9 Jan 2012 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
The Sun’s royal editor has revealed that over half of the paparazzi photos of royals that the paper receives are not published because of ethical considerations.
Duncan Larcombe told the Leveson Inquiry that this was due to concerns over breaches of privacy and the Press Complains Commission code, he rejected any suggestion that Clarence House put the newspaper under pressure not to run certain photographs.
He told the Inquiry that the Sun turned down photos of the royals stolen from Pippa Middleton’s car in 2009, the tipsters asked for £25,000 for the images.
Distancing himself from former editor Kelvin Mackenzie’s “lob it in” approach, Larcombe said that “it doesn’t work like that on royal stories” or on Fleet Street. He said it was particularly important to “get it 100 per cent right” with such stories.
However he admitted that the internet was “the elephant in the room”, many photos rejected by mainstream outlets finding their way online.
Larcombe added that every member of the public was a “potential paparazzo” in the age of camera phones, claiming that Prince Harry had little privacy unless he was “hiding in one of his castles”.
The Sun’s picture editor John Edwards told the Inquiry that more photos were now coming in from members of the public, though the majority of the 15-20,000 images the paper is offered per week still come from agencies.
Discussing pictures of a heavily pregnant Lily Allen shopping in London, Edwards said they were not published after a request from the singer’s agent’s request, despite Allen appearing happy to be shot in the photos. He added that there were celebrities that the paper would be reluctant to use photos of, such as Sienna Miller, due to their past experiences with the paparazzi.
When asked about the intense press coverage of the McCanns, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in May 2007, Edwards said he had “tremendous sympathy” for the couple, who returned to a media scrum outside their home in Leicestershire after Madeleine’s disappearance.
“We got it spot on in Portugal, but may not have been so good when it came back to Leicestershire,” Edwards said.
21 Dec 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
A former financial reporter at the Daily Mirror has told the Leveson Inquiry that phone hacking seemed to happen daily at the paper, and was “openly discussed”.
James Hipwell, who wrote the City Slickers column for the paper from 1998 before being jailed in 2006 for writing about firms he owned shares in, stood by his witness statement in which he said phone hacking was a “bog-standard journalistic tool”. He told the Inquiry the practice was openly discussed by the showbiz desk, recounting that the team had deleted a message from a celebrity’s voicemail to stop the rival paper, the Sun, intercepting and getting the story.
“It didn’t seem to me to be an ethical way to behave, but it seemed a generally accepted method to get a story,” Hipwell said.
He said he did not report the practice to former editor Piers Morgan because it seemed that it was “entirely accepted” by senior editors on the paper.” He said that, while he did not see hacking talked about in front of genuine management of the company, he witnessed it being discussed with senior editorial managers.
Hipwell also said he witnessed a colleague hacking into Morgan’s phone in early 2000, although he said he did not think it elicited any useful information.
Morgan told the Inquiry yesterday he had “no reason to believe” the practice was occurring at the tabloid while he was editor from 1995 to 2004.
In a witness statement to the Inquiry, Morgan said Hipwell’s claims were the “unsubstantiated allegations of a liar and convicted criminal.”
Hipwell said he could not prove Morgan knew about the practice, but added that “looking at his style of editorship, I would say it was unlikely he didn’t know it was going on.”
He said Morgan was the tabloid’s “beating heart” and “dear leader”. He described how Morgan would go up behind reporters and look at what they were writing on screen, and would re-write headlines and copy late at night after publication.
“The newspaper was built around the cult of Piers,” Hipwell said, noting that as editor he did his job “very well”.
Yesterday Morgan told the Inquiry editors only knew 5% of what their reporters were doing, and that he only “very occasionally” asked reporters about the sources of their stories.
Yet, Hipwell said, “nothing really happened on that [showbiz] desk without Piers knowing about it.”
Hipwell also contradicted Morgan’s statement that the PCC code was on the wall of Mirror newsroom. He told the Inquiry he was never briefed about the code or journalistic ethics, and that he did not see any visible signs of ethical leadership from the paper’s senior managers.
He said corporate governance was not a term used in the newspaper office.
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19 Dec 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
A former News of the World sports reporter who received a bullying compensation settlement worth almost £800,000 has said his choice to take on his bosses “finished” his career.
Matt Driscoll, who was diagnosed with severe depression in 2006, told the Leveson Inquiry this afternoon he could not “imagine any editor wanting to snap me up tomorrow.”
“I am the guy who has taken on the bosses,” he said.
Driscoll worked on the paper’s sports desk from 1997 to 2007, when he was sacked. An employment tribunal found in 2009 that the paper had discriminated against him on grounds of his disability and that the editor had presided over a culture of bullying at the redtop. He was awarded £792,736 in compensation.
He said his illness was “entirely” due to the treatment of the News of the World, and noted his doctor had advised he “distance” himself from the paper. Driscoll described receiving daily calls from the paper and being told his pay would be stalled if he sought advice from an independent doctor rather than a company nurse.
Driscoll had received a tip that Arsenal football club would play in a claret-coloured strip, though the team dismissed the claim. Some months later the story appeared in the Sun. “I received a phone call from my sports editor to say ‘we’re dead’,” Driscoll said.
He said “power corrupts” some editors, with their egos allowed to “run wild” and that some had “lost touch with reality”.
“Editors were under even more pressure than proprietors to make sure their readership stayed at a certain level,” he added. “That pressure passed down.”
Of journalism, he said, “you work at a certain level of stress but you are almost at saturation point.”
He said he had no direct involvement with phone hacking, but added that “it was known throughout the whole of Fleet Street that news reporters or feature writers could obtain mobile phone messages.”
He said any suggestion of stories being fabricated at the paper were “absolutely crazy”, claiming the litigation costs would be too high to risk.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, and will include evidence from Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror and the News of the World, who’ll be appearing via satellite; the paper’s former TV editor Sharron Marshall; Farrer & Co partner Julian Pike, and Steve Turner, who represented Matt Driscoll during his tribunal.
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30 Nov 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
Speaking at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press on Tuesday, Paul McMullan, the former deputy features editor at the News of the World, said this:
“In 21 years of invading people’s privacy I’ve never actually come across anyone who’s been doing any good. Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in …Privacy is evil; it brings out the worst qualities in people … Privacy is for paedos; fundamentally nobody else needs it.”
You can almost hear the horrified gasps as this heresy sank in. But ask yourself: at moments in your life when you’ve most fervently desired that something about you should remain private, wasn’t it often the case that this was because you thought — or thought others might think — that there was something disgraceful there?
It is no different with public figures, celebrities, politicians — the class of individuals that, for all the focus that there’s been on Milly Dowler’s family, occupy 99 percent of the media’s intrusive attention.
When an MP I felt very strongly about my privacy as an (undeclared) gay man; but I remain unconvinced that my constituents had no right to know about this; I was happy enough to tell them about the happy, shiny parts of my personal life — my marathon running, etc.
It’s my firm belief that one of the drivers of reform of the laws on homosexuality, and one of the motives that drove many MPs into the Equality lobby — and indeed one of the reasons many have chosen to come out of the closet — was precautionary: they supposed the media would eventually find out. How sure are you that this was to be regretted?
Matthew Parris is a journalist and a trustee of Index on Censorship
