15 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Alastair Brett, former legal manager at the Times, faced an intense grilling at the Leveson Inquiry today over the circumstances in which a reporter at the paper used email hacking to reveal the identity of anonymous police blogger, NightJack, in a 2009 story.
Former Times reporter Patrick Foster had identified the blogger as DC Richard Horton by gaining access to an anonymous email account run by Horton, the Inquiry heard last month.
Brett told the Inquiry he was “furious” with Foster when he approached him about the story and asked him if he had broken the law or if there was a public interest defence he could rely on. “I told him he had been incredibly stupid. He apologised, promised not to do it again,” Brett wrote in his witness statement.
“I was told it was a one-off occasion,” he said, “and I thought ‘I’ve got to tell him you cannot behave like this at a proper newspaper’.”
Email hacking is a breach of the Computer Misuse Act and does not have a public interest defence. Brett conceded he was unaware of the Act at the time.
He said Foster told him he could identify NightJack using publicly available sources of information. Brett told Foster that if this were possible then the Times would be able to publish the story, provided the reporter put it to Horton beforehand.
A stern and incredulous Lord Justice Leveson argued that the Times had misled the High Court over the unmasking of NightJack in their fight to overturn an injunction brought by Horton. He said Foster “used what he knew and found a way out to achieve the same result.”
Brett maintained Horton had been identified legitimately. “No he hadn’t, with great respect,” Leveson responded. “He couldn’t put out of his mind that which he already knew.”
Leveson also accused the Times of exposing wrongdoing “on the basis than an individual would not seek redress.”
“What the Times have done,” the judge said, “doesn’t that mean you’re justifying any route you wish to take to get a story provided it is true?”
Brett concluded the heated session by stressing he did not condone Foster’s methods. “In 33 years I was at the Times this was the one and only case I had,” he said. “God I wish I could have done without it.”
“If you could have been in the room with me and Patrick, I mean, the air was blue,” he said.
Earlier today the Inquiry heard from Daily Mail associate news editor and former crime editor Stephen Wright, who warned against examining contact between the police and the media “to the nth degree”, suggesting that rules banning informal contact between the two might be “abused by senior officers who seek to control the information flow.”
“It could lead to a corruption of a different kind,” he added.
The Inquiry continues on Monday.
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15 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
A leaked Daily Mail story about advances in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence undermined the probe into the teenager’s death, the Leveson Inquiry heard this morning.
The Metropolitan police’s DCI Clive Driscoll, who led the re-opened inquiry into the teenager’s murder, described a November 2007 meeting he sought to hold in secret with Stephen’s mother, Doreen, and her lawyers.
Driscoll said while he was on the train home that evening, he received a phone call saying a story following the meeting would be running in the Daily Mail the next day.
“Stephen’s family were distraught about this,” Driscoll wrote in his witness statement, adding that the story “undermined” the Met’s relationship with the Lawrence family. “When this happened it was almost like going back to square one,” he wrote.
“Every time a story leaked to the press I had to repair relations with the family,” he wrote, adding later that the volume of leaks led him to believe that “someone was deliberately attempting to disrupt the investigation”.
Driscoll said he had “nothing but respect” for Stephen Wright, the Mail journalist whose name appeared on the November 2007 story. “No-one has tried harder, no organisation has tried harder to bring justice to Stephen’s parents,” Driscoll said, “but we were getting there, and it was undermining that inquiry, and I can’t understand that.”
“I have admiration with what the paper did in supporting the family, I have admiration in Mr Wright pursuing it. The bit I can’t understand is why, when you get there, you would then do anything to undermine it.”
Driscoll says he does not know who leaked the story about the meeting to the Mail. As a result, “everyone became a suspect”.
He added that Wright was spoken to by the police following the story and did not write a second piece. The journalist also maintained that the article did not come from a police source.
“I do not believe Mr Wright would have done anything to deliberately undermine the investigation,” Driscoll wrote.
The officer also thanked the paper for choosing not to publish another piece related to the Lawrence inquiry, which he said would have had “a serious consequence on the investigation we were planning.”
Driscoll admitted that the nature of Lawrence’s murder in 1993 — one of the “defining murders of its time”, he said — meant it would always generate a certain amount of press interest. In his written evidence he noted that a “significant amount” of information about the investigation was being leaked to the media, namely the News of the World, in October 2007. “This was incredibly damaging,” he wrote.
Also in the witness box this morning was the Sun’s crime editor, Mike Sullivan, who said he believes that the Metropolitan police have grading charts on individual journalists with a marking system to show the favourability of the coverage towards the police. Yet the Met’s counsel, Neil Garnham QC, denied this was the case.
Sullivan also criticised the Filkin report into press-police relations for its “patronising” tone towards journalists, adding that he does not know any journalists who will “pour alcohol” down sources’ necks to get a story.
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14 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The president of the Crime Reporters’ Association, Jeff Edwards, was encouraged by his former boss at the News of the World to bribe police officers for information, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.
Edwards joined the now defunct tabloid in 1981 and was appointed crime correspondent soon after. Around the end of 1983, his then line manager told him he was unhappy with his work, arguing that he was not producing enough stories.
Pressuring him to improve his performance, Edwards’ boss told him: “we have plenty of money available, let your contacts in the police know that we will reward them for good information.”
“I do not remember what I said in return but I remember being worried about both my job and what my boss was suggesting as I had never paid police officers before, and was worried about the legal and ethical issues involved,” Edwards wrote in his witness statement.
“No more was said for about three or four weeks, but I did not offer bribes or rewards to any police contacts and clearly my performance was still not good enough because the News Editor confronted me again. He was angry and again said words to the effect that I should be paying police officers to induce them to pass on information,” he continued.
“I do remember that I became upset and said to him that I disapproved strongly of such methods and said something on the lines that I thought we were about exposing hypocrisy and corruption and yet here we were with him instructing me to bribe police officers.”
Edwards added that he felt this was the “final nail” in his coffin: “I remember him becoming angry and saying words to the effect that ‘if you will not do my bidding I will find someone who will’.”
He was removed from his position as crime correspondent and returned to the main newsroom as a general reporter the following week.
Edwards said he worked with “many excellent and enterprising journalists who upheld the best traditions of the profession” at the News of the World, but noted his feeling that there was a “section of the staff who displayed dishonest and devious behaviour”. He said the culture at the Daily Mirror, where he later became chief crime correspondent, was “far removed” from that of the Sunday tabloid.
Elsewhere in his oral testimony, Edwards claimed the police operate on a “blame culture” during crises or scandals, and will take the “easier option” of closing down “as much engagement as possible.”
He advocated “delicate adjustments” being made to the rules of engagement between police and the press, pushing for a more “common sense” approach rather than what he termed a “carpet-bombing of the system.”
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with further evidence from crime reporters, as well as former Times lawyer Alastair Brett and Peter Tickner, former Director of Internal Audit at the Metropolitan police.
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14 Mar 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
Crime reporters have lamented the current atmosphere of more restricted contact between the press and police at the Leveson Inquiry today.
Testifying this morning, the Guardian’s Sandra Laville said that there has been an “over-reaction” by the Metropolitan police in response to the Inquiry into press standards, and that “open lines of communication, which have been there for many years, are being closed down”.
“It affects everything I do at the moment,” she said. She told the Inquiry that when she recently approached a senior ranking officer to ask him about a subject he knew well, he said he had to ask the Met’s press officer who then refused her access to him. Laville said this was “absolutely not” how it was in the past.
The reporter stressed that the country’s police force needed to be held account, which could not be done by journalists relying solely on official sources. She warned that limiting information to official sources might drive information “underground” and turn it into a “black market”.
“I think we already have laws and guidelines in place and I think they should be reiterated,” Laville said. “You can regulate as much as you like, unless you can trust them [police officers], I don’t think it’s going to work.”
The Independent’s Paul Peachey added that there was a concern that the current eagerness to drive information through official channels — namely the police press office — would lead to less contact between the media and the force, and that restricting information further would be a “worrying trend for the way we hold the police in this country to account.”
Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas of the Sunday Times told the Inquiry he disagreed with recording every exchange between journalists and police officers, as suggested in the recent Filkin report into press-police relations. “It would be a mistake to unnecessarily restrict flow of information between journalists and police officers,” he said.
Laville defended using informal contacts as a source for information alongside official channels, noting that they often bring “texture” and “colour” that official sources might not provide.
She disagreed with the view of former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Condon that hospitality can be “the start of a grooming process that can lead to inappropriate or unethical behaviour”, calling the suggestion “faintly ludicrous”.
“These people are grown-ups, they make life and death decisions,” Laville said.
She said that she saw it as “perfectly legitimate” and part of “normal human relationships” for meetings between journalists and police officers to take place in a social setting, noting that taking contacts out for drinks occurs in every journalistic sector.
She noted differences between Condon’s and Lord Stevens’ commissionerships in dealing with the media. “Under Lord Condon you could not talk to an officer without a press officer present,” Laville said, noting that his successor adopted a policy of “more openness”.
She stressed that the press and police have for years had a “mutually beneficial relationship” and that it was in the public interest. “It’s lasted for a long time because it actually works,” she said, but added that she believed that training on both sides could help to “understand each other’s worlds”.
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