16 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry
The solicitor representing hacking victims attacked Britain’s tabloid press today as he pledged to unmask the “tawdry journalistic trade” at the third hearing of the Leveson Inquiry.
David Sherborne, who is representing 51 core participant victims, gave a powerful and emotional account of how murdered teenager Milly Dowler’s phone was hacked by the News of the World. He called the act one of “cruelty and insensitivity” and said that Dowler’s parents will testify of the euphoria they felt when the deletion of their daughter’s messages meant they thought she was alive.
Sherborne questioned News International’s earlier claims that hacking was limited to one rogue reporter, adding that there was a cover-up at the newspaper over the extent of the practice, and that there was a concerted effort after the event to “conceal the ugly truth from surfacing.”
He said the paper’s former glory has been so “fatally befouled by its cultural dependency on the dark arts”, giving journalism a bad name.
But phone hacking was, Sherbone said, “just one symptom” of a disease afflicting Britain’s tabloid press. He called the red-tops’ treatment of the parents of Madeleine McCann, he little girl who went missing in Portugal in 2007, “a national scandal”. He noted that Kate McCann’s diary that was given to Portuguese police was published by the News of the World and left her feeling, in her husband’s words “mentally raped”.
He also attacked the reporting of the arrest of Christopher Jefferies, the landlord of murdered Bristol woman Joanna Yeates who was later released without charge and cleared of any involvment of any involvement in her death. Reading out a range of damning headlines referencing Jefferies, Sherborne accused the press of a “frenzied campaign to blacken his [Jefferies’] character, a frightening combination of smear, innuendo and complete fiction”,
Sherborne said such stories were printed to “make money, not solve crimes”, and that none of them had a public interest defence. Earlier this year, both the Daily Mirror and the Sun were fined for contempt of court for articles published about a suspect arrested on suspicion of Yeates’ murder.
The Dowler family, Gerry McCann and Jefferies will all give evidence to the Inquiry next week.
Sherborne also made the case for respect to individual privacy, saying it was “as much a mark of a tolerant and mature society as a free and forceful press.” He condemned tabloid culture of kiss-and-tell-stories, citing reporters’ invasions into the lives of JK Rowling, Charlotte Church, Max Mosley, Sheryl Gascoigne and Hugh Grant, all of whom will be giving evidence in the coming weeks.
In a recent development, Sherborne added that the mother of Hugh Grant’s child had received abusive phone calls because the actor had criticised the press. She was allegedly told to “tell Hugh Grant to shut the fuck up”. Sherborne said that last Friday he had to seek an emergency injunction on behalf of a woman who just had the actor’s baby, the real reason for which being the threats she had received.
Sherborne said he was calling for “real change.”
Earlier in the day, the National Union of Journalists’ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet painted a stark picture of journalistic life in the UK, with an omnipotent editor, a slew of relentless pressures, and “brutal” consequences for reporters who did not deliver stories. She said a culture of fear among journalists inhibited them defending fundamental and ethical principles, and that speaking out publicly was “simply not an option” for fear of losing their jobs.
Referring to one of the Inquiry’s key questions raised by Lord Justice Leveson earlier this week, Stanistreet argued that the protection of journalists by way of a trade union could help “guard the guardians” and promote ethical awareness.
Following her, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger made the case for a stronger Press Complaints Commission that must have the power to intervene, investigate meaningfully and impose significant sanctions. Unimpressed by how the PCC handled phone hacking, Rusbridger argued in favour of a press standards and mediation commission, a “one-stop shop” that is responsive, quick and cheap. He added that the industry needed to establish a public interest defence that could be agreed upon and argued for.
Leveson agreed on the value of a “mechanism being set up that benefits all”, but questioned how to persuade those who do not subscribe to the PCC that it is a sensible approach.
Sherborne, however, vowed that his victims’ evidence will show “how hopelessly inadequate this self-regulatory code is as a means of curbing the excesses of the press.”
While conceding he, his clients and Rusbridger may agree on strengthening the PCC, Sherborne also quoted a client who claimed that leaving the PCC in the hands of newspapers would be tantamount to “handing a police station over to the mafia.”
The Inquiry will continue with evidence from victims on 21 November.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
01 Nov 11 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
The celebrity trend of taking out injunctions to prevent publication has calmed, according to some of Britain’s top editors. Giving evidence at the joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions yesterday Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor; Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye; John Witherow, editor of the Sunday Times and Jonathan Grun from the Press Association, explained that he felt the balance between freedom of expression and privacy has been restored.
Speaking at the committee, Hislop called the lull in injunctions an “outbreak of sanity,” whilst John Witherow said superinjunctions had been “scattered around like confetti,” and added that the mood now seems to have changed. Hislop attributed the decline to a number of “spectacular own goals” and said the “worrying” trend had caused a “real chilling effect” on free speech. Witherow agreed, and cited the recent case of Jeremy Clarkson as a deterrent.
Following the recent press scandals, Grun explained: “All of the furore we’ve had with super injunctions and phone hacking has created a distorted lens on the media.”
Grun added: “It does misrepresent the day-to-day activities of hundreds of newsrooms across the country. In newsrooms across the country journalists take decisions beneath the radar but those decisions tend to guard the privacy of what you would describe as ordinary people.”
When asked if declining sales was the reason behind the publication of sensationalist articles, all of the editors disagreed. Hislop said “printing the truth is the way to sell papers,” whilst Grun advised that “accuracy underpins everything we do at PA.” Rusbridger added that using “commercial consideration” when deciding whether to run a story is dangerous.
He explained: “If you’re going to lessen standards or become lax because you think that’s a route to better sales, it’s a slippery slope.”
Similarly, the editors all agreed that defining the public interest for editorial decisions was clear, with Hislop adding that it comes down to “common sense.”
Ian Hislop suggested that “the libel business dried up, and privacy became the next avenue,” whilst Rusbridger named the breach of confidence as his biggest issue as a newspaper editor, describing it as an “ever present threat” which can hit you, commenting “I’m much more worried about confidence.”
But the editors added that it was unclear how many injunctions still stood. Witherow said: “We may never know how many stories have not been covered, or how many people who have been up to no good will sleep a little easier.”
Earlier in the day, Joshua Rozenberg, a legal commentator and journalist; Professor Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications at Westminster University and Professor Brian Cathcart, founder of the Hacked Off campaign and professor of Journalism at Kingston University, also gave their evidence to the committee.
Alice Purkiss is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship
30 Sep 11 | Uncategorized
The need to maintain freedom of expression while we work to restore faith in the press was emphasised by one of the journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal at an event in London organised by The Guardian last night.
Carl Bernstein said he was “struck by the parallels” between the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and the saga that brought down US President Richard Nixon in the 1970s. He added that the two events were “shattering cultural moments of huge consequence that are going to be with us for generations”, and that both were “about corruption at the highest levels, about the corruption of the process of a free society”.
Chaired by Channel 4 News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the event, titled After Hacking: How Can The Press Restore Trust?, brought together a panel consisting of Bernstein alongside George Eustice, David Cameron’s former press secretary; Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of French newspaper Le Monde; and The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger.
Regulation of the press was high on the agenda. Eustice, while disagreeing with Ivan Lewis’s suggestion of “striking-off” journalists guilty of malpractice, claimed there was “not much wrong” with the existing Press Complaints Commission (PCC) code, besides that it needed to be better enforced. He argued that the British press needed stiffer regulation in order to prevent a repeat of the phone-hacking scandal and raise journalistic standards.
Bernstein was at odds with Eustice, arguing that “any kind of prior restraint on what we publish would be a slippery slope inhibiting free speech.” He said the press must be regulated in the same way as our speech is, through general law rather than a specific code. Otherwise, we would be “heading towards a truth commission”.
Kauffmann also agreed that regulation was unfeasible, as “journalism is not an exact science.” Rusbridger, meanwhile, was in favour of continuing the UK’s current model of having two systems of regulation for press and broadcasting, though noted the complications that may lie ahead as papers continue to develop their web strategies. Where regulation of journalism ends and regulation of blogging begins, an issue also raised at last week’s Law Society debate, was flagged as a stumbling block of tighter controls.
Yet any possible solutions to restore faith in the press go beyond mere regulation, it was argued. Kauffmann noted that the scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire has brought into focus the fundamentals of journalism: “Why do journalists do what they do? What is right and what is wrong? We need to ask these questions.”
The thorny conflict between privacy and the public’s right to know, Bernstein opined, would also help to define who we are and deciding what is news. The latter, he said, was the “most important task of journalism”.
He also emphasised that the scandal is part of a “cultural breakdown” that goes beyond Rupert Murdoch, involving politicians and consumers alike. “We’ve not heard much about the consumers of trash,” he said. “They also have a responsibility for culture.” He later asked: “Why are people seeking information to reinforce already held beliefs? That’s where journalism is going.”
He noted we are experiencing a global loss of trust in our institutions, from the press to politicians. Giving them more secrecy would be “awful”, he said, adding that we need to be “more aggressive” in breaking this down.
With the fear of a potential backlash on the press, Rusbridger noted that the next few years will be “uncomfortable” for journalists. But he reminded the audience that it was “an act of outstanding journalism that exposed an act of bad journalism.”
“Without reporters,” he concluded, “we’re all fucked.”
Marta Cooper is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship
