Leveson Inquiry: The story so far
Marta Cooper looks at what we’ve learned from the UK’s investigation into the press
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Over 6,000 potential phonehacking victims, Leveson told
Sue Akers, deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, told the Leveson Inquiry today that there are 6,349 potential victims of phone hacking identified in the evidence being investigated. This material included 11,000 pages of notes by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
Akers added that the number of “likely victims” — those whose names featured other details that suggested they had been, or had the potential to be, hacked — was 829.
Of this figure, 581 have been contacted, 231 were “uncontactable” and 17 have not been contacted for operational reasons.
Bringing the Leveson Inquiry up to date with the status of Operation Elveden, which investigates payments to police officers, Akers said 40 officers were working on allegations of police corruption, but there were plans to expand that figure to 61 following the arrest of four journalists at the Sun on 28 January.
Akers said there was a “very legitimate” public interest in Elveden, which was launched last summer. “If the public think that information is being leaked by police officers to journalists, then it is inevitable that public confidence is eroded,” she said.
A total of 14 people have been arrested as part of the investigation, including four journalists. Akers said that the also police wanted to question a fifth unnamed journalist who is currently abroad.
She added that she was “less confident” about being closer to the end of Operation Elveden than she was about Operation Weeting, the investigation into phone hacking that is running in parallel with Elveden.
Akers agreed with Robert Jay QC that she was “nearer the finishing line than the starting gun” of Weeting. Ninety police are working on Operation Weeting, with 35 focused on dealing with victims.
A total of 17 people have been arrested — 15 are on bail and the remaining two have had no further action taken against them — while police have been going through 300 million emails recovered from News International in November, which Akers said was progressing at a “relatively advanced stage”.
Akers updated the Inquiry on a third investigation, Operation Tuleta, which is examining allegations of computer hacking conducted by newspapers. She said 20 officers were looking at 57 separate allegations of “data intrusion” dating as far back as the late 1980s.
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PCC witnesses face criticism at Leveson Inquiry
The Press Complaints Commission was today criticised at the Leveson Inquiry for having taken a “somewhat restrictive and timorous” approach to investigate phone hacking.
Robert Jay QC told former PCC director Tim Toulmin that the self-regulation body had failed to “test the boundaries of its powers” by choosing not to question former News of the World editor Andy Coulson after he resigned from the tabloid following the 2007 convictions of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire over phone hacking. Toulmin rejected this suggestion.
Toulmin, who headed the PCC from 2004 to 2009, said the prospect had been discussed but it was decided that the body’s powers “wouldn’t have had traction” with Coulson.
He added that he later thought this was a mistake. “The PCC should have been seen to ask him,” he said. Lord Justice Leveson interjected, saying that doing so would have been “incredibly powerful”.
Quizzed about the PCC’s response to the Goodman and Mulcaire jailings, Toulmin said that although the PCC did not investigate the matter, it conducted an “exercise that was designed to produce a forward-looking report” and establish principles of internal governance to avoid future wrongdoing.
“We were looking at how it arose, and the culture,” he said.
The PCC produced two reports, one in May 2007 that found no further evidence of wrongdoing, and one in September 2009 that has since been withdrawn, which concluded the body was not misled by the News of the World.
Regarding the 2009 report, Toulmin conceded that dismissing evidence from the Guardian was a “major mistake”. He said he was not a member of the board that decided on the report’s conclusions.
Testifying at the Inquiry earlier this month, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger had said the 2009 report was “worse than a whitewash”.
Elsewhere in his testimony, which ran for over three hours, Toulmin discussed the PCC’s response to the Information Commissioner’s findings on Operation Motorman, which examined the use of a private investigators by the media to obtain personal information. He said that the then commissioner, Richard Thomas, went to the wrong body when he approached the PCC with his report. “He either should have gone directly to the industry — trade bodies — or the code committee, which is more representative of the industry,” he said, noting that data protection breaches were outside of the PCC’s remit.
Last month, Thomas told the Inquiry the PCC “should have done more” in response to the Motorman findings, and that he sought their “loud, strident condemnation.”
Toulmin also asserted that the PCC was not subject to influence from current editors serving on its board, namely Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre and former News International CEO Les Hinton. “They never a single time would phone me up and suggest we should behave in a certain way,” Toulmin said.
Toulmin argued that PCC members were not “cowed” by editors’ presence, and that their presence gave”bite” to complaints rulings.
In his witness statement, Toulmin argued that it was “inappropriate” to call the PCC a regulator.
Leveson also put it to Toulmin that the PCC was believed by the public to be a regulator ” when it wasn’t actually a regulator at all,” Leveson said. Toulmin agreed, claiming that it was “a complaints handler (…) a sort of ombudsman.”
The PCC’s current director, Stephen Abell, who gave evidence this afternoon, said he too was “happy” that the term regulator not be used to describe the PCC. He said that at the heart of the newspaper industry is “people exercising their right to be polemic”, and that regard needed to given to the nature of the industry when coming up with an over-arching structure.
During his testimony he ran through cases of complaints made to the PCC, citing Jan Moir’s column in the Daily Mail about the death of singer Stephen Gately, which was originally headlined “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Abell said there were over 22,000 complaints about the piece — which was later amended to the print edition headline “A strange, lonely and troubling death” — but it was “just short” of a breach of the PCC code, despite being a “difficult” episode to judge.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with evidence from current PCC chairman Lord Hunt, former chair Sir Christopher Meyer and PCC member Lord Grade.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
Facebook more pub than publishing, Leveson told
The director of public policy (EMEA) at Facebook told the Leveson Inquiry today that regulating what people say on the social network would be akin to regulating what people say in the pub.
Richard Allan said it was “important” to distinguish editorial published content from “chatter on the internet”, noting that websites of papers such as the Guardian provide content, while Facebook provides distribution.
Questioned about the website’s oft-debated approach to privacy, Allan said that the purpose of the social network, to which over 50 per cent of Britons over 13 subscribe, is to allow people to connect and “share information with others”. He defended the network’s anti-anonymity policy, arguing using one’s real name made for a more “meaningful” experience.
He told the Inquiry that users should be able to speak freely on the website as long as they obey rules. He noted that the site has clauses on hate speech, pornography and harassment, adding that the “strongest protection” came from its 800 million-strong community of “neighbourhood watch” users.
Earlier today, representatives from Google urged the Inquiry to ensure a distinction between the publisher of content online and the host platform.
“Google is not the internet, and it is also not the only entry point to the internet,” the web giant’s head of corporate communications in the UK, David-John Collins, told the Inquiry. “Whatever robust system you recommend will have to cover all entry points.”
He emphasised that there was a “very essential balance online”, while Daphne Keller, the corporation’s legal chief who appeared alongside Collins today, warned against the “over-breadth” of regulating the internet.
Keller and Collins spoke at length about Google’s policy for removing content. They told the Inquiry that it has removed hundreds of URLs from its search function relating to the News of the World Max Mosley splash, but stressed that that does not mean the content disappears from the web.
Last November Mosley told the Inquiry that search engines were “dangerous”, as they could “stop a story appearing, but don’t or won’t as a matter of principle”. The former motorsports chief revealed he is currently taking litigation action in 22 countries, suing Google in France and Germany, and considering bringing proceedings against Google in California in an attempt to remove certain search results.
Keller said that defamatory material will usually be taken down within days, but if such content is defamatory under UK law it may still be visible for users via google.com, so long as it does not violate US law.
She said it would be impractical for Google to search out potentially defamatory content itself, and said it is “much better” for users if a judgment has been made by a court or legal process that has weighed the evidence.
Also appearing this afternoon was Camilla Wright, co-editor of celebrity news website Popbitch. “You can’t choose when you’re public and choose when you’re private,” Wright said of celebrities, adding that the website had apologised “five to six” times since it was founded.
The Inquiry will resume on Monday.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson