The Brooks-Coulson trial was very narrowly focused on the hacking issue. It did not include the earlier police inquiries into the News of the World’s (NoW) involvement in blagging confidential records and bribing corrupt police for information in the late 1980s and 1990s. The jury was not shown Brooks’ evidence (no doubt a slip on her part, telling the truth) to the parliamentary media committee in March 2003 that her journalists had paid police for information in the past, which is of course a criminal offence. Ironically Select committee evidence is not admissible in court because of the rules protecting parliamentary privilege. Above all, the trial excluded the illicit and ruthless use of power by which the Murdoch press, and especially Brooks, destroyed individuals and suborned governments. Continue reading
Tagged with Leveson
Doctors don’t regulate themselves, so why should the press?
For eight months now the press have been allowed to pursue every finagling twist and turn to avoid being held to account after the horrors of the hacking scandal in the hope that memories of their illegal behaviour will gradually fade and they can then return yet again to business as usual, like the banks.
The outstanding issue is not about the details of the Leveson proposals (which have been almost universally accepted) so much as about the nature of press freedom. If press freedoms are to be preserved (and nobody dissents from that), then, it is argued, the regime must be genuinely voluntary. That immediately raises two questions. What is press freedom? And if the regime is ‘genuinely voluntary’, doesn’t that give those newspapers who have broken the law (and nearly all newspapers engaged in hacking on a big scale) a veto on anything they dislike?
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Bloggers’ letter to the Guardian raises Leveson concerns
Our editor, Jon Lansman, was a signatory to this letter in today’s Guardian, which raises concerns about the inclusion of not-for-profit multi-authored blogs on the same level as newspapers within the new press regulation framework. Other signatories include the editors of LabourList, Conservative Home and Left Foot Forward.
The Leveson inquiry was set up to address “the culture, practices and ethics of the press, including contacts between the press and politicians and the press and the police” (Comment, 19 March). Our views diverge on whether the outcome of the Leveson process – and the plans for a new regulator – are the best way forward. But where we all agree is that current attempts at regulating blogs and other small independent news websites are critically flawed.
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Cameron forced to backtrack over Leveson
ameron has just, shortly before 1pm today, conceded a deal over the Leveson proposals for press regulation which provides for everything that the Labour & LibDem parties were demanding. He did that, not because he believes it, but because he knew he would lose the vote and will do anything to avoid the humiliation of a parliamentary defeat. It is a triumph for Ed Miliband and his Labour team who have (rightly) not tried to rub his face in it – however much he might deserve it, given his back-room cabals with the newspaper publishers to block a new democratic settlement at any cost – but have consented to tease out an all-party agreement as being the best solution, so long as it contains all the elements needed to ensure that an abusive press can be effectively held to account. And this agreement does contain that. Continue reading
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Leveson should not apply to the not-for-profit blogosphere
Mark Ferguson raises an important issue which has been neglected in the last minute deal-making and it is important albeit not what most politicians are currently hacked-off about — on the important question of whether the deal meets the requirement of adequate statutory backing see the Spectator or Labour List, although be warned that they broadly reflect the (convenient) stance of the Leaders of their own side. Nor is it the question of media ownership, which politicians fail to raise but Mark Seddon does so here.
The issue is the internet – to which Leveson devoted just one page in his very lengthy report, though he has since spoken about the issue. In the long run, when the importance of print mdeia diminishes, it is what matters most and it concerns not only the so-called freedom of the press (aka the unregulated freedom of the rich press barons) but the more important freedom of speech. Continue reading