17 May 2012 | Index Index, minipost, United Kingdom
A number of UK broadcasters have won a judicial review overturning a decision that had forced them to hand over video footage of October’s Dale Farm evictions to Essex Police. ITN, the BBC, Sky, Hardcash Productions and the National Union of Journalists had appealed a decision by Chelmsford Crown Court to grant a production order to present unbroadcasted footage of the controversial evictions to the police. Today Mr Justice Eady and Lord Justice Moses overturned the judgement in a landmark decision, which NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said was a “huge victory for the cause of press freedom”.
10 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
As the first module of the Leveson Inquiry drew to a close yesterday, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre refused to retract a statement accusing actor Hugh Grant of “mendacious smears” against his company unless Grant agreed to take back the “toxic and explosive” statements made about the Mail.
In a heated debate Dacre and David Sherborne, counsel for the core participant victims, discussed answerphone messages left for Grant from a “plummy-voiced woman,” described in a 2007 Mail on Sunday article. In his evidence to the Inquiry in November, Grant suggested that the information for the story, which suggested his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks, could only have been accessed by phone hacking.
Dacre, who was recalled to give evidence on the issue for a second time this week, said: “Our group did not hack phones and I rather resent your continued insinuations that we did,” adding that he had given the Inquiry his “unequivocal word” on the matter earlier in the week.
Dacre accused Sherborne of “attacking my group rather unpleasantly”. Referring to Grant as the “poster boy for Hacked Off,” Dacre went on to add that the actor “is obsessed by trying to drag the Daily Mail into another newspaper’s scandal.”
Lord Justice Leveson Leveson suggested that the editor may need to appear before the Inquiry again at a later date. Dacre replied: ” I have shown this week I am prepared to devote a lot of time to this.”
Heather Mills, who also appeared before the Inquiry yesterday, said she had “never” played voicemail recordings to former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan. In his evidence to the Inquiry last December, Morgan claimed he had heard voicemail tapes, in which Mills’ then partner Sir Paul McCartney sang an apology and asked for forgiveness, that had been obtained legitimately, but he refused to “compromise” his source.
Mills added: “I couldn’t quite believe that he would even try to insinuate [that], a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years, would relish in telling the court if I had played a voicemail message to him.”
The court also heard how Mills had recorded over 64 hours of footage of alleged harassment from journalists, including evidence, shown to the court of a car chase involving paparazzi which resulted in a crash.
Thursday’s session also focused on bullying within the journalism industry, hearing a number of anonymous testimonies from reporters. Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) presented 12 written accounts to the court, detailing “tremendous pressure,” “macho culture” and other “degrading” treatment.
One testimony described a journalist being forced to write “anti-Islam stories”, and being called the “token lefty” when they complained. The journalist described being “in tears” at the treatment, but explained that it continued.
Another said: “three or four staff suffered physical collapses, almost certainly to some extent as a result of the stress.”
Former News of the World news editor Ian Edmondson also described a “culture of bullying” at the newspaper, explaining that “you will do what you are told”. Edmondson said that everything was dictated by the editor and explained editor Colin Myler, who replaced Andy Coulson following his resignation in 2007, continued the newsroom bullying.
Edmondson also denied drafting emails sent by Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter of the News of the World, to women involved in an orgy with ex-motorsports boss Max Mosley in 2008, though he added it was “more likely that I would have asked” Thurlbeck to contact them.
Edmondson told the Inquiry he believed the emails to be a “threat”, chiming with the inference of Mr Justice Eady that the messages amounted to blackmail, as suggested in the judgment following Mosley’s successful privacy action against the News of the World in the same year.
He was also quizzed about extracts of Kate McCann’s diary that appeared in the paper in 2008, contradicting claims made by Myler that Edmondson had sought permission to publish from the McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell. Asked if he had led editor Myler to believe he had “made it clear” to Mitchell that the paper had the whole diary and planned to publish parts, Edmondson replied: “No.”
Appearing via video link, Darryn Lyons of photo agency Big Pictures, explained that his photographers tried to stay in line with the PCC code, but added that photographers, picture agencies, and publishers no longer know where they stood in the industry.
“Celebrities court publicity when they want to, and all of a sudden they want to switch it off. I don’t agree people should be hounded up and down the street. I do agree people should be photographed in public places, we have a free press and a free press should be able to work in public places,” he said.
When asked about the legal case against his group brought by actress Sienna Miller regarding photographs taken of her on holiday, Lyons said that paparazzi had been taking pictures of people on holiday since “Brigitte Bardot was seen sunning herself on the beaches of St Tropez”.
PR veteran Max Clifford told the Inquiry that he had agreed his own hacking settlement with former NotW editor Rebekah Brooks over a “quiet lunch in Mayfair.” Clifford agreed to £220,000 a year for three years plus legal costs, and to provide the newspaper with tip-offs.
Clifford said he believed the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World and the Leveson Inquiry had “frightened people”. He added that he was aware of “several stories that would have dominated the headlines,” over recent months that had not been published.
The Inquiry will resume with module two, examining the relationship between the press and the police, on 28 February.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
16 Nov 2011 | 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.
27 May 2009 | Uncategorized
The National Union of Journalists held a meeting on Tuesday in support of journalist Suzanne Breen. Following Breen’s reports in the Sunday Tribune on the Real IRA, she is facing the prospect of a court order under the Terrorism Act 2000 to disclose information, with serious implications for press freedom and for her own personal safety. Suzanne Breen told the NUJ about the background to her case. Jo Glanville’s speech in support of Breen is posted below. Other speakers included Sir Geoffrey Bindman, Bill Goodwin and Mark Stephens.
Any journalist who reports on terrorism faces a double challenge: the job of reporting in the first place on a highly sensitive subject, where gaining the trust of your sources is paramount. And then the challenge of dealing with the police once you’ve broadcast or published your story when they come after you for your sources, your notes and your research material.
What we’ve seen at Index on Censorship over the past year is an apparent increase in the police’s pursuit for journalists’ material in counter-terrorism investigations. It appears to have become routine for the police to go on fishing expeditions: broadcasters and newspapers can expect to receive vague, poorly defined production orders that ask for anything and everything in the name of counter terrorism — interviews, contacts, details of meetings.
It’s quite clear that journalists are being asked to act as an arm of the state. The potential chilling effect on investigative journalism is profound, the pressure this puts journalists under is extreme and the danger this can place them in — as in the case of Suzanne Breen — is unacceptable. It’s also unnecessary.
What we see happen in most cases is that production orders of this kind end up in months and months of horse trading in the courts — while media lawyers fight to limit the scope of the production orders. Time and money is wasted — and it is a hugely stressful experience for the journalists involved.
In fact, too frequently the police instinct for going after journalists and their sources degenerates into a farce as they put in production orders for material that is already in the public domain. One wonders if they think journalists are some kind of alternative library service. In Suzanne Breen’s case they even had the opportunity of arresting a member of the Real IRA — thanks to the Sunday Tribune story — but chose not to take it up. Instead, they went after Suzanne Breen. Putting her life potentially at risk — not to mention her livelihood as a journalist.
The continuing lack of recognition for the cardinal tenet of the protection of sources remains a grave concern, despite the Bill Goodwin case, where the European Court established the cardinal importance of the protection of sources as the bedrock of press freedom. And even despite the case of Suzanne Breen’s predecessor at the Sunday Tribune, Ed Moloney, where again there was an attempt to jail a journalist for not handing over material, and the judge ruled, “Police have to show something more than the possibility that the material will be of some use. They must establish that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the material is likely to be of substantial value.” Yet none of this seems to make an impact — no one learns any lessons. The same fight for principles has to take place over and over again.
The circumstances surrounding Suzanne Breen’s case — Martin McGuiness’s statement about “dissident journalists”, the fact that Suzanne’s lawyers were not allowed to see the evidence against her, the fact that she’s never been put under this pressure before for her sources — all point to a politically motivated scenario.
Following Shiv Malik’s case last year, Index held a meeting with leading media lawyers, including the lawyer Mark Stephens, the NUJ, the Society of Editors and Newspaper Society, to discuss how best to protect journalists facing production orders. We’ve since met with Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, and he’s now looking at a protocol drafted by the group which is in essence a code of conduct and of best practice that seeks to put an end to these routine fishing expeditions. It also seeks to make the courts and the police aware (although I do wonder how many times we have to make them aware…) that protection of sources is not some high-minded ethical ideal — it is the fundamental principle without which there cannot be a free press.
Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship
