Why Leveson’s recommendations are more worrying than you think

20 Dec 12 | Leveson Inquiry

In my months covering the Leveson Inquiry, a clear and startling picture was painted of closed, secretive police forces, tense in their relationship with reporters on local and national papers and fiercely protective over the flow of information.

Justin Penrose of the Sunday Mirror described a “state of paralysis” in police-press relations. The Times’ crime editor Sean O’Neill said that “in the current climate, if you arranged to meet an officer you’d be looking over your shoulder the whole time.” The Guardian’s Sandra Laville cited an “over-reaction” by the Metropolitan police in response to the Inquiry, adding that “open lines of communication, which have been there for many years, are being closed down.”

So it is worrying that some of the more terrifying passages of the Leveson report that could perpetuate this closed culture, chill investigative journalism and also have grave implications for whistleblowers have gone almost unnoticed.

First, Leveson recommends increasing sentencing powers for breaches of section 55 of the Data Protection Act and also suggests that paragraph 2 (b) of schedule 1 the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) be repealed. The latter means that police should only request journalistic material as a last resort; repealing it would make it far easier for them to do so. As Index wrote in a policy note published today, the work of journalists who cover  crime or terror stories could be compromised if this proposal is followed through, and sources that require protection might feel less confident in dealing with the press as a result.

O’Neill told me he finds the proposed change to PACE “terrifying”, calling it a “landgrab of massive new powers” that could force journalists to disclose their sources.

Add to this Leveson’s suggestion for an internal whistleblowing hotline, which would, in his view, get rid of the need for confidential briefings to journalists on internal police issues. The judge also recommends that “it should be mandatory for ACPO [Association of Chief Police Officers] rank officers to record all of their contact with the media”, and proposes an end to off-the-record briefings.

“This is music to the ears of people in the Met,” O’Neill said. “They think they should be the guardians of what transparency is.”

“Leveson has effectively just endorsed the approach the Met adopted post-phone hacking, when it went into complete lockdown,” he added.

Leveson might well strive for a more transparent environment — after all, it was the shady culture of collusion between editors, police officers and politicians that allowed reprehensible newsroom practices to fester and helped to severely dent public trust. This is rightly being investigated. But there is nothing wrong with an officer talking to a journalist: contact between them is just one of the ways reporters can scrutinise those in power, and the informal kind might provide more “texture” and “colour” that official sources might not give, as Laville told the Inquiry last March. Both parties are humans, and need to be able to discuss matters openly and without fear if information is to flow freely.

For their part, both David Cameron and Nick Clegg expressed strong concern over the data protection recommendations when they responded to the report last month. Yet amid the recent arrest of an officer in connection with a leak that spurred the “plebgate” row and resignation of Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell, there is greater concern over how police officers and journalists navigate the murky post-Leveson world, as Vikram Dodd alluded to this week.

The reality is that this unsavoury mix of uncertainty and landgrabs fits a wider pattern of a culture yearning for a firmer grip on information: from disciplining a police officer for tweeting to plans for secret courts in the Justice and Security Bill currently under consideration in the House of Lords, there seems to be an appetite for perpetuating secrecy.

It’s hard to know what’s more worrying: that Leveson — so adamant was he about protecting freedom of speech — suggested these alarming proposals, or that so few seem bothered by the prospect of information becoming such a shackled commodity.

Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. Follow her on Twitter: @martaruco

More on this story:
Read our latest policy note in response to the Leveson Report

Social media guidelines: Nice start, but still a long way to go

19 Dec 12 | Uncategorized

Keir Starmer’s social media interim guidelines appear sensible enough, which is more than can be said for the controversial cases that led to the Director of Public Prosecutions’ consultation.

Index took part in that consultation back in October. I wrote at the time Starmer was adamant that the ruling in the Paul Chambers appeal (which overturned his 2010 conviction for jokingly tweeting that he would blow an airport “sky high”) was not to be seen as any sort of precedent. Yet in the guidelines published today, Starmer cites the two passages in that ruling that seemed to provide most protection for free speech, which noted:

…a message which does not create fear or apprehension in those to whom it is communicated, or may reasonably be expected to see it, falls outside [section 127(i)(a) of the Communications Act 2003], for the simple reason that the message lacks menace.

And:

Satirical, or iconoclastic, or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humour, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it should and no doubt will continue at their customary level, quite undiminished by [section 127].

So it would seem there’s been a slight change of mind, which is entirely reasonable and welcome (though on Twitter Chambers’ partner Sarah Tonner seems a little annoyed by this apparent switch).

Apart from that, what else have we got to discuss in these interim guidelines? Well, there’s a slight shift away from the use of the controversial section 127 of the Communications Act. At the consultation I attended, the various representatives, from diverse groups including anti-bullying and anti-harassment bodies, were keen to stress that section 127 was not appropriate for social media, and that it would be better to focus on patterns of harassment, abuse etc, and prosecute, if necessary, under anti-harassment laws such as the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This is welcome – too often we focus on the medium rather than the behaviour.

More generally, there’s much on high thresholds on prosecution, and clear identification of public interest, perhaps not evident in the prosecutions of people such as Liam Stacey (sentenced to 56 days in prison for a “racially aggravated public order offence” after tweeting a poor taste joke about footballer Fabrice Muamba).

There is not much on the difference between “merely offensive”, which may not merit a prosecution, and “grossly offensive”, which could. As so often, this comes down to the probable perception of a right-thinking person. As in definitions of “obscenity” it seems a case of “I know it when I see it”.

There is a worry in the suggestion that removal of offensive posts by ISPs may provide a defence against prosecution.

While Facebook, Twitter et al will sometimes remove posts off their own bat, there is no absolute uniform system, and due to the sheer volume of traffic on social networks every day, some posts will slip through and others will be removed prematurely or inappropriately. Furthermore, this contains the germ of a suggestion of third-party liability, in which ISPs are held responsible for content. It will be crucial to examine this in the three-month public consultation on the guidelines which open today. It will also be worth examining whether section 127 of the Communications Act is appropriate at all in social media cases.

A decent start then, but more to be done.

Padraig Reidy is news editor at Index. Follow him on Twitter: @mepadraigreidy

More on this story:
Read the guidelines in full here
Graham Linehan on the Twitter Joke Trial
Paul Sinha on a tale of two tweets
Do western democracies protect free speech?