12 Dec 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Worrying news from Buckingham Palace Road this morning: the Telegraph is reporting that Culture Secretary Maria Miller’s special adviser Joanna Hindley warned its reporters of Miller’s connection to the Leveson report before the newspaper published details of her expenses, notably that Miller’s parents lived in her taxpayer-funded second home.
The paper took the rare step of choosing to disclose details of the conversation in light of concerns over “the potential dangers of politicians being given a role in overseeing the regulation of the press.”
The key passage from their story:
When a reporter approached Mrs Miller’s office last Thursday, her special adviser, Joanna Hindley, pointed out that the Editor of The Telegraph was involved in meetings with the Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary over implementing the recommendations made by Lord Justice Leveson.
“Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors’ meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about,” said Miss Hindley.
Miss Hindley also said the reporter should discuss the issue with “people a little higher up your organisation”.
In an email statement, a DCMS spokesperson said:
Mrs Miller’s special adviser raised concerns with a journalist about the nature of an approach to Mrs Miller’s elderly father. Her advisor noted that Mrs Miller was in regular contact with the paper’s editor and would raise her concerns directly with him, which Mrs Miller did subsequently.
However, this is a separate issue to on-going discussions about press regulation. Mrs Miller has made the Government’s position on this clear.
This “flagging up” is worrying, but it’s not the first instance of those in power feeling that they already have right to tell reporters what to print. Remember the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson’s revelation last month, pre-Leveson?
In the last few weeks, I have had an MP and a government minister call asking me to (respectively) discipline a Spectator writer who had annoyed him on Twitter and take down a blog that was ‘over-the-top’.
Meanwhile, Evan Harris of the Hacked Off campaign, which pushes for tougher regulation of the press, has apparently suggested Miller should “recuse herself” from Leveson issues.
Those of us concerned about a post-Leveson environment in which emboldened MPs are able to intimidate the press have been told we’re overreacting. But today’s report proves our point: it is precisely the sort of thing that could prevent journalists from doing their jobs and endangers press freedom and the role of the fourth estate in holding politicians to account. And it does little favours to the argument that the state should have a role in regulating our papers.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. Follow her on Twitter: @martaruco
30 Nov 12 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
Friday’s newspapers gave an interesting glimpse into how the next few months of negotiation on the future of press regulation will go.
The Telegraph’s leader headline said everything you needed to know: “Let us implement the Leveson Report, without a press law.”
The Times (£) was in conciliatory mode, complimenting Lord Justice Leveson’s report as an “impressive achievement”. Importantly, the paper, target of some scorn as part of Rupert Murdoch’s News International group, noted that it was up to the press to quickly move towards independently implementing some of Leveson’s recommendations, thus avoiding a new law on the press:
The industry now needs to come together quickly to agree how independent regulation will work. It also needs to consider how to guarantee its independence…
With a flourish at the end of his press conference Sir Brian announced that “the ball moves back into the politicians’ court”. In fact it is the press that needs to act. The judge has made it painfully clear that the status quo has failed. The press, not Parliament, must act.
Stablemate the Sun was similarly supine:
MUCH of Lord Leveson’s report on the Press makes sense.
The Sun does not argue with his call for a sharper independent regulation of newspapers and many of the proposals within it.
The onus is now on the newspaper industry to come up with robust and muscular proposals for the independent regulation that can prove there is no need for the new law recommended by Lord Leveson.
The Sun is convinced this can be achieved. We have already pledged complete co-operation with a new independent watchdog that would have vastly stronger powers than the discredited Press Complaints Commission.
The Mail, while remaining quite gentlemanly about Sir Brian (“has approached his impossibly wide brief in a fine spirit of public service, firmly got behind David Cameron, who told parliament that he was not convinced by, or comfortable with, calls for a press statute:
To his enormous credit, however, David Cameron sees this report for what it is — a mortal threat to the British people’s historic right to know.
If he prevails in protecting that right, with the help of like-minded freedom lovers in the Commons and Lords, he will earn a place of honour in our history.
(It’s not entirely clear whether the “our” in whose history Cameron shall be revered is the nation or the Mail newsroom.)
The left-leaning Mirror took on Labour leader Ed Miliband’s support for statutory regulation, saying: “The Mirror is Labour’s friend,” it says, “but we refuse to swallow the party line.”
The Guardian, meanwhile, published a long and intricate editorial that did not make it entirely clear where it stood on statutory regulation. But pressed on the BBC this morning, editor Alan Rusbridger suggested that if statute was the only way of gaining the “particularly fantastic” carrots offered by Lord Justice Leveson (such as alternative dispute resolution).
Interestingly, the Daily Express, which had opted out of the PCC, pledged to get behind an independent regulator, without statute:
As David Cameron admitted yesterday, to pass a press law making newspapers ultimately accountable to Parliament for what they print would be to cross a Rubicon.
His challenge to the newspaper industry to devise its own regulatory system that complies fully with the tough principles set out by Lord Leveson, delivers fair play and yet does not require legislation is therefore one we are happy to take up.
How they’ll all figure out how to work together will make a fascinating few month’s viewing.
28 Nov 12 | Leveson Inquiry, Media Freedom, United Kingdom
The judge’s part is done, now its up to the press and parliament. Can the press convince politicians they are capable of reform? Or will the government decide it needs powers to control the press?
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