06 Feb 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre accused Hugh Grant and the Hacked Off campaign of “hijacking” the Leveson Inquiry and attempting to “wound” Associated Newspapers with the actor’s evidence.
In a marathon testimony that lasted almost four hours, Dacre said Associated’s statement that the actor had made “mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media” was a “sensible” way of defending his newspapers and its publisher.
The statement was a response to Hugh Grant’s testimony at the Inquiry last November, when he described a 2007 story in the Mail on Sunday that claimed his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks due to his late night calls with a “plummy-voiced” studio executive. Grant said the only way the paper could have sourced the story was through accessing his voicemail, and that he “would love to hear what their source was if it wasn’t phone hacking”.
Dacre stressed he knew of no cases of phone hacking at Associated’s titles.
Meanwhile, Hacked Off and the Media Standards Trust said in a statement that they “categorically refute” Dacre’s “baseless accusations”.
Dacre took the debate on press regulation to a new level today by suggesting a press card system for those signed up to a new regulatory system.
He proposed improving the “haphazard” press card system by transforming it into an “essential kitemark for ethical, proper journalism”.
He argued that press briefings, sporting events and other conferences in public office should be open only to those with such a card, and suggested reporters guilty of “gross malfeasance” have their cards withdrawn.
“It is in the interests of both sides, news providers and news obtainers; why should they not have the right to believe they are dealing with accredited journalists?” he asked, arguing that the cards would be used proof of reporters being “responsible journalists”.
He suggested a “civil contract” for every journalist working for an accredited news organisation, effectively requiring them to adhere to the rules of a new regulatory body.
He argued that an improved press regulator should “move more towards a General Medical Council or Law Society type structure where it seen as the regulatory and disciplinary authority for the industry”.
He said there were currently 17 bodies that were able to issue press cards, yet the existing cards “don’t mean much”.
Dacre’s proposals echo Independent editor Chris Blackhurst’s endorsement of Labour MP Ivan Lewis’ suggestion that journalists be “struck off” if they are found to have committed gross malpractice.
Yet Dacre added that the “beauty” of the system would be that the newspaper industry, rather than the state, would be policing journalists. This point, he stressed, made his proposal differ from the licensing of journalists, noting that statutory regulation of the press was “thoroughly, thoroughly undesirable”.
At an Inquiry seminar last September, Dacre said those who call for the licensing of reporters “should emigrate to Zimbabwe”.
Dacre said he supported Lord Hunt’s proposal made last week for contractual press regulations, calling it an “attractive” solution.
Elsewhere in his testimony Dacre was grilled by Robert Jay QC over his paper’s use of search agencies as uncovered by the 2006 reports arising from Operation Motorman, which looked into unlawful trading of information by newspapers. The Daily Mail was identified as the paper with the the most transactions, followed by the Sunday People and the Daily Mirror.
Dacre confirmed he was aware that the Daily Mail was using search agents before 2006, though not to the extent as revealed by the ICO reports. He added he was aware that the paper used private investigator Steve Whittamore around 2004 or 2005.
He contested that his reporters believed they were acting within the law, using Whittamore to obtain addresses and phone numbers, and added that private investigators were used because it was quicker than journalists conducting checks themselves.
He emphasised he took measures to stamp out the practice, noting that he sent emails and letters to staff in 2005 — after Whittamore’s trial — advising them about data protection.
“I moved decisively and ruthlessly to stamp it out. Other newspapers didn’t, and we did,” he said. More than once he claimed the BBC had “spent more” than his paper on search agencies.
Dacre was characteristically defensive when he was taken through a series of controversial Daily Mail stories. Quizzed about a story headed “Cancer danger of that night-time trip to the toilet”, and asked if it was the job of some reporters to sensationalise scientific research, Dacre disputed that his paper adopted “an irresponsible stance” on medical stories.
Regarding Jan Moir’s column about the death of singer Stephen Gately, which was originally headlined “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”, Dacre conceded that the piece could have “benefited from a little judicious subediting”.
However, Dacre stressed that he would “die in a ditch” to defend his columnists’ right to write what they wish. The Press Complaints Commission received over 20,000 complaints about Moir’s piece.
Dacre, largely seen as one of the most powerful editorial figures in British media, denied that he imposed his will on his staff, arguing “they would leave” if he did so.
Wrapping up his testimony, Dacre said that British journalism should be “proud” that Mail Online last week became the biggest newspaper website in the world, and accused Robert Jay QC of painting a “very bleak” and “one-sided” picture of the paper.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with Sun editor Dominic Mohan, Times editor James Harding and former PCC chair Baroness Buscombe among those giving evidence.
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01 Feb 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The current chairman of the Press Complaints Commission gave an impassioned warning against statutory regulation of the press at the Leveson Inquiry yesterday.
“There is already statute,” said Lord Hunt. “What is missing is a statutory regulator, which is what I’d regard as infringement on freedom of press.”
Lord Hunt said Britain’s “much envied” press freedom was the country’s “greatest asset”.
“The road to parliamentary hell is paved with good intentions”, he added, telling the Inquiry that there were “very strong views” in parliament that there should be tougher limits on the power of the press.
He said the Inquiry was a “tremendous opportunity” for the press to come forward with the type of system that Sir David Calcutt proposed in the early 1990s. “But not by statute,” Hunt emphasised.
He also held the view that the PCC was not a regulator, arguing that it had been “unfairly criticised for failing to exercise powers it never had in the first place”.
He said there was an urgent need for a new body and that the Inquiry was a key factor in there being “wide consensus for radical reform”. He argued that a new regulator should have two arms — one for handling complaints and mediation, and the other for auditing and enforcing standards.
Hunt also revealed that Northern and Shell boss Richard Desmond, who withdrew from the PCC last year, has agreed to sign up to his newly proposed press regulator. Hunt repeated that there was a “real appetite” for change and proposed a five-year rolling contract for publishers to sign up to.
Earlier today, serving PCC commissioner Lord Grade said he did not believe that statutory regulation would have a chilling effect on investigative journalism, which he said was “alive and well” in broadcasting despite being “heavily regulated”.
Yet he took issue with statutory regulation raising the prospect of judicial review and a slower complaints process, and had concerns over the powers of a statutory body to intervene with newspapers prior to publication.
Grade said a new, improved regulator should have “visible, painful, tangible powers of sanction”, and that statutory recognition of a body that is independent of politicians and proprietors seemed to be a “very important way forward”.
He added that current PCC staff were “underpaid, overworked, overstretched”, and that the body barely had enough resources to do more than be a “complaints resolution vehicle”.
The Inquiry continues today, with evidence from Ofcom, the Advertising Standards Agency and PressBoF.
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31 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The former chair of the Press Complaints Commission has made a staunch defence of the self-regulation body at the Leveson Inquiry today.
Sir Christopher Meyer, who chaired the self-regulation body from 2003 to 2009, grew exasperated as he was asked by counsel Robert Jay QC whether the body should stop the press coming up with stories to fit supposed facts. “As long as human beings are involved, there will be fallibility,” Meyer told the Inquiry.
“It is as if you say to the police ‘you are useless because you can’t stop crime’,” Meyer said. “These are ridiculous arguments.”
In one of the more heated sessions of the Inquiry, Meyer told Jay that he seemed “to ignore” that the public has confidence in the complaints body, which has faced criticism in various witness testimony for having failed to deal proactively with complaints. In her evidence to the Inquiry in November, Harry Potter author JK Rowling called it a “wrist-slapping exercise at best”, while the father of missing toddler Madeleine McCann suggested “repeat offenders” of incorrect coverage should lose their privilege of practising journalism.
Meyer contended it was unfair for Jay to suggest he was slow in protecting the McCanns or condemning the Express’s coverage of them. The couple, whose daughter went missing in Portugal in 2007, received a libel payout of £550,000 from Express Newspapers for defamatory articles published about them.
Meyer said he had made it “perfectly plain” to Gerry McCann that he had an option of taking a legal route or the PCC, stressing to the Inquiry that the PCC made “particular efforts” to make itself available to the McCanns within 48 hours of their daughter, Madeleine, disappearing.
He added that he told the then-editor, Peter Hill, “you have to resign” after the payout.
He continued, “the McCanns needed the press for publicity’s sake”, adding that the couple had made a “Faustian” bargain with the media.
He also rejected Jay’s suggestion that, had the PCC taken a more proactive stance with the McCanns, the libellous coverage of Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies would not have been able to go so far.
“Don’t drag me down that path,” he told Jay, noting that he was no longer the PCC chairman at the time, and that the body had been successful in containing media scrums.
Quizzed about why the PCC did not call in newspaper editors in the wake of the Information Commissioner’s reports on Operation Motorman, Meyer said he needed “actionable information” and wanted to “see the beef” before talking to editors.
Last month, the former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas told the Inquiry the PCC “should have done more” in response to the Motorman findings, and that he “just did not buy [the] line”, that the PCC could not intervene because the use of private investigators by the press was a criminal matter.
Discussing the oft-criticised PCC report on phone hacking in 2007, published after the jailing of Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman on related offences, Meyer argued it was not useful for the PCC to “duplicate” the police inquiry, and that interviewing former News of the World editor Andy Coulson would not have added “anything of value” to the report.
He said the PCC decided to conduct a “lessons-learned exercise” to shed a “little more light” on what had occurred at the News of the World. Meyer called the report “monumental” and said the police and papers uncovered more evidence of phone hacking than was known in 2006.
His exchange with Robert Jay QC became more agitated as they moved on to Max Mosley, who sued the News of the World in 2008 for publishing a story accusing him of engaging in a Nazi-themed orgy.
Meyer said Mosley was “extremely rude” about the PCC after he decided to launch a legal complaint against the News of the World, adding later that “the whole thing might have taken a different course” had Mosley had gone to the PCC before the tabloid published its sting. “We around the table — the commissioners — would have had a very interesting debate,” Meyer said, adding, “we would have found for him.”
He added that the PCC could have attempted to halt the publication of Mosley sting, as the body “regularly” gave pre-publication advice and there would have been a “big debate” about whether the Nazi theme of the story “affected the central argument”.
Meyer grew increasingly frustrated when asked if there was “collusion” between the PCC and editors serving on its board.
“God knows I had my conflicts with the editors on all kinds of things,” he told the Inquiry. “If you think I was sitting in their pocket not daring to do things that they did not like, think again Mr Jay.”
Meyer gave a staunch defence of free expression, noting that he was a “strong believer of freedom of the press” and “very firmly of the view that you do not go down the road of statute”.
Meyer warned that state involvement in press regulation was a “slippery slope”. He argued that in the future a “less permissive, less liberal state” may try to take advantage of existing legislation to do things that “might be offensive to freedom of expression”.
He added that the press is “quite closely hemmed in by statute and code of practice”, adding that he would not not want to see a “system of regulation that is more repressive than need be.” Referring to a 2003 speech, Meyer said he still believed the PCC should not be able to fine newspapers, contrary to current PCC director Stephen Abell’s view expressed yesterday.
Contrasting with the testimony of Abell and former director Tim Toulmin, Meyer said he believed “very firmly” that the PCC was a regulator, noting that “it is regulation unlike anything else”.
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09 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The former Information Commissioner told the Leveson Inquiry he was disappointed by the Press Complaints Commission’s lax response to allegations of illegal activities among the British press.
Richard Thomas said he wanted “loud, strident condemnation” from the regulator, having written to them in November 2003 after being advised by the ICO’s legal team that prosecuting journalists over the use of private investigators would be too costly. Yet he was told by PCC Chairman Sir Christopher Meyer that the regulator’s role was not to enforce the law. Thomas said he “just did not buy that line”, that the PCC could not intervene because the use of private investigators by the press was a criminal matter.
“I thought their response was less strident [than I expected],” Thomas said. “I think they could have and should have done more.”
He added that attempts to develop a “guidance note” with the PCC ground to a halt in April 2004.
Thomas reflected that, “with hindsight, I think I would’ve been more aggressive and assertive” with the PCC.
He noted his surprise and outrage at the PCC’s assertion that the ICO’s report on Motorman’s findings had “come out of the blue”, given that Thomas and PCC representatives had had two meetings about its contents.
Thomas described the data breaches exposed by Operation Motorman as “pernicious”, and felt deterrents would prevent further wrongdoing. In a “breakthrough” government consultation paper issued in July 2006, Thomas proposed two-year prison terms for those found guilty of trading in illegal data.
He admitted he was not expecting a “powerful campaign” of hostility from the tabloids. “It left me with the message that we were challenging something that went to the heart of tabloid activity,” he said. “As somebody said to me ‘you do realise you are challenging their business model’.”
Thomas reiterated his agenda “was not to send journalists to prison”, but to correct bad behaviour.
The Inquiry continues on Monday, with evidence from former News International staff.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
