20 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Crime reporters across the regional and national press have expressed fears that contact between press and police will be restricted further in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry.
Highlighting the current climate, Tim Gordon of the South Wales Echo revealed that one of his reporters was told that Gwent police were “tightening up” rules in place for dealing with the media due to the Inquiry and the recent Filkin Report into press-police relations.
He added he was “concerned” that Gwent police had announced that their officers could not talk to the media unless they had been given prior permission from their press office. He described the difficulty in getting information from official channels, noting that the force’s press office was closed on weekends.
“I would much prefer that we could move forward trusting each other,” Gordon said, ” that my reporters could build and develop relationships with police officers on a professional basis, so there’s no fear or favour granted on either side, but that the information is free-flowing.”
“I would much prefer if the police were encouraged to give as much information as they possibly could,” he added.
Similar concerns were voiced at the Inquiry last week, with the Guardian’s Sandra Laville lamenting what she called an “over-reaction” by the Metropolitan police in response to the Inquiry, and that “open lines of communication, which have been there for many years, are being closed down”.
Gordon also had reservations about suggestions made by Elizabeth Filkin that contact between reporters and police officers be recorded. “My fear with a written record,” Gordon said, “is that it already suggests something is wrong with talking to a journalist.”
His view was shared by Wolverhampton Express and Star Editor Adrian Faber, who questioned whether or not what he called a “codification” would necessarily make police officers “more open”.
He said recording contact would lead to an officer “slightly looking over your shoulder and saying ‘should I be saying this?'”.
Faber added that such a measure “would lead to extra dimension that isn’t necessary locally”, noting that the regional press operates on a basis of trust with the communities they serve — a theme also raised by Gordon. “If we don’t have their trust we can’t go back to them,” he said.
Sunday Mirror crime correspondent Justin Penrose added that there was now a “state of paralysis” in police-press relations, noting that police officers are less forthcoming or willing to talk to the media.
Tom Pettifor of the Daily Mirror echoed this, saying there may be “more reticence” among officers to talk to him if he did not go through a force’s press office, and that “informal contact” was now more difficult.
Logging press-police contact, in Pettifor’s view, “is obviously not going to eliminate the problem of corruption”, but would “freeze up” the information flow.
The Inquiry also heard from Metropolitan police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, who replaced Sir Paul Stephenson last summer following his resignation amid speculation over the Met’s links to News International after the phone hacking scandal. Hogan-Howe conceded that public confidence in the Met had been “damaged” and he accordingly had to “set the boundary high” in terms of press-police relationships.
“I’d rather be criticised for setting the bar too high than too low,” he said, adding later that his aim is to build a “positive” relationship with the press, but accepted there might be “restrictions” when crime was being investigated.
He praised press coverage of the murder of schoolboy Rhys Jones in Liverpool in 2007. While he said the press interest was at times “challenging”, it ultimately led to more witnesses coming forward.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow.
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19 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The associate editor (news) of the Sunday Express has said a Guardian story from July 2011 alleging the News of the World had deleted voicemail messages on murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone “chronically and potentially fatally” damaged press-police relations.
James Murray told the Leveson Inquiry that the article, which alleged the tabloid had deleted messages on the abducted teenager’s phone, giving her family false hope that she was alive and listening to her voicemail, had an “enormous impact” throughout the industry.
“We spent an enormous amount of time building up relations with Surrey police, meeting them for briefings, having coffee, gaining their trust,” he said. “All that trust was blown out of the water.”
He added that normal lines of communication have since been damaged, noting later: “Everyone’s cautious, everyone’s frightened.”
Last December the Metropolitan police announced that the tabloid may not have deleted Dowler’s voicemails, though it remains uncontested that the paper hacked her phone.
In response to this morning’s revelation that the News of the World had employed their own surveillance team to identify suspects and the deployed Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) team in the 2006 Ipswich murders inquiry, Murray warned against journalists acting as detectives. “Playing an amateur detective can get you into all sorts of trouble and that’s not what we’re about,” he said.
He added that the now defunct tabloid was a “lone wolf” in the field of surveillance, saying it had been mentioned the paper had resources to employ ex-detectives, and that he could not think of another mainstream newspaper that had “such a well-organised enterprise.”
On recommendations for press-police relations, Murray argued that issuing written guidelines would be “frankly ridiculous”, though he said a “broad-based framework” might be helpful.
Speaking earlier today, John Twomey, chair of the Crime Reporters Association and crime correspondent at the Daily Express, also warned against what he termed a “freezing effect” if all contact between reporters and journalists were to be recorded.
“Officers would be less likely to talk to you,” he said. “Some officers may just cease contact with you completely.”
Daily Star reporter Jerry Lawton also expressed his concern that the Inquiry may have impacted on the relationship between reporters and police forces, noting that lines of communication had “been shut down all over the place.”
“My concern in the fall-out from phone hacking and this series of inquiries is that a wedge will be driven between the police and press that will restrict the level of trust and guidance, therefore making accurate reporting more difficult,” Lawton wrote in his witness statement.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with further evidence from crime reporters, staff from West Midlands Police and Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe of the Metropolitan police.
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19 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
A retired criminal investigator has accused the News of the World of jeopardising the investigation into murder of five women in Ipswich in 2006.
Testifying before the Leveson Inquiry this morning, Dave Harrison was part of a Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) team deployed to the Ipswich murder inquiry, in which five women were killed between October and December 2006. His team’s objective was to put any suspect under surveillance.
He said he was told that the News of the World had employed their own surveillance team made up of “ex-special forces soldiers, whose objectives were to identify any suspects we were working on, and to identify us and our operation base.”
“Someone in the police had found out that SOCA was being deployed and passed this information to the media,” Harrison wrote in his witness statement.
Harrison added that a surveillance team from the Sunday Mirror was also employed to “pick up and interview” the first suspect in the inquiry. In his witness statement, Harrison wrote that colleagues watched the suspect “being picked up and driven round by a team that carried out anti-surveillance manoeuvres before dropping him off at a hotel to be interviewed.”
Harrison said he believed the News of the World surveillance jeopardised the murder investigation by potentially hindering SOCA’s own surveillance. He told the Inquiry that a murder suspect, revisiting the scene of the crime, might halt or change his movements if they believed they were being followed. “The evidence would be lost and the prosecution case weakened.”
“If our surveillance had been weakened by having to try and avoid other surveillance teams looking for us, if we had lost the suspect he may have gone on and committed further murders,” Harrison added.
“If we had lost the suspect because of their actions there could have been tragic consequences.”
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16 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
England’s libel laws have turned the country into “liberty’s enemy”, Observer columnist and author of You Can’t Read This Book Nick Cohen said at last night’s launch of Index and English PEN’s final report of the Alternative Libel Project.
“We virtually invented freedom of expression, but any scoundrel can go to the High Court,” Cohen said.
He was among a host of libel reform campaigners speaking at yesterday’s event at London’s Inner Temple, reflecting on the strides made in the campaign and reaffirming the need for change in England’s defamation law.
The Alternative Libel Project, the result of a year-long inquiry looking into alternatives to resolving libel claims through the High Court, has recommended the use of quicker and cheaper methods to tackle the chilling costs of bringing a claim forward. The report advocates capping the cost of a libel claim at the average UK house price and allowing judges to protect ordinary people from having to pay the other side’s costs if they lose.
Cohen gave an impassioned defence of press freedom, noting that the proliferation of online publishing meant libel reform was no longer only an issue facing reporters. “Everyone is a journalist,” he said.
He praised the campaign’s efforts but urged supporters to look at the “cold climate into which this legislation is emerging”, comparing asking to do the press a favour to asking for a pay rise for MPs after the expenses scandal.
Science writer Simon Singh argued that issues of libel reform were not “old problems”, revealing that, in addition to battling a libel claim brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association, in 2010 he also received another threat over remarks he had made about climate change. The fear of libel, Singh said, was “widespread”.
Opening the event, Justice Minister Lord McNally echoed his statement made at yesterday’s Westminster Legal Policy Forum, saying that he would be “extremely disappointed” if a commitment to legislate of defamation was not part of the Queen’s Speech in May.
“This is not the end, not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning,” he said.
Alternative Libel Project Final March 2012
