{"id":93376,"date":"2011-09-28T11:49:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T11:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=6351"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:28:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T12:28:55","slug":"leveson-inquiry-panel-status-challenged-at-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93376","title":{"rendered":"Leveson Inquiry panel status challenged at hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Index on Censorship\" href=\"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Index<\/a> attended this morning&#8217;s hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in which Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers\u00a0<a title=\"The Guardian - Daily Mail publisher challenges status of Leveson inquiry panel \" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/media\/2011\/sep\/28\/daily-mail-publisher-leveson-inquiry-panel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">expressed concern<\/a> that the six-strong panel in the <a title=\"Leveson Inquiry\" href=\"http:\/\/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leveson Inquiry<\/a> into phone hacking lacks tabloid or regional newspaper experience.<\/p>\n<p>Associated legal team argued that the panel, members of which Lord Justice Leveson stressed were appointed due to their expertise in a specific field, may be partial and &#8220;filter&#8221; their prejudices into judgments made throughout the inquiry. Leveson responded that the panel&#8217;s role is merely an advisory one, and that any conclusion of the inquiry &#8220;will be mine and mine alone&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>With the backing of Trinity Mirror, the Newspaper Publishers&#8217; Association and Guardian News &amp; Media,\u00a0the publisher also argued that the panel should have more members, noting that the inquiry would &#8220;benefit from experts across the industry&#8221; that would &#8220;fill the gap&#8221; left by the lack of representation of mid-market or tabloid papers. A solicitor representing Associated said the omission of such bodies would be &#8220;unfortunate in such a major inquiry&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Leveson&#8217;s six advisers are Sir David Bell, former chairman of the Financial Times; Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty; Lord David Currie, former chairman of Ofcom; Elinor Goodman, former political editor of Channel 4 News; George Jones, former political editor of the Daily Telegraph; and Sir Paul Scott-Lee, former chief constable of West Midlands police.<\/p>\n<p>Leveson argued that the essence of the panel, as well as upcoming seminars attended by core participants and non-core participants alike, was to encourage debate and provide a balance of views. He stressed,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I am very conscious that I am stepping into a profession that is not the one that I spent 40 years of life in. It is critical that I obtain advice from those who have made their life in this area, not least because I would be keen to understand any flaws that I might have because of lack of experience.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He concluded he would reserve a ruling on the application to invite further assessors and would provide a decision in due course.<\/p>\n<p><em>Index will be tweeting from throughout the inquiry at @<a title=\"Twitter - IndexLeveson\" href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/IndexLeveson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">IndexLeveson<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Marta Cooper<\/strong>: Leveson Inquiry panel status challenged at hearing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[3815],"tags":[7427,4317,7358,2930],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109328,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93376\/revisions\/109328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}