and that his decision not to launch an inquiry into cross-media ownership was not a means of appeasing the News Corp boss. Their relationship until he left office in 2007 was a “working” one, Blair emphasised.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with evidence from education secretary Michael Gove and home secretary Theresa May.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
