21 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The former secretary for culture media and sport told the Leveson Inquiry today that her family had “been destroyed” by intense media harassment.
Tessa Jowell, culture secretary from 2001 to 2007, became emotional as she described the “total” invasion of privacy she and her family had suffered.
Detailing what she called “obsessive curiosity” about her family and private life, Jowell said: “In the months to years after I’d find people sitting outside my house with cameras.”
“Only in the last 18 months do I find myself not looking in cars to see if there is somebody waiting,” she added.
In May 2006 she was told by Operation Caryatid, the original phone hacking investigation, that her voicemail had been intercepted 28 times, and subsequently discovered the activity was more extensive. In December 2011 Jowell settled a civil case for breach of privacy with News International.
“There is no evidence yet shown to me that the hacking of my phone was undertaken for commercial motives, but rather in pursuance of an obsessive interest in my troubled family circumstances at that time,” Jowell wrote in her witness statement.
She added that she was “deeply shocked” when she read Metropolitan police’s DCS Keith Surtees’s evidence, in which he said Jowell had declined to sign a statement to be used in the prosecutions of former News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire when she was first informed of phone hacking in August 2006.
“It is untrue,” she told the Inquiry. “Had I been asked at that time to provide a witness statement I would have.”
She said she “sought clarification” from the police over how she could contribute but was assured there was nothing further to do, writing in her witness statement that her “offers of further help were declined”.
She also said she did not approach the News of the World over the matter because she believed the perpetrators had been imprisoned, and did not complain to the Press Complaints Commission about the press intrusion she suffered.
During her evidence, Jowell and Lord Justice Leveson collided over whether or not the Press Complaints Commission was in fact a regulator. “Regulatory may be the wrong term,” Jowell said, noting that the Commission oversaw media conduct and provided redress for those who felt they had been wronged by the press.
Asked if the DCMS should have taken a more hands-on role in media monitoring, Jowell said such manoeuvres would have “been seen as a step to undermine self-regulation”.
“There’s no halfway house in this,” she said. “Either the media is regulated on statutory basis or it’s self-regulated.”
The Inquiry continues this afternoon with evidence from Lord Mandelson.
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11 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt faces fresh questions over his involvement with News Corp’s bid for control of satellite broadcaster BSkyB, as emails shown to the Leveson Inquiry today suggest he sought guidance from the company over phone hacking.
The 27 June 2011 email from News Corp PR chief Frédéric Michel to ex-News International CEO Rebekah Brooks — who was today giving evidence at the Inquiry — read:
JH is now starting to looking [sic] to phone hacking/practices more thoroughly and has asked me to advise him privately in the coming weeks and guide his and No 10’s positioning…
Hunt’s spokeswoman has said the claim was “inaccurate”.
The email also revealed that Hunt was due to make an “extremely helpful” statement to Parliament regarding the bid, based on his belief that “phone hacking has nothing to do with the media plurality issues”. On 30 June Hunt announced the bid could go ahead, subject to one further public consultation.
The 27 June message adds heat to Hunt, who has already faced intense pressure in the wake of 160 pages’ worth of emails between Michel and Hunt’s adviser Adam Smith that were released to the Inquiry on 24 April. These revealed that News Corp was being given advance feedback of the government’s scrutiny of the BSkyB bid.
Smith has since resigned, saying that he had acted without Hunt’s authority and that his contact with News Corp “went too far”. Hunt has contended that he himself acted within the ministerial code.
News Corp abandoned the takeover bid in July 2011 in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
Brooks’ day-long appearance marked the second day of the third module of the Inquiry, which is examining relations between press and politicians. Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC said these relationships may have been “over-cosy” in his opening remarks yesterday.
Brooks swayed from appearing nervous to restless and was more impassioned towards the end of her evidence. Discussing her contact with David Cameron, Brooks revealed the PM signed off his text messages to her with “LOL”, under the impression it meant “lots of love” rather than “laugh out loud”.
When Brooks clarified the difference to the PM, he then stopped using the acronym, the Inquiry learned.
Brooks’s contact with Cameron has been the focus of attention this week, with reports that the PM had texted her up to 12 times a day. Brooks dismissed the claim as “preposterous”, noting that he would send her messages once or twice a week.
She told the Inquiry she had received messages of commiserations from Cameron, chancellor George Osborne and former prime minister Tony Blair after her July 2011 resignation. She confirmed that she received a message from Cameron, the gist of which was to “keep your head up”, but that it was not a “direct text message”.
She said that she spoke to Cameron “in general terms” after the Guardian published its July 2009 story on phone hacking that had claimed the practice was not limited to a single reporter. She added that they discussed it in more detail the following year as civil cases were brought forward.
The atmosphere between Jay and Brooks turned dour as the afternoon wore on and Jay’s usually mild questioning became more terse. Brooks defended some of the Sun’s more controversial coverage, notably its 2006 story on former prime minister Gordon Brown’s son Fraser suffering from cystic fibrosis.
When pressed over the source of the piece, Brooks refused to budge, asserting that the story came from the father of another cystic fibrosis sufferer. Brown had alleged the paper obtained the information through hacking into his son’s medical records, which the redtop countered was “false” and “a smear”.
For Lord Justice Leveson, the issue was whether it was “part of the culture of the press that attack is the best form of defence”.
Brooks, who said she was friends with Brown’s wife Sarah — whom she called an “amazing woman” — maintained she had the couple’s express permission before publishing the story.
“If the Browns had asked me not to run cystic fibrosis story, I wouldn’t have,” she said.
She also countered Jay’s suggestion that the Sarah’s Law campaign run by the News of the World to “name and shame” known sex offenders was “sensationalised” and “inflammatory”. Brooks maintained the approach taken, arguing she could not predict the reprisals that ensued (a Newport-based paediatrician was mistaken for a paedophile in August 2000, with the word “paedo” being written across the front of her home). However, she conceded that she had some regrets, mentioning the list of convicted paedophiles that had been published in the paper.
Throughout her evidence, Brooks reiterated the power of the Sun was its “readership”, whose voices she had sought to reflect during her editorship from 2003-2009.
“If a journalist ever compromised their readership or their role through friendship then it’s their failing,” she said.
The Inquiry continues on Monday.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
10 May 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Anyone looking for a lesson in deadpan testimony could have done worse than tune into Andy Coulson’s appearance at the Leveson Inquiry today.
It was an unedifying session with the former News of the World editor and ex-Number 10 communications chief, who was protected from having to discuss the phone hacking scandal due to his July 2011 arrest and subsequent bail as part of Operation Weeting.
Lord Justice Leveson and Robert Jay QC trod particularly heavily on his meeting with George Osborne in March 2007 to discuss the communications role with the Conservative party. “Did it not occur to you — why are they asking me?” Jay asked.
Coulson, who said he entered into the conversation with a “degree of reluctance” and that he “wasn’t thinking about politics at all”, reiterated that he had been in the newspaper industry for a long time, running campaigns and managing a team. Given the “electoral mountain” the party had to climb, these were seemingly useful credentials.
“The conversation was very much, ‘What do we need to do to get elected?'” Coulson said, clarifying that his role was to build relationships across media (he stressed more than once the “fundamental” role of television in explaining policy).
Pressing him further over his News International background, Coulson said his time at the media organisation might have been “considered useful” by the Tory party when considering him for the position, but “was not specifically discussed as being an advantage.” He also any refuted any suggestion that former NI chief executive Rebekah Brooks — due to give evidence tomorrow — had any influence in his recruitment.
Coulson was keen to stress that contact between the party and the media was above board. In his witness statement he wrote that “there was no quid pro quo” between them and NI or any other media organisation.
“I would certainly have taken every opportunity, to the point of becoming a bore, to sing the praises of David Cameron and the Conservative Party and to encourage them to support us. That was my job,” Coulson wrote.
He conceded that he was “not minded to disagree” with David Cameron that the relationships between some of the media and the government had become too cosy. Yet he warned Leveson against erecting more barriers, arguing that the public was already disengaging with politics and further restrictions would exacerbate “what is already a difficult process.”
Coulson ended his terse but lengthy afternoon session by noting the Inquiry has suggested that “a friendship is always based on some ulterior motive”. On the contrary, Leveson responded, arguing that the key was to maintain clarity in relationships.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow.
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01 May 12 | Uncategorized
Rupert Murdoch is “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”, a committee of MPs has concluded today.
In a damning report on News International and phone hacking, the Commons culture, media and sport select committee accused the media mogul of exhibiting “wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications” and not taking steps to become fully informed about the extent of phone hacking at his empire. It said:
This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International.
The report accused three former News International executives — Les Hinton, Colin Myler, and Tom Crone — of misleading the committee during its inquiries, which began in July 2011 in the wake of revelations about the extent of phone hacking at the now defunct News of the World. The report said that NI’s former legal manager Crone and ex-News of the World editor Myler “deliberately avoided disclosing crucial information to the Committee and, when asked to do, answered questions falsely”.
The report said that the company “finally realised that its containment approach had failed” by spring 2011 in the wake of civil cases brought forward, and that its “one rogue reporter” stance was by then no longer credible. It said that News Corp’s strategy was to “lay the blame on certain individuals” (citing Myler and Crone amongst others) while “striving to protect more senior figures, notably James Murdoch.”
“Even if there were a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture at News International, the whole affair demonstrates huge failings of corporate governance at the company and its parent, News Corporation”, the report added.
Meanwhile, former NI chairman James Murdoch, who gave evidence to the committee along with his father last year, was accused of “wilful ignorance” and of betraying “astonishing lack of curiosity on the part of a chief executive” for not having inquired more deeply into the extent of the practice in 2008, at the time of negotiations surrounding a £700,000 phone-hacking settlement paid to the Professional Footballers’ Association boss, Gordon Taylor.
“Had James Murdoch been more attentive to the correspondence that he received at the time, he could have taken action on phone hacking in 2008 and this committee could have been told the truth in 2009,” the report said.
Last month the younger Murdoch resigned as chairman of BSkyB, whose parent company News Corporation was founded by his father. He also stood down as chairman of the newspaper publisher, News International, earlier this year.
However the report’s conclusions were not unanimous, with the committee split over several of its findings. The motion to submit the report to Parliament passed by a majority of six to four, with four Conservative members opposing. Four of the five Tory members of the committee also refused to declare the elder Murdoch was a fit person to run an international company.
“This line about Rupert Murdoch not being fit was stuck in on the basis of no evidence to the committee whatsoever,” Tory MP Louise Mensch said. She added that the report was “carried on political lines” and feared its credibility had been damaged as a result of not having full backing of all committee members. Committee chair John Whittingdale stressed, however, that the committee was “wholly agreed” on the main findings relating to their being misled by named individuals.
Meanwhile, Ofcom released a statement noting it had seen today’s report:
Ofcom has a duty under the Broadcasting Acts 1990 and 1996 to be satisfied that any person holding a broadcasting licence is, and remains, fit and proper to do so. Ofcom is continuing to assess the evidence – including the new and emerging evidence – that may assist it in discharging these duties.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. She tweets at @martaruco
