16 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The editor of the Daily Mirror told the Leveson Inquiry he believes there is a “willingness” for online news providers to sign up to a regulatory framework.
Richard Wallace, who has edited the paper since 2004, said that “legitimate” online news providers would want to join a new regulatory body because “it gives them a lot of cachet”.
He said that “responsible” online news sources would be more successful. “The out and out cowboys, I don’t see in the long term they can survive,” he said, adding that “people want information that is competent and true.”
Asked about press tycoon Richard Desmond’s view that having current editors serve on the Press Complaints Commission creates rivalry, Wallace said that serving editors should play only an “advisory role” in a new body. He suggested former editors and ex-lawyers should serve, enabling the new body to call editors to account.
Discussing the relationship between the press and the political sphere in the UK, Wallace said that he did not believe the media were too close to politicians, but said News International had “particular influence”.
“The reason Rupert Murdoch has so much power is because we choose to give it to him,” he said, arguing that “politicians should have shown a lot more backbone”.
“They’re there to look after the welfare of the people, not the welfare of a media organisation,” he said.
He was also quizzed over the Mirror’s inaccurate stories about Chris Jefferies, the former teacher wrongly arrested in late 2010 on suspicion of murdering his tenant Joanna Yeates. Wallace told the Inquiry that off-the-record briefings from Avon & Somerset police, who said they were “confident” that Jefferies was “the right man”, “coloured” his judgement.
He called the episode a “black mark” on his editing record and expressed “sincere regret” to Jefferies and his friends and family. “Jefferies’ name will for ever more be printed on my mind,” he said.
The Daily Mirror was fined £50,000 for contempt of court over its coverage of the former teacher.
Meanwhile, on phone hacking, Wallace said he did not believe the practice had occurred, but added it “might well have been” hidden from him.
He added that he had never heard the Paul McCartney voicemail message to Heather Mills that former Mirror editor Piers Morgan told the Inquiry he himself had listened to.
Discussing the departure of his predecessor, Wallace said Morgan was dismissed over the publication of a series of hoax Iraqi prisoner abuse pictures. “It was a catastrophic error of judgement and he paid the price,” Wallace said.
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12 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Richard Desmond, founder and owner of Daily Express owner Northern & Shell, today defended his editor’s coverage of missing toddler Madeleine McCann despite the volume of defamatory articles the paper published.
I don’t wish to minimise it,” he told the Leveson Inquiry, “but if there were 102 articles on the McCanns, and 38 bad ones, you could argue there were 68 or 70 good ones.”
He told the Inquiry that the McCanns took four months to take legal action over the paper’s coverage, claiming that until then “they seemed quite happy for us to run articles about their poor daughter.”
Counsel to the Inquiry, Robert Jay QC, called this a “grotesque characterisation”. He also said the coverage of the Express and the Star, also owned by Northern & Shell, were the “most egregious defamations” of all the redtops.
Despite apologising and paying Kate and Gerry McCann over £500,000 in damages for “entirely untrue” and “defamatory” articles written about their daughter’s disappearance, Desmond believes the Express was “scapegoated by the PCC” over its coverage, claiming it was only the Express that “stood up and said yes we got it wrong”.
An increasingly irritated Jay criticised Desmond for drawing comparisons with the death of Princess Diana and attempting to justify his papers’ coverage of the McCanns by arguing speculation over what had happened was rife.
“There has been speculation that Diana was killed by the royal family,” Desmond said. “The speculation has gone on and on. I don’t know the answer.”
Desmond’s performance this afternoon was pugnacious, with potshots being taken at rivals and regulators. He called the current Press Complaints Commission a “useless organisation run by people who wanted tea and biscuits and by phone hackers; it was run by people who wanted to destroy us.”
He called the Inquiry “probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to newspapers in my lifetime.” He said he would rather “get rid” of it, “prosecute people that committed offences, and get on with business.”
He also took particular care to reignite hostilities with the Daily Mail, calling it “the Daily Malicious”, “Britain’s worst enemy”, and referring to its editor Paul Dacre as “the fat butcher”.
Desmond seemed at pains to define the term “ethical”, adding: “We do not talk about ethics or morals because it’s a very fine line and everybody is different.”
The Inquiry continues on Monday.
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12 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry, News and features
The former editor of the Daily Express has denied claims made to the Leveson Inquiry that he was “obsessed” over coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Peter Hill said it was an “international story on an enormous scale” and that there was an “enormous clamour” for information.
“It was not a story you could ignore”, he said, “you simply had to cover it as best you could.”
Hill said it was “nothing to do with an obsession”, adding that the “entire country” had an opinion about the 2007 disappearance of McCann.
Express reporter Nick Fagge told the Leveson Inquiry in December that Hill had “decided it was the only story he was interested in.”
There was a tense exchange between Hill and Robert Jay QC, during which Hill accused the Inquiry counsel of putting him “on trial” during questioning about the tabloid’s McCann coverage. Lord Justice Leveson reassured him he was not.
“I did not accuse them of killing their child. The story that I ran were the people that did accuse them and those were the Portuguese police,” he said.
He added that there was “reason to believe that they might possibly be true.”
When asked by Jay about checking the accuracy of the stories, Hill said: “We did the best we could do which was not very much.” He added that the McCann stories boosted circulation “on many days”.
Madeleine’s parents accepted £550,000 in damages and an apology from Express Newspapers in March 2008 for what the company said were “entirely untrue” and “defamatory” articles. Hill told the “nothing” further happened after the libel case.
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12 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The editor of the Daily Express has suggested to the Leveson Inquiry today that one of the reasons for the paper opting out of the Press Complaints Commission was because it failed to stop the tabloid publishing defamatory articles about the McCanns.
Hugh Whittow said: “Because of the McCanns I think that was a huge problem for us and I think they should have intervened.” He added that “no one was intervening at all, and the coverage “just went on and on”.
Kate and Gerry McCann accepted £550,000 in damages and an apology from Express Newspapers in March 2008 for what the publisher admitted were “entirely untrue” and “defamatory” articles.
Whittow told Lord Justice Leveson: “I don’t blame the PCC. I just think in hindsight they might have been able to intervene and perhaps this will reflect in the body that you set up.”
Whittow was deputy editor at the time of the paper’s libellous coverage of the parents of the missing toddler, and said was not party to the decision to withdraw from the PCC.
Daily Star editor Dawn Neesom also testified to the Inquiry this morning. As counsel Robert Jay QC took her through a series of front-page stories from the paper, Neesom admitted headlines can at times “go too far”, with one story headlined “Terror as plane hits ash cloud” resulting in copies of the paper being removed from airport newsagents’ shelves over fears they could cause panic among travellers.
Earlier in the day Express Newspapers’ legal chief, Nicole Patterson, revealed to the Inquiry that the company was using private investigator Steve Whittamore in 2010, five years after he had been convicted for illegally trading information.
Going through a list of invoices from Whittamore’s company, JJ Services, Jay revealed that the earliest date of payments to the firm was 31 January 2005, and that Whittamore was still carrying out services for Express Newspapers in 2010.
Patterson said was not sure if Whittamore was still being used by the company’s papers. Jay called this surprising, given the “cloud hanging over” the private investigator.
Patterson added that the company carried out an internal investigation into phone hacking and other unlawful news gathering methods at its tabloids going back to 2000. She said there was no evidence to suggest phone hacking “or anything of that nature” had occurred.
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