Abstract
It began with the hacking of an abducted schoolgirl’s phone.
In July 2011, the Guardian revealed that Milly Dowler’s mobile phone had been hacked by the News of the World around the time of her disappearance in March 2002, triggering a public outcry, the closure of the Sunday tabloid itself and the setting up of the Leveson Inquiry to examine press ethics, culture and practices. While the Metropolitan and Surrey police forces have since revealed that it is impossible to say with any certainty that the tabloid deleted the messages that caused the teenager’s family to have false hope she was alive, it is uncontested that the paper accessed her voicemails. The police have not been able to pin down what caused the messages on Milly’s phone to clear.
The first weeks of evidence confirmed what we knew: of course the tabloids use underhand methods to get stories. Paps camping outside the homes of celebrities and ordinary citizens? Unsurprising. An unfaithful celebrity cultivating the ‘family man’ image? Red-top fodder.
Yet despite the appetite for scandal in our culture – ‘the last big throwback to Victorian England’, to quote former chief secretary to the Treasury and kiss-and-tell victim David Mellor – the British public was rarely present at the inquiry.
It often felt as if journalism was in the dock. In May, Independent on Sunday editor John Mullin was summoned to explain how he had sourced a story that, the inquiry claimed, contained elements from Andy Coulson’s witness statement, which was not yet public. An unwavering Mullin explained that the story was down to ‘good honest journalism’ based on three independent sources, but that didn’t stop some grandstanding from counsel David Barr, who continued to press Mullin. No further action was taken by Leveson on the matter, but at that moment the gulf between journalists and the inquiry’s lawyers had never seemed quite so vast.
Moments of chill also spiralled into ridicule. Simon Walters of the Mail on Sunday was asked by a confident Carine Patry-Hoskins whether using the words ‘at last’ in a headline represented a degree of comment or opinion. Walters, unsure if he had any involvement with the online version of the article in question, said it was ‘pretty mild’ by way of comment.
Crime reporters also grew exasperated as they had to explain social engagements with police officers – lunch, coffee, dinner, whether or not alcohol was involved – with many lamenting that previously open channels of communication had been shut down in the wake of the inquiry.
But for all its sometimes excessive scrutiny and theatrics, this inquiry matters because the future of the British press is in its hands. It is a matter of weeks before LJL recommends a new regulatory system. Various suggestions have been put to him: a press-card model, a contractual system, a body able to fine errant newspapers up to £1 million and a system backed by legislation to resolve privacy cases.
Calls against statutory regulation have been boisterous, although several titles have said they see the possibility for statutory underpinning of a new system. With onlookers unable to predict his thinking, Leveson has said any fears of censorship or curbing our cherished press freedom are misplaced.
Misplaced or not, there is a strong personal and professional investment in the outcome. John Lloyd put it best in the Financial Times when he described how the press had developed in a way that was ‘organically bohemian, anti-authoritarian, possibly over-emotional . . . but nevertheless free’.
There was, he said, an attachment to retaining ‘the right to be irresponsible’, which might explain aversions to the more stringent regulation that binds the legal and medical professions.
Exposed illegality is being dealt with, and rightly so. But it comes back to culture: unethical newsroom practices flourished because they could; only stronger editorial governance can deal with them. But this must be balanced by public interest defences across the array of criminal offences that apply to the media.
If the state regulates the press, then the press, to quote Ian Hislop, ‘no longer regulates the state’. Perhaps there are nuances Leveson can find in his new system, but he, unlike the journalists his recommendations will affect, will not have to deal with the emotional fallout.