21 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The former secretary for culture media and sport told the Leveson Inquiry today that her family had “been destroyed” by intense media harassment.
Tessa Jowell, culture secretary from 2001 to 2007, became emotional as she described the “total” invasion of privacy she and her family had suffered.
Detailing what she called “obsessive curiosity” about her family and private life, Jowell said: “In the months to years after I’d find people sitting outside my house with cameras.”
“Only in the last 18 months do I find myself not looking in cars to see if there is somebody waiting,” she added.
In May 2006 she was told by Operation Caryatid, the original phone hacking investigation, that her voicemail had been intercepted 28 times, and subsequently discovered the activity was more extensive. In December 2011 Jowell settled a civil case for breach of privacy with News International.
“There is no evidence yet shown to me that the hacking of my phone was undertaken for commercial motives, but rather in pursuance of an obsessive interest in my troubled family circumstances at that time,” Jowell wrote in her witness statement.
She added that she was “deeply shocked” when she read Metropolitan police’s DCS Keith Surtees’s evidence, in which he said Jowell had declined to sign a statement to be used in the prosecutions of former News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire when she was first informed of phone hacking in August 2006.
“It is untrue,” she told the Inquiry. “Had I been asked at that time to provide a witness statement I would have.”
She said she “sought clarification” from the police over how she could contribute but was assured there was nothing further to do, writing in her witness statement that her “offers of further help were declined”.
She also said she did not approach the News of the World over the matter because she believed the perpetrators had been imprisoned, and did not complain to the Press Complaints Commission about the press intrusion she suffered.
During her evidence, Jowell and Lord Justice Leveson collided over whether or not the Press Complaints Commission was in fact a regulator. “Regulatory may be the wrong term,” Jowell said, noting that the Commission oversaw media conduct and provided redress for those who felt they had been wronged by the press.
Asked if the DCMS should have taken a more hands-on role in media monitoring, Jowell said such manoeuvres would have “been seen as a step to undermine self-regulation”.
“There’s no halfway house in this,” she said. “Either the media is regulated on statutory basis or it’s self-regulated.”
The Inquiry continues this afternoon with evidence from Lord Mandelson.
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18 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
There was an unsettling moment in the normally demure Leveson Inquiry last week.
As the 10 May hearing began Lord Justice Leveson announced he would be calling Independent on Sunday editor John Mullin to appear to discuss an article published the previous Sunday Leveson said disclosed details included in Andy Coulson’s confidential witness statement.
Coulson, the former News of the World editor and David Cameron’s ex-communications chief, was due to appear that afternoon. Under Inquiry protocol, witness statements are confidential, and Leveson has made clear his distaste for leaks, issuing restriction orders under section 19 of the Inquiries Act that prohibit prior publication of the statements outside of the Inquiry’s confidentiality circle.
Summoned under section 21 of the Inquiries Act, Mullin appeared, and was robust in his defence: he told Leveson that the story — which revealed Coulson held shares in News Corp while working at No. 10 — had been confirmed by three sources before the leaked copy of the witness statement came to his attention on the Wednesday evening prior to publication.
He said he was aware of the Inquiry’s restriction order but believed it did not apply to the story, as none of the sources relied on Coulson’s statement.
It quickly became rather unsettling, with junior counsel David Barr questioning why Mullin had read the statement at all and implying it was used as a fourth source for the article. A defiant Mullin did not budge, repeating that the story had been confirmed — “copper-bottomed” in his words — by the time the statement reached him.
“We didn’t use the statement as a source,” he told the Inquiry, adding:
We may not be the world’s greatest newspaper, in fact we may not be the greatest newspaper in our own building, but we’re good honest journalists and we try and do our job as best as we can do it. This is an issue of massive public importance. The fact that your Inquiry is going on shouldn’t stop us from doing good honest journalism as we go ahead. It was our misfortune that through good honest journalism we got this statement after we had already substantiated the story.
Later in the week Leveson said he would not pursue action under Section 36 of the 2005 Inquiries Act against the newspaper.
Even for an interested (and, if I may say so, pretty dedicated) Leveson watcher such as myself, exchanges of the Barr-Mullin kind made me question the Inquiry. Mullin explained clearly how he believed he did not break the restriction order; was it necessary for Barr to press further on the other three sources?
Besides being unnecessary, it was futile: journalists don’t reveal sources. At that moment, the gulf between the lawyers brought into examine the standards of the press and the journalists giving evidence had never seemed so wide, or so problematic.
In printing the Coulson story Mullin had done what good editors do: fill their pages with informed and readable content that serves the person buying the newspaper.
The judge might be a few months away yet from setting in stone his recommendations for what the country’s press regulation system should look like, but watching a lawyer trying to get a newspaper editor to shed light on his sources did little to calm fears of a chilling atmosphere towards the press and freedom of expression.
These fears aren’t just speculation: various crime correspondents across regional and national titles told the Inquiry during their evidence in the second module that previously open channels of communication between them and police forces had been shut down (see here, here and here).
The episode might have been nothing more than a roadblock, and Leveson has said that no inferences should be made from the orders he issues and his approach to press regulation.
But Mullin summarised it perfectly when he said the Inquiry — fascinating and illuminating though it may be — should not stop good, honest journalism.
To do so would go against the freedom and diversity of expression that British newspapers are built on.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index, where she covers the Leveson Inquiry. She tweets at @martaruco
17 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Veteran newspaper editor Sir Harold Evans attacked the “excesses” of the British press and called for more external control while warning against introducing regulation by statute.
Appearing via video link at the Leveson Inquiry this afternoon, Sir Harold said his evidence, in which he largely detailed Rupert Murdoch’s bid for control of the Sunday Times in 1981, was relevant as it was a “manifestation of too close a connection between a powerful media group and politicians”.
Evans, who edited the Times from 1981-2 (having edited the Sunday Times from 1967-1981) and whose feud with Murdoch is well-documented, said he was “disgusted, dismayed and demoralised” by the “vindictive and punitive atmosphere” at the title.
He left his post at the Times after a year of being made editor.
Evans, who has lived in the United States since the mid-1980s, heralded the country’s reputation for accuracy and fact-checking in journalism but said the United Kingdom was “superior” in its style. He spent the early part of his evidence reflecting on his time as a journalist in the 1970s, a time he described as Britain having a “half-free press” and that “almost every investigation ran against external restraint”, such as the Official Secrets Act, libel and contempt.
He lamented what he termed the “excesses” of the British press, namely the “persecution of individuals for no public good whatsoever”, telling the Inquiry we were now in a “situation where papers are hiring private detectives. We used to hire reporters.”
He slammed the Press Complaints Commission as not having the powers even to “frighten a goose” and recommended a press ombudsman with the power to subpoena, punish and “hold the press to the very highest standards.”
While Evans warned it was “dangerous to bring a statute to bear on these matters”, he stressed that there was a need for “some extra authority to clean up the mess we’re in”.
The Inquiry continues on Monday.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
16 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Former justice secretary Jack Straw has urged Parliament to amend the Human Rights Act to include a tort for breach of privacy.
“I think parliament needs to take this job on now,” Straw told the Leveson Inquiry today, adding that doing so would send a message to the public that they had “the right to have their privacy protected”.
Echoing his 2011 Gareth Williams memorial lecture, Straw said that legislating on privacy has gone “through a side door” by relying on the HRA. There is no current tort on privacy in English common law, though section 12 of the HRA says that a court must regard the extent to which a media defendant has complied with “any relevant privacy code”.
Straw, who was Home Secretary from 1997-2001 and Foreign Secretary from 2001-2006, also claimed self-regulation of the press had “palpably failed” and that regulation with statutory underpinning was the only means of compelling newspaper groups to join into a system.
“If you leave it to self-regulation we will end up with the absurd situation where they [the press] are judge and jury in their own courts,” Straw said, adding that the press “can’t go on claiming every other institution in the land needs external regulation” while it continues to regulate itself.
However he dismissed counsel Robert Jay QC’s suggestion of the possibility of state control in newspaper content as “nonsensical”.
Straw flagged newsroom culture as an area of concern, adding that the press needed to be “more examining of what they are doing” and that the Inquiry itself provided a “mirror” for journalists.
“With luck, there’ll be continuing momentum for change,” Straw said, contradicting former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell’s more pessimistic view that there was “no appetite” for media reform.
He accused the British press of being “Quixotic”, telling Leveson: “one day you’re best thing since sliced bread, next your paternity is being questioned by the same newspaper”.
He added that there was a degree of “voyeurism” among some sections of British journalism that took “no account of the responsibility of decision-making” and that there was a “willful refusal” by the press to develop an understanding of how governance works. “They reduce it so much to personality and conflict,” Straw said, adding that newspapers had contributed to a culture in which politics is seen as boring or pointless.
The Inquiry is currently focusing on relationships between the press and politicians, with Straw revealing that, during his time in the Cabinet (1997 to 2010), some newspapers were gradually “being favoured by particular ministers”.
“They had these little groups,” he said, adding that it was “very incestuous and very unhealthy” and that both sides were to blame.
Straw said one of the reasons the Blair government was too close to some of the press was because of its involvement with them during their time in opposition, a relationship it carried into Downing Street when it came to power in 1997.
“Every politician wants to have the best relationship they can with the press,” Straw said, but warned one’s own position becomes “compromised” and it could “undermine your integrity” if relationships are too close.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with evidence from former Sunday Times editor Sir Harry Evans and journalist Peter Oborne.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
