6 Dec 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
Can phone hacking ever be justified in the public interest? The Guardian’s investigations editor told the Leveson Inquiry today that in rare cases it could be.
David Leigh said the one occasion he did hack the phone of a businessman was a “minor incident” that seemed “perfectly ethical”. He said, “I don’t hack phones, normally. I’ve never done anything like that since and I’ve never done anything like that before.”
Referring to his admission in a 2006 article, Leigh described that the businessman in question had inadvertently left his PIN on a printout, allowing Leigh to dial straight into his voicemail. In the same article Leigh confessed to “a voyeuristic thrill” in hearing another person’s private messages, but added that, unlike the hacking of phones of members of the royal family carried out at the News of the World by Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, his aim was to expose bribery and corruption, not “witless tittle-tattle.” He added, “unlike the News of the World, I was not paying a private detective to routinely help me with circulation-boosting snippets.”
Leigh also admitted to blagging, having telephoned Mark Thatcher, pretending to be an arms company executive to prove the pair knew each other and had entered into a business deal together. “I give that as an example of when the use of subterfuge is okay,” Leigh said.
Public interest, he said, was the “compass” for journalists, although the boundaries are unclear and judgments on whether to pursue certain stories must be made on a case-by-case basis. When asked about obtaining documents illegally, such as in the case of MPs’ expenses being exposed, Leigh said he believed the “overwhelming” public interest meant the Telegraph was “right to do what it did”.
Leigh went on to highlight the differences between broadsheets and tabloids, arguing that the latter are “incapable of self-regulation.” He said he would be in favour of abolishing the PCC, which he called a “fraud and bogus institution” that works largely to keep the government and royal family off the back of the popular papers.
He argued in favour of punitive damages, which he said would act as a more effective deterrent than Max Mosley’s proposed method of a prior notification system. “Prior restraint,” Leigh said, “is another word for censorship.”
Also speaking today was filmmaker Chris Atkins, who described selling fake celebrity stories to tabloid newspapers. “We called them up, gave them fantastical lies and they wrote them down and published them the next day,” he said, noting one of their most successful, which was featured in the Sun, that claimed Girls Aloud star Sarah Harding was a fan of quantum physics.
Atkins asserted the quote featured in the piece was fake, despite the paper contesting it was from Harding’s PR. Atkins called it a “remarkable coincidence.”
Atkins also described approaching four tabloids with a potential story about celebrity medical secrets, indicating he could provide records. While the Sunday Express deemed it a “legal minefield”, the Sunday People and Sunday Mirror showed interest.
He argued journalists should be disciplined for trying to buy medical records, adding that the Mirror’s reporter in question, Nick Owens, may not have gone on to write a libellous article for the Sun about wrongly arrested Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies had he been punished while at the Mirror.
“Newspapers understand one thing: money,” Atkins said. “The PCC ajudications are as good as meaningless really in terms of correcting mistakes.”
Charlotte Harris, a solicitor for phone hacking victims, was also in the witness box today. She said it was “incredible” and “obstructive” that News International had placed her under surveillance, along with fellow victims’ lawyer Mark Lewis. Farrers, NI’s lawyers, had been suspicious that Lewis and Harris were exchanging confidential information gained from acting for claimants. To then hire a private investigator to survey her, rather than approaching the her firm, Harris said, was the “wrong approach.”
“You shouldn’t have to be suspicious of your opponents in that way,” Harris said, claiming that surveillance “got in the way.”
Also providing evidence was Welsh sales manager Steven Nott, who in 1999 tried to alert the British press and authorities to insecure voicemail systems. Nott said that, during a network outage, Vodafone customer services had told him he could access his own voicemail from another phone by entering a default code. Concerned about the ease of intercepting voicemails, Nott then contacted Oonagh Blackman at the Daily Mirror, who tested the method herself and indicated the story would be published. Nott said he received £100 for the tip, but the story was never printed.
Nott accused the paper of keeping phone hacking methods for their own purposes, adding that Blackman had threatened him with court action if he divulged that he had passed on the information to them.
Alerts he made to the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office and HM Customs and Excise also went unheeded, he said.
The hearing continues on Thursday with evidence from various academics.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
6 Dec 2011 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
The Independent and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism are winning deserved praise for their exposé of lobbyists Bell Pottinger this morning.
Bureau journalists, posing as agents of the Uzbekistan government, recorded senior Bell Pottinger executives boasting of their access to government and media. Bell Pottinger has previously worked for regimes with dubious human rights records including the governments of Sri Lanka and Belarus. An excellent piece of work by all accounts, and the Independent and The Bureau promise more to follow.
Bell Pottinger has responded angrily. The Times reports that Lord Bell (chair of Bell Pottinger’s parent company Chime Communications) has taken the matter to the Press Complaints Commission, describing the covert recording as “unethical“.
It would be easy to dismiss this with a wry “Well he would, wouldn’t he?“, but as the Leveson Inquiry goes on, there appears to be more and more unease with the shadier methods of journalism, which include covert recording, and Lord Bell may be attempting to tap into this feeling.
It’s clear that being recorded without one’s knowledge isn’t very nice. But it’s also clear that the Bureau’s investigation is in the public interest, and this should be enough to justify it. Amid the furore over phone hacking, surveillance, blagging and the rest, we should be very careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The murkier methods of the press have their place.
30 Nov 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
Speaking at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press on Tuesday, Paul McMullan, the former deputy features editor at the News of the World, said this:
“In 21 years of invading people’s privacy I’ve never actually come across anyone who’s been doing any good. Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in …Privacy is evil; it brings out the worst qualities in people … Privacy is for paedos; fundamentally nobody else needs it.”
You can almost hear the horrified gasps as this heresy sank in. But ask yourself: at moments in your life when you’ve most fervently desired that something about you should remain private, wasn’t it often the case that this was because you thought — or thought others might think — that there was something disgraceful there?
It is no different with public figures, celebrities, politicians — the class of individuals that, for all the focus that there’s been on Milly Dowler’s family, occupy 99 percent of the media’s intrusive attention.
When an MP I felt very strongly about my privacy as an (undeclared) gay man; but I remain unconvinced that my constituents had no right to know about this; I was happy enough to tell them about the happy, shiny parts of my personal life — my marathon running, etc.
It’s my firm belief that one of the drivers of reform of the laws on homosexuality, and one of the motives that drove many MPs into the Equality lobby — and indeed one of the reasons many have chosen to come out of the closet — was precautionary: they supposed the media would eventually find out. How sure are you that this was to be regretted?
Matthew Parris is a journalist and a trustee of Index on Censorship
21 Nov 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
Actor Hugh Grant linked the Mail on Sunday to phone hacking today as he and other witnesses gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, starting what is set to be a week-long attack on the practices of the tabloid press.
In his marathon account, he spoke of a 2007 story in the paper that claimed his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks due to his late night calls with a “plummy voiced” studio executive. Grant said the only way the paper could have sourced the story was through accessing his voicemail, and that he “would love to hear what their source was if it wasn’t phone hacking.”
He also told the Inquiry about a chance encounter with Paul McMullen, former features editor at the News of the World, who “boasted” about hacking at the paper.
A spokesman for the Mail on Sunday said this afternoon: “Mr Grant’s allegations are mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media.” Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Mail, has consistently denied that any of its staff were involved with hacking.
Grant went into detail about a slew of other incidents. He noted how he and his girlfriends had been “chased at speed” by papparazzi, the Sun and Daily Express had invaded his privacy by publishing details of his medical records, and that the life of the mother of his newborn baby had “been made hell” due to press intrusion. He also alleged that the Daily Mail paid £125,000 to the ex-lover of the child’s mother for photos of her.
Grant said the “licence the tabloid press has had to steal British citizens’ privacy for profit” was a “scandal that weak governments for too long have allowed to pass.”
In their brief but raw account this morning, the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler spoke of the moment they believed their daughter was picking up and deleting her voicemail messages. Sally Dowler said, “it clicked through on to her voicemail so I heard her voice and [said] ‘she’s picked up her voicemail Bob! She’s alive!’.”
Milly’s voicemail had been hacked into and her messages deleted, making room for new ones to be left. Sally Dowler said she did not sleep for three nights when she was told of the interception this year.
The Dowlers also described a walk they took seven weeks after their daughter had gone missing to retrace her steps, a photo of which was featured in the News of the World. The Dowlers believed it was a result of photographers being tipped off after their own phones had been hacked. “How did they know we would be doing that walk on that day,” Sally Dowler asked. She called the photo an “intrusion” into the family’s private moment of grief.
Of the press attention that followed Milly’s disappearance, Sally added that the family had to “train” themselves not to answer questions. “Someone would come up to you when you least expect[ed] it,” she said.
The Dowlers added that the press had been a “double-edged sword”, noting the efforts made by the papers to spread information about Milly’s disappearance.
They said they would leave it to the Inquiry to make decisions, but wanted the extent of hacking to be exposed. Bob Dowler said he hoped News International and other media organisations would “look very carefully” at how they procure information for stories. “Obviously the ramifications are very much greater than just an obvious story in the press,” he added.
Journalist Joan Smith also gave evidence. She discovered her phone had been hacked around six weeks after the daughter of her partner, Labour MP Denis MacShane, had been killed in a skydiving accident in 2004. She revealed that detectives had shown her notes taken by Glenn Mulcaire earlier this year, which listed her name, address and phone numbers.
She attacked tabloid culture as “so remorseless” that those involved have “lost any sense that they’re dealing with human beings.”
She said she did not consider herself a celebrity. “You don’t have to be incredibly famous to be a target for their intrusion,” she said, adding later that the press interest in her came from her relationship with MacShane.
Smith was keen to defend freedom of expression, noting that she opposed state regulation and the licensing of journalists. She added that there needed to be a “successor body to PCC (Press Complaints Commission) that isn’t dominated by editors.”
Media lawyer Graham Shear also attacked the redtops, calling the industry a “business model which has become dependent on titillating and sensationalist stories.”
He said his clients began to suspect they were under surveillance in 2004, when “stray facts” known to few began to appear in the press. Several would clients would change their mobile telephone numbers two or three times a year, he added.
He spoke of “orchestrated” attempts to persuade clients to pay off kiss and tell girls, and noted the reluctance of press to contact him and his clients prior to publishing, preferring to pay any damages for breaches of privacy afterwards. He also described the £60,000 in damages paid by the News of the World to Formula 1 boss Max Mosley for privacy invasion as a “very gentle parking fine”.
The hearing continues tomorrow, with evidence from Steve Coogan, Elle Macpherson’s former business adviser Mary-Ellen Field, ex-footballer Garry Flitcroft, and Margaret Watson, mother of murder victim Diane Watson.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
