02 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
Over the past ten days, Lord Justice Leveson has been overseeing an Inquiry that resembles more a daytime chat show than the first public examination into the standards and ethics of the British press in thirty years.
There have been some memorable moments: ex-Formula 1 boss Max Mosley claiming Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre was “completely naive about sex”; we learned Hugh Grant‘s middle name is Mungo; and on two occasions — to the horror of the the press gallery —Leveson admitted he had not read the morning papers.
But the comedy gold of the Inquiry surely came from Paul McMullan. Those watching sat agog as the News of the World deputy features editor ran through his life as a tabloid hack. He told us stories of pretending to be “Brad the rent boy” to expose a priest — “there’s two of us, in our underpants, running through a nunnery at midnight after getting the priest…it was such fun” — he admitted he “loved giving chase” to celebrities (“fun” before Princess Diana died, he said); he had tried and failed to hack David Beckham’s phone; he claimed “circulation defines the public interest”; and, in a quote he’ll now forever be associated with, affirmed that “privacy is for paedos.”
Then there was his solemn regret for having discovered actor Denholm Elliott’s homeless and drug-addicted daughter begging outside Chalk Farm tube station, took her to his flat, photographed her topless and turned it into a News of the World splash. She later killed herself.
Blend these two and you get an Inquiry that has been a cocktail of surreal, intense, sometimes hilarious, and at other times haunting.
In the first week of evidence, it was at times impossible not to feel a sense of guilt for being a journalist, as witnesses gave example after damning example of press intrusion, harassment and, in some cases, indefensible and vile exploitation. In a raw, 30-minute account, the Dowlers recounted the moment they managed to get through to their missing daughter Milly’s voicemail, leading them to believe she was alive. It was only nine years later, this year, that they were told the reason they had managed to was because Milly’s voicemail messages had been hacked and deleted to make room for new messages to come through. She was almost certainly dead at the time.
How bizarre it was to have that chilling testimony juxtaposed with Hugh Grant’s lengthy afternoon account of press intrusion, sprinkled with his wit and movie-star charm.
As the first week drew to a close, paparazzi emerged as the villains. Sienna Miller described being chased down her street by 10 photographers —- “take away the cameras,” she said, “and you’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman”. Sheryl Gascoigne recalled driving to a police station to chase off a paparazzo who was following her, only to be told nothing could be done. JK Rowling had more than one tale of being long-lensed while out with her family, with her daughter, then aged eight, being snapped in her swimsuit. These photos were later printed in OK! magazine. An image, she said, “can spread around the world like a virus”.
It was hard not to sympathise with the witnesses as they doled out story after story of questionable press standards, reminding us of the worst of the trade to which we belong and have cultivated, seemingly limitless in its desire to get just one shot.
This reminder turned into guilt with the stories of ordinary people. The pain of the McCanns was almost palpable: a couple, desperate in the search for their missing daughter, being accused in the papers more than once of killing her and freezing her body. The wrongly arrested Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies described how, in a matter of days, the British media’s distorted coverage had “vilified” him and left him “effectively under house arrest.” And there was the haunting revelation by the Watsons, whose remaining son had killed himself and was found clutching copies of the articles that had, they said, defamed their murdered daughter.
That the Dowlers in particular remained balanced, conceding that the press had been helpful in spreading information about their missing daughter, made the tabloid pill an even more bitter one to swallow.
As journalists took to the witness box, we were been doled out sizeable home truths about the British press, elements of which Alastair Campbell deemed “putrid”. He slammed the Daily Mail for a “culture of negativity”, where speed and ideology reign supreme. Former tabloid hack Richard Peppiatt portrayed a tabloid culture of bullying, fabrication and agenda-setting more intent on delivering impact than seeking truth. And then there was McMullan, who revealed his editors did indeed know about phone hacking and were “scum” for denying it.
The PCC was criticised throughout the Inquiry, notably for its failure to investigate phone hacking in 2009 or mitigate in the coverage doled out to the McCanns. JK Rowling called the regulator “a wrist-slapping exercise at best”. Libel was also repeatedly highlighted as something for the “rich”.
Various solutions that were offered included a public interest advisory body to help guide reporters; a regulator with the power to issue fines and impose sanctions; and a league table of newspapers to see which ones adhered to a code of conduct. A cheaper and more accessible system in which it would be possible for libel or privacy cases to heard in county courts, not just the high court, was also suggested. Unsurprisingly, Max Mosley championed a policy of prior notification to warn people before publishing stories exposing their private lives.
The past ten days of revelations, criticisms and potential solutions hammered home the quandary Leveson has on his hands: how to avoid infringing free speech — “the cornerstone of democracy”, to quote Hugh Grant — while finding ways to restrain further bad behaviour in the British press. Listening to Nick Davies’ account alone, recounting a history of rigorous and meticulous reporting, we were reminded that it was an act of brilliant journalism that exposed an act of putrid journalism; and it is of credit to this Inquiry that it is giving those on the receiving end a rare platform to criticise the redtops.
But there is far more to come. Before Christmas we will hear from the former information commissioner, a solicitor for phone hacking victims, and News International. In the new year editors and proprietors will take to the witness box to face the accusations of unethical behaviour they have received.
McMullan may have set the entertainment bar high, but what will go on in court 73 is set to be no less intense than ten days just passed.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
30 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
A former police officer told the Leveson Inquiry today that his bosses at the Information Commissioner’s Office warned him the press was “too big” to take on over private investigators.
Alec Owens, who was a senior investigator in Operation Motorman, an ICO-led investigation into allegations of data protection offences by the British media, revealed he had found notebooks in private investigator Steve Whittamore’s home with 17,500 entries identifying each reporter and newspaper who had commissioned a task. The “Pandora’s box” of information also included invoices to and payments from newspapers, criminal record checks, car registration checks and ex-directory telephone numbers.
Owens said, “we could identify the newspaper, the journalist, Whittamore, who he used, the blaggers, the corrupt people, and we had a paper chain right the way up and down.”
However, a “shocked” Francis Aldhouse, the then deputy information commissioner, told Owens the press were “too big” to take on.
Owens said that no journalists had been questioned or charged in Operation Motorman, adding, “I wish we had the opportunity to look at all this.” He contended that the evidence found was “strong enough to stand on its own” to prosecute journalists, noting that some were using Whittamore 300 or 400 times.
Owens also revealed that the mobile phone number of abducted schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family’s ex-directory telephone number were featured in Whittamore’s notebooks, as well as the names of other victims of phone hacking at the News of the World.
Operation Motorman, carried out in 2003, investigated the use of a private investigators by the media to obtain personal information. In 2004, Whittamore was arrested and given a conditional discharge. In September of this year, Owens gave a disk of his files on the operation to the Independent newspaper, revealing previously unpublished details of the scale of the press use of private investigators. Just weeks before coming to the Inquiry, Owens’s home was raided under a warrant by Cheshire police, in an operation he described as a “fishing trip.”
Earlier in the day, former Number 10 director of communications Alastair Campbell called for media reform, labelling the British press “putrid”.
In his three-hour testimony, Campbell described a “culture of negativity”, with the Daily Mail being the most “relentless” for its crime and health scares. He said parents whose children have had measles should blame negative coverage over the MMR vaccine, and cited social workers as only ever being defined negatively in the tabloids, which he said impacted on recruitment, morale and the services they provide. He said the press’s treatment of the Dowlers and McCanns was “not atypical” but rather something that happened to anyone who became a “news commodity”.
He went on to say the paper was “utterly the product of one person”, and questioned editor Paul Dacre’s assertion that he had never published a story based on illegal information. Campbell argued that editors may genuinely not know “that the law is being broken left, right and centre”.
Of journalists, he said, “they are the spin doctors. They are the ones deciding what the line is…The line then gets reported as public opinion.”
While stopping short of accusing the Mail of phone hacking, Campbell said he was “unprepared” to say the paper had “never done anything untoward”.
He said that during his time at Downing Street he was “very concerned” about how many stories about Cherie Blair and her life coach Carole Caplin were getting out to different parts of the press. While admitting he had no evidence of hacking, Campbell said in his witness statement that it was “at least possible” that this is how stories were revealed.
Campbell claimed that those who argued loudest for freedom of the press were “terrified” of regulation, but that the majority of journalists had nothing to fear. Those who were terrified, he said, were scared of losing “the ability to do this sort of journalism they have been doing over the last decade or so.”
He agreed with Guardian journalist Nick Davies that a public interest advisory body should be introduced to help guide reporters. He also argued in favour of a new regulatory body that would not have current media representatives sitting on it. He advocated a US-style system of fact-checking on newspapers as well as league tables to see which papers adhered to the code of practice.
Also speaking today was Mark Lewis, a solicitor for victims of phone hacking. He described the surveillance carried out on him and his family by News of the World private investigators as “truly horrific.” In an impassioned testimony, he went on to say that News International sought to “destroy” his life and “very nearly succeeded”.
Lewis also refuted claims in a dossier compiled by NI lawyers that he had leaked information to the Guardian, accusing solicitor Julian Pike and News of the World lawyer Tom Crone of “complete arrogance and idiocy”.
The hearing continues on Monday, when we will hear from Francis Aldhouse, the former ICO investigator on Operation Motorman, solicitor Charlotte Harris and author Peter Burden.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
29 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The former deputy features editor of the News of the World told the Leveson Inquiry today the paper’s editors knew that phone hacking was taking place.
In his explosive testimony, Paul McMullan accused former News of the World editor Andy Coulson of having “brought the practice wholesale” to the paper. He added that ex-News International CEO Rebekah Brooks was well aware of hacking, saying “we did all these things [hacking phones] for our editors.”
He went on to call the pair “scum” for denying any knowledge of the practice and “trying to drop me and my colleagues in it”.
In his two-hour account, McMullan said phone hacking was a “perfectly acceptable tool…if all we’re trying to do is get to the truth.” He went on to say the hacking of abducted schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone was “not a bad thing for a well-meaning journalist to do”, adding that the reporters involved were “doing their best” to find her.
McMullan admitted he had attempted to hack the phone of footballer David Beckham, but failed once Beckham answered the call. He also said he had swapped Sylvester Stallone’s mother’s number for Beckham’s with a fellow reporter.
McMullan painted a vivid picture of life at the now-defunct News of the World. He described giving chase to celebrities as “such good fun”, adding that he would be told by the features desk to “take a fast car and see what you can get.” He recalled one of Princess Diana’s security guards offering to tell the paper when she was landing at Helsinki airport in exchange for £30,000. In another instance he recounted, former editor Piers Morgan congratulated him for stealing photos of a former lover of John Major. He earlier quoted Morgan as saying, “I don’t care what it costs, I just want to get the defining stories of the week”.
McMullan repeatedly defended his trade, saying he “used any means necessary” to “catch people who rule over us.” He recounted pretending to be “Brad the rent boy” to get a photo of a priest spanking a young man. “I was either a drug user, a drug dealer or a millionaire from Cambridge,” he added.
When asked about his views on privacy, McMullan was blunt: “Privacy is evil…[it] is the space bad people need to do bad things in.” He added, “Privacy is for paedos” and claimed that “in 21 years of invading people’s privacy, I’ve never actually come across anyone who’s been doing any good.”
He added that public interest was defined by circulation. “I don’t see it’s our job to force the public to choose, ‘you must read this and you can’t read that’,” he said.
Also speaking today was The Guardian’s Nick Davies, who uncovered the phone hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World this year.
He told the Inquiry that Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator hired by the paper, had only “facilitated” the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone in 2002, and that it was reporters at the paper who listened to and deleted her voicemails.
Davies said Mulcaire was “a brilliant blagger, so he could gather information [and] data from the mobile phone company.”
Earlier this month Mulcaire denied deleting Dowler’s messages.
Davies also said the journalism industry was not “interested in or capable of” self-regulation, citing the Press Complaints Commission’s failure to properly investigate the extent of phone hacking in 2009. He said that the PCC did not take into account getting remedy for victims of the press, adding that apologies should be published as prominently as the stories that had contained incorrect or damaging information.
He cited libel as the “worst burden” facing journalism, advocating a system of arbitration so libel cases could be dealt with outside the courts.
He spoke in favour of an advisory body to guide reporters on whether they were operating in the public interest, noting how it was often difficult to know what the public interest boundaries were.
Former Daily Star reporter Richard Peppiatt was also in the witness box, describing the atmosphere of the tabloid press as one of “you toe the line or you get punished.” He added that the paper was ideologically driven, and that a reporter’s job was “simply to write the story how they [the paper] want it written”.
When asking editors if he should meet an anonymous caller who phoned the paper and made sensational claims about the death of actor Matt Lucas’ husband, Peppiatt said he was told to “just write it up.” He added that he invented a story about model and actress Kelly Brook seeing a hypnotist. He said the news editor had offered £150 to the first person to come up with a page 3 story at 6pm on a Sunday.
Reading out a stream of fabricated headlines and recounting a trip to Scotland to stage a mock proposal to Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle, Peppiatt said at the forefront of tabloids’ minds was questioning how far to push boundaries. He added that much of the Star’s content was based on stories taken from the Daily Mail, and that if a reporter found a Mail story was based on poor evidence, “you would be kicked back to your seat fairly robustly”.
Peppiatt labelled the redtops’ practice as “free speech Darwinism…[they] will shut up voices contrary to theirs.” He noted how one freelance reporter at the Star expressed unhappiness over the tone of the paper’s coverage, and was then given “every anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant” story for the next fortnight.
He added that he was “sick” of editors “stepping forward saying ‘moral considerations are at the forefront of our minds’,” saying it was “certainly not true.”
However, he highlighted the economic pressures facing newspapers, citing financial reasons behind why he stayed at the Star. “There are so few jobs for journalists in current climate,” he said, “I couldn’t afford not to be working.”
Peppiatt, who resigned from the tabloid in March 2011 after two years at the paper, also said he had received threats after his departure, including a message that said “you’re a marked man until you die”. He said he was the victim of a “campaign of harassment”, and told the Inquiry he was taking legal action against an unnamed person in the tabloid world who he says threatened him for speaking out.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with evidence from former Number 10 director of communications Alastair Campbell, and Alec Owens, an ex-policeman who worked on the Information Commissioner’s Operation Motorman inquiry.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
29 Nov 11 | Media Freedom, News and features
As British journalism faces the most significant public inquiry in a generation, Julian Petley talks to former Press Council chief Louis Blom-Cooper about ethics, public debate and maintaining a free press
The Leveson inquiry, whose remit includes examining “the culture, practices, and ethics of the press”, as well as making recommendations for a “new more effective policy and regulatory regime which supports the integrity and freedom of the press:, represents a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reform the behaviour of the press and the manner in which it is regulated. Why twice? Because we’ve actually been here before.
During the 80s, intrusive and generally excessive behaviour by the popular press led to a growing number of calls in Parliament for newspapers to be regulated more effectively. In 1981, Frank Allaun introduced what was to be the first of a series of private members’ Bills calling for a statutory right of reply for members of the public against whom allegations had been made in the media as a whole; Austin Mitchell introduced a similar Bill in 1984, and in 1987 Ann Clywd brought forward her Unfair Reporting and Right of Reply Bill. These were all Labour MPs, but in 1987 the Tory MP William Cash presented his Right of Privacy Bill, and the following year another Tory, John Browne, introduced a Protection of Privacy Bill, closely followed by Labour MP Tony Worthington’s Right of Reply Bill.
In 1980, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom set up an independent inquiry into the Press Council, chaired by Geoffrey Robertson QC. This produced the highly critical report People Against the Press, which called for the Council to be given considerably sharper teeth and for the creation of a statutory press ombudsman, as well as for a Freedom of Information Act and the relaxation of laws which hindered investigative reporting. (In the present context, this is a work which urgently needs revisiting.) In February 1987, Lord Longford initiated a debate on press standards in the Lords, and in July of the same year Labour forced a debate in the Commons on Murdoch’s acquisition of the Today newspaper.
By the late 1980s, loud demands for press reform were therefore very firmly on the political and social agenda. This led to the appointment in 1988 of the eminent QC Sir Louis Blom-Cooper as the new head of the Press Council, with the aim of making it a more respected, authoritative and effective self-regulatory body. Like Geoffrey Robertson, Blom-Cooper was concerned both to protect, and indeed to enlarge, the freedom to practise serious journalism which was clearly in the public interest, but also to provide forms of redress for those who had been the victims of mere muckraking and scandalmongering.
The problem was, however, that the popular press cared little for the former kind of journalism but was determined to protect the latter at all costs. Thus Blom-Cooper’s reforms not only found little support amongst owners and editors (and by no means only at the popular end of the market), but he himself became the target of press mischief-making, both in the newspapers themselves and, more damagingly still, behind the scenes in Westminster and Whitehall. Thus the Council was described in the news- papers it was supposed to be regulating as consisting of “pompous laymen and self-important journalists”, as straying “too far into the jungles of taste and discretion”, as a “bunch of loonies” (the Sun, inevitably) and as issuing “hectoring encyclicals”.
Seemingly showing little faith in Blom-Cooper’s reforms, in 1989 the government responded to the growing clamour over press misbehaviour by establishing a committee of inquiry under Sir David Calcutt QC, whose remit was to “consider what measures (whether legislative or otherwise) are needed to give further protection to individual privacy from the activities of the press and improve recourse against the press for the individual citizen”. The writing was clearly on the wall for the Council, and indeed Calcutt was to recommend its abolition and its replacement by the Press Complaints Commission, a body with, to the delight of the press, an even narrower remit than its predecessor, being an organisation which was concerned solely with receiving, mediating and adjudicating on complaints.
The press attitude to Louis Blom-Cooper’s reforms demonstrated all too clearly that the newspaper owners and editors simply would not countenance any self-regulatory measure of which they themselves did not approve. Furthermore, they used their considerable political influence to help into existence a neutered body with which they would feel considerably more at ease. And as absolutely nothing has changed, at least for the better, since the death of the Press Council and the birth of the PCC, this immediately raises a crucial question: even if Leveson does come up with proposals for effective press reform, would the government be prepared to enact them in the teeth of massive, daily press hostility? Past experience suggests that it would not. Even now the knives are out for Leveson in papers such as the Daily Mail, and it’s likely that the government is being relentlessly lobbied by the press barons behind Leveson’s back. Indeed, given that one of the other matters which Leveson is investigating is ‘the relationship between national newspapers and politicians’, he already has a ready-made case study right under his nose.
Julian Petley: What opportunities for press reform do you think are presented by the Leveson Inquiry?
Louis Blom-Cooper: In my view, Leveson presents us with a golden opportunity to do something on the grand scale. All the focus on the press has been, for historical reasons, on complaints, but handling complaints is a disciplinary function, it’s not about monitoring or supervising. What the public needs is to know what its press is doing on its behalf, and also what it is not doing — for example, the reporting of the activities of government prior to the war in Iraq, about which we were left almost totally in the dark because newspapers were not reporting them.
Julian Petley: There has been a great deal of discussion about whether any new arrangements should be independent, self-regulatory or statutory. What’s your view?
Louis Blom-Cooper: I go absolutely spare when people say that whatever intervention there is it must be non-statutory. This is a total nonsense. It depends entirely on what the statute seeks to achieve and what it contains. I also think we need to get rid of the word “regulation”; what we actually need is an independent body which carries out monitoring — independent monitoring of the press. The word “regulation” implies, I think, to some people, some form of executive power, and what I would propose does not contain executive power.
Any form of public intervention to create such a body would require legislation in the first instance. But one absolutely does not want the supervision to be carried out by government itself, rather the government should establish an independent, standing body by means of statute, namely a Commission. The statute establishing the Commission would also set up an Appointments Commission which would consist of, for example, the chairmen of the British Library, the British Museum, the Association of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of Universities, the Lord Chief Justice of England, the Lord President of the Court of Sessions; they wouldn’t be specifically named people, but the people who held these offices at the time of selection. One would thus put between the institution of government and the public itself a wholly independent body, independently selected.
Julian Petley: What powers would this body have?
Louis Blom-Cooper: This brings us back to the nature of the body itself. I would have a standing Royal Commission composed of people who were entirely independent of publishing in any form and appointed in the fashion which I’ve just mentioned. And it should certainly include members of the public; half of the people appointed to the Press Council were members of the public, and every year we used to receive more than 1,000 applications. This certainly wasn’t replicated in the PCC. As I’ve said, this body should be conceived on the grand scale. For example, it should be involved in the question of the education and training of journalists, and in ensuring that there is plurality of press ownership, so that in the case of mergers they can examine whether or not they should take place. In all of these matters it should be undertaking investigations, not exercising executive power. What I do think vitally important would be the Commission’s ability to conduct public inquiries, and the statute would have to give it all the necessary procedural powers to conduct such inquiries, in particular the power to subpoena witnesses. These are what the Press Council sadly, and damagingly, lacked when it carried out its inquiries into press behaviour in the Peter Sutcliffe case and the 1990 Strangeways Prison riot. These would be statutory powers, but they would be procedural, they wouldn’t deal with the substance.
Julian Petley: How would the Commission be funded?
Louis Blom-Cooper: The Commission would have to be funded by Parliament, to whom it would be answerable, and they would have to go to Parliament every year with their budget, just as the Supreme Court has to do, to ask for money to support their activities. So it would have to be funded out of the public purse and not, for example, by a levy on the newspapers: one doesn’t want the press to have any interest, as it were, in the activities of this body. My parallel here, structurally and constitutionally, would be the Standing Royal Commission on the Environment, which is constantly looking at what’s happening to the environment, or PhonepayPlus [formerly known as ICSTIS], the regulatory body for all premium rate phone-paid services in the United Kingdom.
Julian Petley: Would the Commission deal with complaints against individual newspapers?
Louis Blom-Cooper: No doubt one of the Commission’s functions might involve receiving and adjudicating on complaints, but I don’t think that complaints are what really matters here. And, incidentally, insofar as complaints do matter, in my view the first clause of the PCC Code, which has to do with accuracy, is far more important than the one pertaining to privacy. The real problem is the daily lying, cheating and distorting in the press, all of which fall under the first clause of the Code.
Julian Petley: Indeed. Let’s just remind ourselves of what this actually says: (i) The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures. (ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving the Commission, prominence should be agreed with the PCC in advance. (iii) The press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact. Now, this is trampled on daily and routinely treated with absolute contempt, particularly by the popular press. You have only to open any popular paper with the code beside you to realise the yawning chasm between the rule and the reality. Thus it’s entirely unsurprising that the PCC’s own statistics reveal that, in 2009, 87.2 per cent of the complaints which it received concerned accuracy and opportunity to reply, and only 23.7 per cent were about privacy.
Louis Blom-Cooper: Indeed, but I’m not sure that I’d necessarily get rid of the PCC under the arrangements which I’ve just outlined — if the industry itself wishes to deal with complaints against its members, why the hell shouldn’t it? It seems to me a perfectly sensible exercise on the part of any employer to want to know what is in fact happening amongst his own employees. On the other hand, it does need to be stressed that self-regulation in the newspaper industry has proved to be self-serving; it aims to protect the newspaper industry from anything that would impose responsible conduct on proprietors, editors and journalists by an independent agency. It has palpably not served the public interest. And the PCC Code is constructed entirely within the newspaper industry for the benefit of its practitioners, rather than as a standard bearer of ethical behaviour for the public.
But the really important point about the body which I’m advocating is that the statutory power which it would have would be non-executive, that is to say that it would have no direct control over journalists or editors — it would act by precept. Its main function would be monitoring — looking at the press day in and day out and telling the public what it is and, equally importantly, isn’t, doing. It could organise conferences with practitioners in journalism. It would keep under review all the laws affecting the press. It would make representation to the Competition Commission in cases involving takeovers. It should promote centres for the advanced study of and research in journalism. In all these things the Commission would aim to assist the newspaper industry in defining a set of workable standards, and to act as a forum for public debate on the freedom of the press.
It really is extremely important to understand, as I said in my 2007 lecture in honour of Professor Harry Street [“regulation of the media is entirely compatible with, indeed required by, society’s commitment to the values of freedom of speech. There is a need for a new watchdog which barks authoritatively, and, where appropriate, in stentorian terms, but does not bite, except indirectly and influentially”].
Julian Petley: I would agree entirely, but unfortunately the press has done its absolute utmost to equate regulation with censorship.
Louis Blom-Cooper: Yes it has, but what I’m talking about has nothing to do with controlling the press, because I regard all press freedom as simply a manifestation of our individual freedom; that is to say, we give to the press the duty to practise collectively and on our behalf the freedom of expression which we all possess under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Freedom of speech belongs to all of us, it belongs equally to those who work in the media and to those who don’t. It’s particularly important to understand that such a conception of freedom of expression rules out the licensing of journalists. As Harry Street himself argued in Freedom, the Individual and the Law, journalism is “the exercise by occupation of the right to free expression available to every citizen. That right, being available to all, cannot in principle be withdrawn from a few by any system of licens- ing or professional registration”. No one can be prevented from exercising free speech other than by a law which applies to everybody. But, of course, there’s nothing necessarily wrong in restricting and confining freedom of expression by rules of law which do apply to everyone. If freedom of the press means no more than our collective rights performed on our behalf by those daily engaged in newsgathering, then we (the public), in the form of democratic government, should determine how far we should restrict our collective rights, and how the press is to be monitored and supervised. And it is certainly the case that current concerns about the standards of journalism suffice to demand both public debate and governmental action.
Julian Petley: Again, I would agree, but unfortunately the way in which press owners and their appointed editors understand press freedom in this country has precious little to do with Article 10. What they appear to mean by press freedom is the freedom to do just what the hell they like with the newspapers which they own and run. What we have here is in fact simply a smokescreen, the assertion of a property right in the guise of a free speech right, and an extremely arrogant claim that newspapers should be immune from regula- tions which apply to everyone else.
Louis Blom-Cooper: But such a position is wholly untenable. Tell me where, constitutionally, do they get that idea from? Maybe things have developed in this fashion, but tell me what is the legal basis for the present state of affairs? The only legal basis for freedom of the press is Article 10.
Julian Petley: Of course, but the kind of people to whom I’m referring don’t give a damn about Article 10 — all they’re concerned with is the threat posed by Article 8 to their commercial lifeblood of kiss ’n’ tell stories. Indeed, they want the government to rip up the Human Rights Act (HRA) and to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, and their papers are filled day in and day out with the most poisonous and ill-informed stories peddling this particular line. The fact that British newspapers clearly hate the whole notion of human rights tells you everything you need to know about the fundamentally populist, illiberal and indeed anti-democratic nature of much of the British press.
Louis Blom-Cooper: Maybe, but the press’ argument is hopeless, because they’re caught by the Human Rights Act whether they like it or not. And the whole campaign against both the Act and the Convention is just historically illiterate and utter nonsense. One of the things which I found most disappointing about Ed Miliband’s speech at this year’s Labour conference was that there was absolutely no acknowledgement of probably the best thing that Labour did when it was in office, namely to introduce the Human Rights Act. There’s Nick Clegg nailing his flag to the mast of the HRA, and delightfully so, but how much better it would have been if Miliband had said that “we are the architects of the HRA and we have no intention ever of seeing it destroyed”.
Julian Petley: Which they’ll never say, because they wake up every morning terrified of what has been written about them in the right-wing press. What Leveson really needs to investigate is how we’ve arrived at a situation in which, thanks to politicians’ pusillanimity in the face of newspaper bullying, the likes of Paul Dacre, who is accountable only to his readers, effectively dictate government policy on a wide range of social issues. However, turning back to Leveson, do you think that the Calcutt Inquiry, the death of the Press Council and the subsequent creation of the Press Complaints Commission hold any lessons for the present moment?
Louis Blom-Cooper: The Calcutt Committee came to the conclusion that a body like the Press Council which, under my chairmanship, was pro- moting the freedom of the press was incompatible with a complaints body. And that was the reason for getting rid of it — the newspaper industry did not like the way that I was wanting to take the Council, to make it a public body which, whilst dealing with complaints, was very much there for the public. In other words, its primary function was not to protect the industry but to give the public something which they could recognise and accept with confidence as being on their side. So it was in the industry’s interest that the PCC was established, and from my very first day at the Council prominent people in the newspaper industry set about getting rid of me. And when Calcutt was set up, the industry saw this as the perfect opportunity to further their interests in the abolition of the Press Council.
This article appears in Dark Matter the new edition of Index on Censorship magazine, which explores science and censorship.
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