13 Feb 12 | News and features, Uncategorized
Cross-posted at Hacked Off
There is fury and fear among Sun staff after the latest round of arrests by police investigating the alleged corruption of public servants by journalists, and there is more widespread alarm about the future of the press. Where will this end? Will other papers close, as the News of the World did? Is the baby of free expression about to go down the plughole with the murky bathwater of journalistic misconduct?
The anxiety is likely to increase as Rupert Murdoch visits London this week. Though he has said he has no intention of closing the Sun, he is not (how to put this?) a man distinguished by the rigid keeping of his word. It is easy to see why nerves are frayed.
But the picture is not as bleak as some fear, and News International and the Metropolitan police are only doing what they have to do in a society ruled by law. (We need to note, too, that nobody has been charged with anything.)
It is only a few months since News International was rightly lambasted for covering up evidence of, and information about, potentially criminal activities. That material, about phone hacking, had to be dragged out of the company, notably by civil litigants who for the most part have now settled their cases.
If, as seems to be the case, the company is now diligently searching its databases and handing everything suspicious that it finds to the police, then we should be grateful. Nor can we complain that junior figures are suffering the consequences while the top brass are spared: those arrested (and bailed) are for the most part big hitters.
As for the Met, it is doing its job. It may well be doing it with a special zeal, in response to criticisms about a previous absence of zeal, but we can hardly complain about that either. And it is not as though it can make up new laws. Where they have information about possible breaches of the law the police are supposed to investigate, question, search and so forth, and that is what they are doing here.
Corrupting officials matters, too. If local government officials take bribes to fix planning applications for builders, or if defence officials take bribes when awarding arms contracts, we expect prosecutions of both those who pay and those who receive. More than that, we expect the press to expose such wrongdoing, and journalists tend to take pride in the work. Corruption creates injustice and is anti-democratic.
Will the pursuit of these matters lead to unwanted consequences? Will it corrode free expression? I cant see why.
There are no grounds for Murdoch to close the Sun, and if he were to do so it would be another short-sighted, cowardly and capricious act like the closure of the News of the World. He has to take responsibility, show leadership and steer his paper (which is by any measure a national institution) through the crisis.
Does it follow that other papers are in danger? I have no idea, but if journalists on other papers have been bribing public officials (something which nobody can fail to realise is against the law) then they need to face the consequences. It is no use saying that the law is wrong or unfair; if that is the case the right course is to try to change the law, not to ignore it. (Newspapers are rarely tolerant of others who consider themselves above the law.)
The bathwater of unethical and illegal practices in journalism needs to be drained, and the Leveson process exists to do that. There is no reason to suppose that the baby of free expression will be washed away in the process. A far more realistic prospect is that, if we are persuaded to leave this bathwater where it is, the baby will drown in it. Corrupt journalism is the enemy of free expression; it places us at the mercy of monopolists, bullies and lawbreakers. We surely don’t want that.
Brian Cathcart, a founder of Hacked Off, teaches journalism at Kingston University London. He tweets at @BrianCathcart
10 Feb 12 | Leveson Inquiry
As the first module of the Leveson Inquiry drew to a close yesterday, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre refused to retract a statement accusing actor Hugh Grant of “mendacious smears” against his company unless Grant agreed to take back the “toxic and explosive” statements made about the Mail.
In a heated debate Dacre and David Sherborne, counsel for the core participant victims, discussed answerphone messages left for Grant from a “plummy-voiced woman,” described in a 2007 Mail on Sunday article. In his evidence to the Inquiry in November, Grant suggested that the information for the story, which suggested his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks, could only have been accessed by phone hacking.
Dacre, who was recalled to give evidence on the issue for a second time this week, said: “Our group did not hack phones and I rather resent your continued insinuations that we did,” adding that he had given the Inquiry his “unequivocal word” on the matter earlier in the week.
Dacre accused Sherborne of “attacking my group rather unpleasantly”. Referring to Grant as the “poster boy for Hacked Off,” Dacre went on to add that the actor “is obsessed by trying to drag the Daily Mail into another newspaper’s scandal.”
Lord Justice Leveson Leveson suggested that the editor may need to appear before the Inquiry again at a later date. Dacre replied: ” I have shown this week I am prepared to devote a lot of time to this.”
Heather Mills, who also appeared before the Inquiry yesterday, said she had “never” played voicemail recordings to former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan. In his evidence to the Inquiry last December, Morgan claimed he had heard voicemail tapes, in which Mills’ then partner Sir Paul McCartney sang an apology and asked for forgiveness, that had been obtained legitimately, but he refused to “compromise” his source.
Mills added: “I couldn’t quite believe that he would even try to insinuate [that], a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years, would relish in telling the court if I had played a voicemail message to him.”
The court also heard how Mills had recorded over 64 hours of footage of alleged harassment from journalists, including evidence, shown to the court of a car chase involving paparazzi which resulted in a crash.
Thursday’s session also focused on bullying within the journalism industry, hearing a number of anonymous testimonies from reporters. Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) presented 12 written accounts to the court, detailing “tremendous pressure,” “macho culture” and other “degrading” treatment.
One testimony described a journalist being forced to write “anti-Islam stories”, and being called the “token lefty” when they complained. The journalist described being “in tears” at the treatment, but explained that it continued.
Another said: “three or four staff suffered physical collapses, almost certainly to some extent as a result of the stress.”
Former News of the World news editor Ian Edmondson also described a “culture of bullying” at the newspaper, explaining that “you will do what you are told”. Edmondson said that everything was dictated by the editor and explained editor Colin Myler, who replaced Andy Coulson following his resignation in 2007, continued the newsroom bullying.
Edmondson also denied drafting emails sent by Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter of the News of the World, to women involved in an orgy with ex-motorsports boss Max Mosley in 2008, though he added it was “more likely that I would have asked” Thurlbeck to contact them.
Edmondson told the Inquiry he believed the emails to be a “threat”, chiming with the inference of Mr Justice Eady that the messages amounted to blackmail, as suggested in the judgment following Mosley’s successful privacy action against the News of the World in the same year.
He was also quizzed about extracts of Kate McCann’s diary that appeared in the paper in 2008, contradicting claims made by Myler that Edmondson had sought permission to publish from the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell. Asked if he had led editor Myler to believe he had “made it clear” to Mitchell that the paper had the whole diary and planned to publish parts, Edmondson replied: “No.”
Appearing via video link, Darryn Lyons of photo agency Big Pictures, explained that his photographers tried to stay in line with the PCC code, but added that photographers, picture agencies, and publishers no longer know where they stood in the industry.
“Celebrities court publicity when they want to, and all of a sudden they want to switch it off. I don’t agree people should be hounded up and down the street. I do agree people should be photographed in public places, we have a free press and a free press should be able to work in public places,” he said.
When asked about the legal case against his group brought by actress Sienna Miller regarding photographs taken of her on holiday, Lyons said that paparazzi had been taking pictures of people on holiday since “Brigitte Bardot was seen sunning herself on the beaches of St Tropez”.
PR veteran Max Clifford told the Inquiry that he had agreed his own hacking settlement with former NotW editor Rebekah Brooks over a “quiet lunch in Mayfair.” Clifford agreed to £220,000 a year for three years plus legal costs, and to provide the newspaper with tip-offs.
Clifford said he believed the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World and the Leveson Inquiry had “frightened people”. He added that he was aware of “several stories that would have dominated the headlines,” over recent months that had not been published.
The Inquiry will resume with module two, examining the relationship between the press and the police, on 28 February.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
01 Feb 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The chairman of the body that funds the Press Complaints Commission told the Leveson Inquiry today that the News of the World phone hacking scandal has convinced him of the regulator’s need to impose fines.
Lord Black, chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance (PressBoF), revealed that he had been opposed to the imposition of fines, arguing that they would not have strengthened the PCC, but admitted the phone hacking scandal had made him change his mind.
“I certainly now believe that some form of fining system would be appropriate,” he said, citing the scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World as “the most obvious example of why urgent reform of the system is needed.”
Black said there was a “very real” appetite for change from the industry and argued that there needed to be “radical proposals” for changes to self-regulation in order to thwart a threat of statutory regulation.
Black’s testimony follows Lord Hunt’s call yesterday for a new regulator that had increased powers to investigate, as well as audit and enforce standards. Hunt told the Inquiry there was a “wide consensus for radical reform” in the industry.
Ofcom CEO Ed Richards and Chair Colette Bowe also gave evidence today. The pair defended the broadcast regulator, which is underpinned by statute and whose chief executive is chosen by the Culture Secretary, as being able to maintain its independence. Bowe emphasised the regulator is accountable to Parliament — not the government — and Richards stressed that independence was “probably the most prized characteristic of the entire organisation.”
Asked by counsel Carine Patry-Hoskins if Ofcom’s independence would be stronger were its board not selected by the government, Bowe said it would not in practical terms. She added that a better model had not been proposed, and that well-informed parliamentary committee served to hold Ofcom to account.
Richards described Ofcom as a “post-broadcast regulator” that does not attempt to intervene with broadcasts in advance of being aired. He said he pre-broadcast intervention was “very difficult territory, which takes you potentially takes you into the area of censorship and suppression.”
Richards also argued that there was “no reason” why financial penalties should have a chilling effect on investigative journalism, and that there were “plenty of examples” of broadcast journalism that have been controversial and produced within the Ofcom code.
Richards added that Ofcom’s own investigatory powers, namely the ability to require data from broadcasters, were a “key tool” and crucial to the regulator doing its job effectively. He cited the sanctions levied as a result of the 2007 phone-in scandal — during which Ofcom fined GMTV a record £2 million for having repeatedly allowed viewers to enter phone-in competitions after lines had closed — as an “effective deterrent”.
Richards admitted that digital innovations did present challenges for broadcasters, but said any attempt to regulate the internet was a “fool’s errand”.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
09 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie told the Leveson Inquiry that the paper would have come “very, very very close to being shut down” had it “got the Milly Dowler story wrong”.
MacKenzie, who edited the UK’s most popular daily paper from 1981-1994, was referring to reports in the Guardian that the News of the World had deleted voicemails on the abducted teenager’s phone, giving her family false hope that she was alive.
The Guardian reported last month that, while the News of the World had hacked into Dowler’s phone, it was unlikely that it was responsible for the deletion of messages that led to a false hope moment.
Leveson LJ said MacKenzie’s view that the broadsheet got the story “completely wrong” was “interesting”.
MacKenzie accused the newspaper world of “snobbery” and claimed ethics depended on the paper in which an offending story was published. “If you publish in the Sun you get six months’ jail, if you publish in the Guardian you get a Pulitzer.”
MacKenzie added that the culture of the Sun had changed after his departure, noting that subsequent editors Rebekah Brooks and Dominic Mohan were more “cautious”.
He admitted to adopting a “bullish” approach to journalism during his editorship particularly in the 1980s, adding later that the paper’s editor’s office was a “massive hour-by-hour sprawl of phone calls and general rioting”.
Pressed on fact checking by Leveson LJ, MacKenzie said there was “no absolute truth in any newspaper”, adding that journalists attempting to get to the truth while being told lies was a “massively difficult problem”.
He also spoke in favour of newspapers being subject to heavy fines for lying to the Press Complaints Commission.
Mackenzie admitted he did “not really” have much regard for privacy while editor.
Meanwhile, current editor of the paper’s Bizarre showbiz column, Gordon Smart, said ethics were a balancing act between public interest and individual’s right to privacy. “There is a grey area there and we walk that line every day,” Smart said, adding that he believed he and his team “get it right more than we get it wrong”.
He said that the onset of Twitter meant showbiz reporters were more accountable than ever before, adding that social media added to the pressure to meet deadlines.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
