13 Feb 2012 | News and features, Uncategorized
Cross-posted at Hacked Off
There is fury and fear among Sun staff after the latest round of arrests by police investigating the alleged corruption of public servants by journalists, and there is more widespread alarm about the future of the press. Where will this end? Will other papers close, as the News of the World did? Is the baby of free expression about to go down the plughole with the murky bathwater of journalistic misconduct?
The anxiety is likely to increase as Rupert Murdoch visits London this week. Though he has said he has no intention of closing the Sun, he is not (how to put this?) a man distinguished by the rigid keeping of his word. It is easy to see why nerves are frayed.
But the picture is not as bleak as some fear, and News International and the Metropolitan police are only doing what they have to do in a society ruled by law. (We need to note, too, that nobody has been charged with anything.)
It is only a few months since News International was rightly lambasted for covering up evidence of, and information about, potentially criminal activities. That material, about phone hacking, had to be dragged out of the company, notably by civil litigants who for the most part have now settled their cases.
If, as seems to be the case, the company is now diligently searching its databases and handing everything suspicious that it finds to the police, then we should be grateful. Nor can we complain that junior figures are suffering the consequences while the top brass are spared: those arrested (and bailed) are for the most part big hitters.
As for the Met, it is doing its job. It may well be doing it with a special zeal, in response to criticisms about a previous absence of zeal, but we can hardly complain about that either. And it is not as though it can make up new laws. Where they have information about possible breaches of the law the police are supposed to investigate, question, search and so forth, and that is what they are doing here.
Corrupting officials matters, too. If local government officials take bribes to fix planning applications for builders, or if defence officials take bribes when awarding arms contracts, we expect prosecutions of both those who pay and those who receive. More than that, we expect the press to expose such wrongdoing, and journalists tend to take pride in the work. Corruption creates injustice and is anti-democratic.
Will the pursuit of these matters lead to unwanted consequences? Will it corrode free expression? I cant see why.
There are no grounds for Murdoch to close the Sun, and if he were to do so it would be another short-sighted, cowardly and capricious act like the closure of the News of the World. He has to take responsibility, show leadership and steer his paper (which is by any measure a national institution) through the crisis.
Does it follow that other papers are in danger? I have no idea, but if journalists on other papers have been bribing public officials (something which nobody can fail to realise is against the law) then they need to face the consequences. It is no use saying that the law is wrong or unfair; if that is the case the right course is to try to change the law, not to ignore it. (Newspapers are rarely tolerant of others who consider themselves above the law.)
The bathwater of unethical and illegal practices in journalism needs to be drained, and the Leveson process exists to do that. There is no reason to suppose that the baby of free expression will be washed away in the process. A far more realistic prospect is that, if we are persuaded to leave this bathwater where it is, the baby will drown in it. Corrupt journalism is the enemy of free expression; it places us at the mercy of monopolists, bullies and lawbreakers. We surely don’t want that.
Brian Cathcart, a founder of Hacked Off, teaches journalism at Kingston University London. He tweets at @BrianCathcart
10 Feb 2012 | Campaigns, Statements, United Kingdom
The UK government’s plans to extend secret hearings into the civil courts will lead to a diminishing in the open administration of justice, Index on Censorship has said in a letter to the Joint Committee on Human Rights
(more…)
7 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The editor of the Times has admitted to the Leveson Inquiry that a reporter at his paper used email hacking to reveal the identity of anonymous police blogger, NightJack, in a 2009 story.
James Harding was discussing an incident which former Times reporter Patrick Foster had identified the blogger as Richard Horton by gaining access to anonymous email account run by Horton.
Harding, recalled to give further evidence, said he had “learnt a great deal more” about the circumstances surrounding the event since his last appearance at the Inquiry a month ago.
He revealed that he and senior management figures at the Times only became aware of the email hacking after Mr Justice Eady had begun hearing the case at the High Court — to overturn the injunction Mr Horton took to protect his identity — but before a judgment was made.
The inquiry heard that the paper’s lawyer, Alastair Brett, “tore a strip off Foster” when he learned of the email hacking, telling him that “if he wants to pursue this story he has to do it by proper journalistic endeavour”.
Emails shown to the Inquiry today reveal that Foster asked his then news editor, Martin Barrow, to “leave a little space between the dirty deed and publishing”.
In another email from Foster to the Brett, the reporter said he could build his story with publicly-available information. This, Brett replied, may be the “golden bullet”.
Harding said he took the view that the story was in the public interest, though stressed it did not warrant Foster’s unauthorised access to the email account.
“I squarely do not approve of what has happened”, he said.
“If Mr Foster had come to me and said he had done this,” Harding said, “I would have taken the disciplinary action and I would have told him to abandon the story.”
“I sorely regret the intrusion into Richard Horton’s email account by a journalist in our newsroom. On behalf of the newspaper, I apologise”, he told the Inquiry. Harding also said he has written to Mr Justice Eady to apologise that the full details surrounding the story were not disclosed to the court in 2009.
Horton, who won the Orwell prize for his blog describing a PC’s life, closed down his site and removed its content.
Email hacking constitutes a breach of the Computer Misuse Act, for which there is no public interest defence. Foster was given a written warning for professional misconduct over the incident.
Also recalled today was Sun editor Dominic Mohan, who was quizzed about his paper’s page 3 feature, which since late 1970 has printed photos of topless women.
Mohan called the feature an “innocuous British institution” that celebrates natural beauty and represents youth and freshness. He said the feature does not contain models who had had plastic surgery, and that the women photographed were healthy and “good role models”.
Last month the Inquiry heard from a selection of women’s groups who discussed the sexualisation of women in media. Anna Van Heeswijk, of pressure group Object, said page 3 existed “for the sole purpose” of women being sex objects. She also pushed for “consistent” regulation of print media, arguing that the press should abide by the taste and decency watershed that determines what can be broadcast on television before 9pm.
Mohan also refuted claims the paper was sexist, arguing that it had campaigned for a range of women’s issues, such as speaking out against domestic violence in 2003 and raising awareness of cervical cancer screening following the death of reality TV star Jade Goody in 2009.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow and will include evidence from Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer; Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust and political blogger Guido Fawkes.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
7 Feb 2012 | Leveson Inquiry
The former chair of the Press Complaints Commission has said she regrets the 2009 PCC report into phone hacking that concluded there was no evidence to suggest the practice was widespread or that the PCC had been misled in its 2007 inquiry of the activity.
Baroness Peta Buscombe told the Leveson Inquiry she was “never comfortable” putting her name to the report, which claimed that the Guardian’s coverage of phone hacking “did not quite live up to the dramatic billing they were initially given”.
The report has since been formally withdrawn by the PCC.
Buscombe, who resigned as chairman of the PCC last October amid growing criticism, said she equally regretted being “clearly misled” by News International and what editors had told her, adding later that she had been “lied to” over the phone hacking.
But she was quick to say that the self-regulation body needed to be seen as acting. “What could we do? (…) If we’d have done nothing we’d have been called useless,” she said. “It was rather one of those ‘you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t’,” she added later. “It was very very difficult.”
She said people were “misconstructing” the role of the PCC, noting that the body did not have investigatory powers to summon editors to give evidence under oath. She argued that broadcast regulator Ofcom cannot “deal with crime, nor should it”.
She added that the rest of the world “would kill” for the British press’s system of self-regulation, though conceded that the rebuilding of trust was a “problem” and a “tough call” for Lord Justice Leveson.
Buscombe also argued that the major issue was newsroom culture, putting it to the Inquiry: “Can you have a system that changes the culture within news organisations?”
Meanwhile Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has been recalled to face further questioning, after he accused actor Hugh Grant and the Hacked Off campaign of trying to “hijack” the Inquiry.
Dacre made the remarks in his evidence yesterday in response to Grant’s testimony last November, during which he described a 2007 story in the Mail on Sunday that claimed his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks due to his late night calls with a “plummy-voiced” studio executive.
Grant said the only way the paper could have sourced the story was through accessing his voicemail, and that he “would love to hear what their source was if it wasn’t phone hacking”.
Associated Newspaper responded in a statement that the actor had made “mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media”, which Dacre said he would withdraw if “Mr Grant withdraws his that the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday were involved in phone hacking.”
Leveson said that he would need to speak to Dacre for around 30 minutes this week about the issue.
Dacre stressed yesterday that he knew of no cases of phone hacking at Associated’s titles.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson
