{"id":93471,"date":"2012-01-09T17:14:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T17:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=7278"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:28:22","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T12:28:22","slug":"dominic-mohan-leveson-inquiry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93471","title":{"rendered":"Sun editor calls for "level playing field" between print and online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Th editor of the Sun has called for a “level playing field” between the press and the internet at the Leveson Inquiry<\/a>\u00a0today.<\/p>\n

Dominic Mohan, who joined the paper in 1996 and has been its\u00a0editor since\u00a02009,\u00a0said the combination of an over-regulated press with an unregulated internet was a “very, very worrying thought”.<\/p>\n

Mohan said that at the moment, “it feels like every story has to be considered in terms of the Bribery Act, privacy, the PCC.”\u00a0He added that statutory regulation filled him with “fear” and revealed that he\u00a0had had discussions with a senior executive at the paper over appointing an ombudsman to deal with readers’ complaints. He said it could be “useful in terms of self-regulation”.<\/p>\n

Mohan said the Inquiry itself may have made him more cautious about publishing\u00a0certain stories. He\u00a0reiterated that he had “seen mistakes made” at the tabloid and\u00a0was keen to learn from them. He said his\u00a0staff will be advised on language use regarding issues such as HIV\/AIDS, gypsies and travellers later this year.<\/p>\n

He added that, since the Press Complain Commission’s adjudication on a story by the Sun about singer Charlotte Church<\/a>‘s pregnancy — published\u00a0before Mohan became editor — he has “not run stories on females under 12 weeks pregnant”.<\/p>\n

A new system on paying sources requiring four signatures from managers\u00a0was instituted in September 2011, which Mohan called “sensible” and “good governance” following the closure of the\u00a0News of the World after phone hacking revelations.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day,\u00a0The Sun’s head of legal called prior notification “absolutely correct journalism”, adding that it can go some way in avoiding libel by informing\u00a0“the other side” of a story\u00a0before publication.<\/p>\n

Justin Walford told the Leveson Inquiry\u00a0he could not recall an occasion when it was\u00a0in the public interest\u00a0to not inform someone of a story involving them.<\/p>\n

Ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley, who sued the News of the World for breach of privacy\u00a0in 2008,\u00a0has also\u00a0championed the cause<\/a>. Yet he\u00a0lost his bid impose a legal duty of prior notification last May,\u00a0with\u00a0the European Court of Human Rights ruling that such a system would have a\u00a0\u201dchilling effect<\/a>”\u00a0on the press.<\/p>\n

Walford described his own\u00a0role at the tabloid as “risk\u00a0assessment”, noting that he\u00a0would deal with legal issues in the following day’s paper, but that it was the editor who would make the\u00a0ultimate decision of whether running a certain\u00a0story would be worth the risk.<\/p>\n

The hearing continues tomorrow, with evidence from editors of the FT, the Independent and the Telegraph.<\/p>\n

Follow Index on Censorship\u2019s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter \u2013 @IndexLeveson<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marta Cooper:<\/strong> Sun editor calls for “level playing field” between print and online<\/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":[14399,7427,4317,7358,3759,727,631,2469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93471"}],"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=93471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109281,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93471\/revisions\/109281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}