The former TV editor of the News of the World has told the Leveson Inquiry how she “fell out of love” with the industry after being asked to write an untrue story about a celebrity being cheated on by her partner.
Sharon Marshall, now a television critic for ITV’s This Morning, said she could not stay on at the News of the World, stating she had been asked to breach the PCC code over the story. It involved a pregnant celebrity whose partner had allegedly been unfaithful, though Marshall discovered the photo evidence supplied was two years old.
“Morally, it wasn’t going to happen,” Marshall said of the story, which she refused to carry out. “I made sure I killed it.”
She then resigned from the paper despite being asked to stay on. The individual who asked her to write the story, she said, remained in their job.
She described the “tough” and competitive enviroment at the tabloid. “You literally didn’t know what the person next to you was doing.” She described editorial meetings with line managers where she would be asked what she had done to stand up a story, but not about sources.
She said she was “not involved in any direct conversation” in which she was asked to work unethically, adding that she did not see any evidence of unethical behaviour with vast majority of those she worked for.
She denied a bullying culture at the tabloids, but said that “some editors are less than idyllic.”
The Inquiry also heard extracts of Marshall’s book, Tabloid Girl, which detailed her career at the redtops. Lord Justice Leveson asked if the book was “a true story”, as its cover read. Marshall repeated that the text was filled with “heightened reality” and “a bit of topspin”.
“I was writing something somebody told me in the pub,” she told the Inquiry, adding that she did not have “hard evidence” for the stories because she was not “writing a witness statement.”
“I intended it to be a good yarn,” she said.
When Leveson questioned if “topspin” meant “lying”, Marshall said that she would call it “colour”. She later said one example of it was a part of the book in which she described how she “gatecrashed” celebrity weddings.
Another story she recounted involved her being asked to travel to Rhyl to find someone who would back up a kiss and tell story about a member of the band Steps. Marshall admitted an advert for the story, with the pre-ordained headline “My five, six, seven times a night with Steps girl”, was running before the story was written.
During a slightly tense back and forth between Marshall, Leveson and Inquiry counsel, David Barr, a defensive Marshall admitted she “shouldn’t have allowed” the book’s cover to read “a true story”, but repeated that the text involved “dramatisation”.
She concluded that the maxim her book ends with — “fuck the facts…just file” — was not one that the entire industry tabloid worked by. “It’s a few individuals,” she said. “Bad apples.”
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On Monday General Adel Emara, a member of Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, held a nationally televised press conference to address accusations of army misconduct in the most recent series of clashes between security forces and street protestors camped outside of the Parliament building near Tahrir Square.
Emara’s performance, and that of his carefully selected audience, spoke volumes. Foreign correspondents were told that the conference was for local media only. One journalist who was in attendance told me that the room was stocked with people she recognised as employees of the State Information Service.
Emara’s goal was to fend off what amounts to dozens of Rodney King videos. On Friday and Saturday, uniformed army troops staged a series of assaults on civilian protestors that produced a veritable mountain of photographic and video evidence. Soldiers were filmed firing handguns into the crowd (something government officials repeatedly claimed never happened), launching extended group beatings on helpless civilians and throwing rocks from rooftops onto the crowd. The most iconic image — one that fronted newspapers around the world — was of the limp body of a female protestor being dragged down the street. The woman’s black abeya gown gets pulled over her head, exposing a blue bra, as a soldier stomps hard on her chest.
Regardless of the evidence, Emara remained defiant. He repeatedly blamed the protestors for inciting the violence by attacking soldiers Thursday night and threatening to destroy the Parliament building. The true villains, he claimed, were the usual cocktail of shadowy conspirators and complicit media provocateurs.
“There is a methodical and premeditated plot to topple the state, but Egypt will not fall,” said Emara. “The media is helping sabotage the state. This is certain.”
Several times, he actually praised the “self-restraint” shown by Egyptian soldiers in the course of their duties.
“The armed forces does not use violence systematically,” Emara said. “We exercise a level of self-restraint that others envy. We do not do that out of weakness but out of concern for national interests.”
It was, to put it bluntly, either completely shameless or completely delusional. At best it was evidence was what Cairo-based political analyst and blogger Issandr El Amrani likes to call, “The Egyptian Reality Distortion Field.”
According to Amrani, “The ERDF gives Egyptians, notably public officials, an uncanny ability to disregard what is plain for all to see and, with the utmost confidence, assure all comers of its opposite.”
Emara did acknowledge the aforementioned attack on the partially disrobed young woman, but said that observers “don’t know the full circumstances”. He never explained just what circumstances could justify a grown man stomping on a seemingly unconscious woman.
The Q&A session that followed was equally revealing. Most of the questions were either softballs or long-winded speeches — a common failing among Arab journalists. The only two difficult questions about the behaviour of Egypt’s army were generally shrugged off by Emara, who said all incidents were under investigation and the public would be informed of the results in due time.
In the end, Emara called for sympathy and support for the beleaguered Egyptian soldiers.
“These heroes from the army have our appreciation for what they are doing for the sake of the nation. They will be remembered by history,” he said. “They are the pride of this nation, the best soldiers on earth. May God protect Egypt and its people from strife and keep Egypt’s flag flying high.”
Incredibly, half the room erupted in applause at Emara’s closing statement, while the journalists in the front row visibly swiveled in the seats to see who was clapping.
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Threats against freedom of the press in Guatemala have been highlighted by the case of freelance journalist Lucia Escobar. While government directed attacks against the press are not currently an issue, paramilitary groups could still pose a threat to journalists. Death threats forced Escobar to flee her home with her family after she denounced a vigilante group in the town of Panajachel. Escobar claimed the group’s “social cleansing” activities were promoted by local government officials.
Escobar‘s story was published in the Guatemalan daily El Periodico, it accused the town mayor, Gerardo Higueros of turning a local citizens group into a death squad with the help of an unidentified fundamentalist Christian group. The vigilante organisation is apparently cleansing the town of Panajachel of “undesirables”, including beggars and homeless people. Within days of writing about the problems,the mayor, Higueros, who is also director of a local television news show, dedicated a couple of hours in a television broadcast to accusing Escobar of lying about the story and trafficking drugs.
Escobar said she knows that despite a number of complaints to local police about the armed group’s activities, none of the cases have been investigated by the authorities. Escobar left her home in Panajachel in early November, and she is still at a loss. “I had no idea it was going to turn into this,” she said in Guatemala City. She is not planning to return to Panajachel until the situation is cleared up. El Periodico complained about the lack of reaction from government authorities in Guatemala City to the attacks against its reporter.
In May another journalist in the provinces was killed after receiving death threats. Yensi Roberto Ordoñez Galdámez, a television reporter was found murdered in his car. His case has not been solved.
