Another hole-in-the-corner deal over press regulation has demonstrated yet again the ineptitude of Lord Justice Leveson in adopting a hands-off approach when he had an historic opportunity during his year-long inquiry to investigate potential collusion between politicians and media proprietors.
The conduit for the latest charade is the Privy Council – the age old institution which among its many roles is its use by ministers as a forum to help resolve conflicts of interest while keeping the state at arm’s length.
Discussions held on Privy Council terms are always off-the-record and such is the establishment’s reliance on a mechanism where negotiations can be conducted without incriminating finger prints that it was not even on the judge’s radar during his superficial examination of the culture of shadowy negotiations between the government of the day and the all-powerful media companies.
Therefore there seems to be little chance of discovering who said what to whom and when in the lead-up to the surprise withdrawal of the Royal Charter on press regulation which had previously been agreed by the political parties. Instead the go ahead was given for consideration of a rival Royal Charter prepared by the newspaper industry.
The decision to postpone approval of the original Royal Charter was made only days before it was due to have been rubber stamped by the Privy Council in mid May 2013.
That was certainly what “Downing Street” had been briefing until the last-minute change of heart by the Prime Minister following what were said to have been behind-the-scenes pressure from “senior Conservatives”; it was then revealed by “government sources” that arrangements had in fact been made for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to put the industry’s alternative Royal Charter out for consultation..
Most newspaper comment has been restrained – proprietors and editors have no intention of damaging their own proposals for press regulation – and little explanation has been given as to why the government backed away from the all-party agreement on implementing the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry.
Six months have elapsed since the judge presented his report and recommendations and my own conclusion on studying his findings and proposals was that the rules which the Inquiry put forward to prevent ministers colluding with the media were likely to prove ineffective and nothing more than a meaningless charade.
My conclusion (see After Leveson? Published by Abramis, February 2013) was that Lord Justice Leveson turned a blind eye to the black arts of political propaganda and paid the penalty, being upstaged by the press proprietors’ spin. I deplored the judge’s lack of curiosity about the tricks of the trade of what the judge dismissed as the ‘day to day business’ of political journalism and the inquiry’s failure to get to grips with the collusion surrounding the trade in political exclusives and newspaper endorsements.
Lord Justice Leveson had the misfortune to find himself outmanoeuvred and outgunned by a pre-emptive strike by the newspaper proprietors during the long build-up to the publication of his report and recommendations in November 2012. In the end the judge had no alternative but to accept that he was virtually powerless to respond when the owners’ front organisation, the Free Speech Network, engaged in the kind of political collusion and media manipulation which he and his legal team had so pointedly refused to investigate with any thoroughness during the eight months that his inquiry took evidence. Leveson considered that ‘a number of issues...“spin”, so-called anonymous briefings and the practice of “feeding” favoured journalists with stories in return for an expectation of a certain type of treatment’ were not ‘central to the work of the inquiry’.1 Yet these were the very same techniques which the proprietors, editors and Conservative politicians used with such devastating effect to spin the line that the judge intended to turn Britain back three hundred years to what the Daily Mail predicted would be the ‘new dark age’ of a licensed press.2
His lofty declaration that the inquiry was not ‘directed at the relationships of everyday political journalism’3 became a central flaw in his recommendations regarding one of the duties set out in the inquiry’s original terms of reference, to examine ‘the future conduct of relations between politicians and the press.’ He concentrated instead on what he believed was ‘most directly relevant’ to the public interest, namely:
‘the question of a closeness which may have, or appear to have, impacted on the willingness or ability of the politicians to decide matters of public policy about the media, and specifically of policy on press standards.’4
Leveson could hardly be faulted on the broad sweep of the Inquiry’s investigation into the controversies surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of four leading British newspapers and News Corporation’s aborted bid to take total control of BSkyB but by turning his back on the issue of press standards and ethics as they applied to political journalism, the judge failed to inquire into, let alone appeared to show any understanding of, what after all has been the covert daily currency of ‘relations between politicians and the press.’ Proprietors and politicians have always been careful to avoid scrutiny of their two-way trade in favourable press reporting in return for a sympathetic approach towards media ownership and regulation. Therefore the very occasional insight into this hitherto hidden relationship could be all the more revealing.
What did the judge think David Cameron had in mind when he gave the Inquiry his explanation for the October 2009 text message from Rebekah Brooks saying that ‘professionally we’re definitely in this together!’?5 Cameron told the judge it meant that he as future Prime Minister and she as the newly-appointed CEO of News International ‘were going to be pushing the same political agenda’.6 Neither Leveson nor the Inquiry’s leading counsel Robert Jay QC thought it worth asking either Cameron or Brooks how delivery of this shared ‘political agenda’ had worked out in practice during the first year of his Premiership, namely in the period before revelations about the phone hacking scandal forced the closure of the News of the World in July 2011 and then the withdrawal of News Corporation’s attempt to take total control of BSkyB. The evidence was there for the asking. Under her editorship (and later as News International’s chief executive) the Sun delivered unquestioning support to Cameron’s campaigns and initiatives both before and in the twelve months immediately following the 2010 general election; the propaganda advantage this gave the Conservatives could not be divorced from the mood music surrounding the almost instant imposition of a six-year freeze in the BBC licence fee in October 2010 or the about-to-be-signed-off bid for total ownership of BSkyB the following July.
Woefully inadequate strengthening of Ministerial Code
When the Free Speech Network, representing publishers, editors and other media groups, unleashed its co-ordinated campaign to pre-empt and then to thwart Leveson’s over-riding conclusion that independent press regulation would require the backing of legislation, the opportunity for pertinent questions had passed; the report makes clear that the judge’s mindset all along was that his chosen path was correct, that he believed he was right to have concentrated on the way the newspaper owners had tried to lobby ministers in person about media policy and press standards rather than get sidetracked by ‘everyday political journalism’ and the role of newspaper campaigns. But had he missed a rare opportunity to question proprietors, editors and also leading politicians about the ways in which the daily papers could be used to twist the news agenda to their own commercial and political advantage?
Leveson was adamant this was not his terrain; he reminded readers of his report that he had ‘already put beyond doubt that I emphatically do not see any case at all for interference in the day to day business of the interaction between journalist and politician.’7 But the contradictions and missed opportunities were highlighted by the plaintive line, repeated at his launch news conference, that even before he had concluded his report the newspapers had ‘started using their considerable megaphones for their own purposes’.8 If the judge had taken a greater interest in the mechanics of political campaigning by the press – and its relevance to the government of the day – he could well have anticipated the Free Speech Network’s propaganda offensive and he might perhaps have been able to take evasive action. His muddled thinking also resulted in a woefully inadequate attempt to strengthen the Ministerial Code as it related to ‘meetings with media proprietors, editors and senior executives at which their commercial interests are discussed’.9
Perhaps not surprisingly in view of his narrow focus and his conclusion that ‘only very limited steps’10 were needed to ‘enhance’ the Ministerial Code, my own evidence to the inquiry did not see the light of day. I had set out proposals for a far more transparent code of conduct designed to keep track of collusion between politicians and the press, a requirement which hopefully would have exposed any hidden dealings over the ‘considerable megaphones’ which were subsequently directed at the judge. Ministers would have had to disclose their contact with groups such as the Press Complaints Commission, the Press Standards Board of Finance and the Free Speech Network and also any ministerial link-ups with those newspapers which campaigned so vociferously on the industry’s behalf against state interference.
Dazzled by Blair’s news management but a lack of interest in Cameron’s spin routines
Leveson rarely held back when offering his opinions on the state of ‘everyday political journalism’. He found nothing which ‘gave rise to any legitimate concern’ about the way information flows from the state to the press; he thought the interaction between politicians and newspapers was in ‘robust good health’.11 But the judge’s pronouncements had clearly not been thought through because he repeatedly tripped himself up when offering his reflections on the impact of government news management over the last thirty to thirty-five years. He contradicted his initial assertion about the robustness of the ‘free-flowing interaction between politicians and the press’ by concluding later in the report, that politicians had been conducting themselves in a way which had not served the public interest, so as:
‘to seek to control (if not manipulate) the supply of news and information to the public in return for expected or hoped-for favourable treatment by sections of the press beyond that which is appropriate or an inevitable by product of politics in a 24-7 media age, but to a degree and by means other than the fair and reasonable partisan conduct of public debate’. 12
No evidence was quoted by the judge to support this conclusion, not least because there had been no concerted attempt during the Inquiry to test his opinions. Nonetheless he did accept that the extent to which politicians attempted to manipulate press coverage was ‘a thread running through a quantity of the evidence’ and it did offer the prospect of an insight into ‘where power lies’.13 Indeed Leveson and his counsel Robert Jay had seemed in awe of the news management techniques exercised by Tony Blair’s government. Leveson quoted at length from the evidence of Lord (Peter) Mandelson and Alastair Campbell; the judge acknowledged that Campbell’s role was certainly one that ‘trod new ground’ but he concluded that New Labour became ‘a victim of its own success, and resulted in diminishing public confidence in political communications’.14
Given his acknowledgement of the lengths to which politicians had gone in previous years to manage the news agenda, Leveson’s failure to follow through the lasting impact of New Labour’s ‘spin’ routines was all the more surprising. He appeared oblivious to the fact that many of the news management techniques of the Blair era had become entrenched in Whitehall; the judge certainly gave every impression of having pulled his punches when assessing the media strategies adopted by David Cameron and the Coalition government. Andy Coulson’s appointment in May 2007 as the Conservative Party’s head of communications reflected the fact that Cameron had been as desperate as Blair had been to hire a media technician who understood the mindset of the tabloid newspapers and who could withstand the pressures of the 24-7 news agenda. Coulson transformed Cameron’s ability to connect with the national press as effectively as Campbell had done a decade earlier for Blair but the significance of Coulson’s achievements both before the 2010 general election and then in government seemed to have passed Leveson by.
The sure touch of the former News of the World editor in guiding the Conservatives’ media offensive was acknowledged in October 2008 when he was named public relations professional of the year by PR Week. Danny Rogers, the editor, considered Coulson’s main strength was his capacity for damage limitation; time and again he ‘gained control of a story by responding quickly and decisively’. Coulson remained in close contact with former colleagues at News International, especially Rebekah Brooks, then editor of the Sun, and during his three years as the Conservative Party’s top spin doctor, the breadth of his experience of campaigning journalism was soon being reflected in the pages of the Murdoch press.
Cameron was quick to exploit the Sun’s campaign for greater support for ‘Our Boys’ serving in Iraq and Afghanistan; he became the only party leader to endorse with a signed article the Sun’s petition for the dismissal of the social workers who were said to have failed ‘Baby P’, a campaign which attracted 1.2 million signatures and resulted in the dismissal of Sharon Shoesmith, head of children’s services for the London Borough of HarHaringey. Under Coulson’s guidance Cameron gained favourable headlines to the disadvantage of the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown when in May 2009 the Daily Telegraph began publishing its highly-acclaimed run of exclusive stories exposing the scandal of MPs’ expenses.
Leveson’s lack of curiosity and failure to explore Cameron’s dependence on Coulson’s expertise was all too apparent when the Prime Minister and his former director of communications gave evidence to the inquiry. In the eight months Coulson served in Downing Street as the government’s media chief, the Cameron-Coulson-Brooks partnership became highly effective in ‘pushing the same political agenda’ in support of the newly-elected Premier. Two Sun campaigns in the first few months of the new administration, which were both endorsed with his signed articles, were a graphic illustration of Brooks’ 2009 text message to Cameron that ‘professionally we’re definitely in this together’. Here was the country’s biggest selling newspaper providing favourable and sustained political propaganda on behalf of the Prime Minister just as the Coalition government was about to take critical decisions on the future of both the BBC and BSkyB. But the behind-the-scenes negotiations which must have preceded publication of these endorsements were not mentioned in Cameron’s quarterly declaration of his meetings with ‘newspaper and other media proprietors, senior editors and executives’; nor would the contact which must have taken place been picked up by the enhancements to the Ministerial Code which were proposed by Lord Justice Leveson. On the other hand the draft code of conduct which I had submitted to the Inquiry as part of my evidence would have demanded far greater transparency:
‘Full declaration is also required of negotiations aimed at securing party political promotions in newspapers and other media outlets e.g. signed articles by Prime Ministers, party or government endorsements and exclusive interviews to promote press campaigns’.15
The shared ‘political agenda’ of Cameron and Brooks as delivered by the Sun
A Sun campaign to cut the bill for welfare payments by exposing ‘benefit scroungers’ was a tailor-made illustration of the shared ‘political agenda’ of Cameron and Brooks – and also of Coulson’s ability to provide the impetus for delivering it by crafting headline-grabbing coverage. In August 2010, within weeks of the Coalition’s post-election emergency budget, the paper launched a hotline for readers to expose ‘feckless benefit claimants’. A two-page spread under the banner headline ‘Help us stop £1.5 billion benefit scroungers’,16 featured a prominent signed article by the Prime Minister in which he promised that ‘people will not get away with fraud’:
‘You know the people I mean. You walk down the road on your way to work and you see the curtains drawn in their house.’17
Cameron’s phrase about ‘curtains drawn’ would become part of the government’s mantra when justifying the measures being taken to tackle benefit abuse; the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, used the image repeatedly although occasionally he tweaked the phraseology. In his speech at the 2012 Conservative Party conference he referred to the ‘shift worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits’, a description he repeated almost word for word when delivering his 2012 Autumn statement.
Few media strategists would doubt the long-term impact and effectiveness of the Sun’s ‘scroungers’ campaign. Week after week, following tip-offs from neighbours, the paper exposed ‘disabled spongers cheating the benefit system’; stories exposing benefit fraud also became the regular fare of other tabloid newspapers. A study published by the University of Kent18 into the stigma attached to claiming benefits included a word search of 6,612 newspaper articles published between 1995 and 2011. It revealed an increasingly negative vocabulary. The Sun was way out in front: 78 per cent of its stories used negative words, followed by the Daily Express (68 per cent) and Daily Mail (67 per cent). The report said the shift in language and ‘the rise in a scrounger discourse is a genuine phenomenon’, a tribute if one was needed to the Sun’s pursuit of the Cameron-Brooks’ political agenda.
‘We are all in this together?’
Cameron’s declaration of his meetings with senior media representatives failed to make any mention of another well-planned but ultimately ineffectual propaganda offensive by the Sun to re-launch the Conservative Party’s ‘Big Society’ initiative. A signed article by the Prime Minister was spread across two pages and offered him a valuable platform to promote a concept in which he had already invested considerable political capital: ‘Yes, my Big Society plan is ambitious but I make no apology for that...’19
Leveson’s reflections on the media strategy which Cameron had adopted both before and after the 2010 General Election could hardly have been any shallower but were only to be expected given the simplistic and rather inept level of questioning. George Osborne, who recommended that the Conservative Party should appoint Andy Coulson as its ‘spin doctor in chief’, told the inquiry that he did not think there was ‘a particular strategy for the Sun’20 but at no point was he asked why it was, as my evidence had illustrated, that Cameron had supplied many more signed articles to the Sun than to any other national newspaper. Osborne acknowledged that Coulson did advise Cameron on how ‘to talk to proprietors and editors and so on’21 but at no point was the Chancellor of the Exchequer challenged on the fact that the Murdoch press had provided such a regular and extensive platform for Cameron both as Conservative Party leader and then Prime Minister. Leveson concluded that ultimately Rebekah Brooks’ text message saying ‘we’re definitely in this together’ did seems to be more a question of ‘News International being “in it together” with Cameron, and seeking to get his messages across for him’.22 But the judge had not inquired either about the mechanics involved or sought to establish how many ‘messages’ the Sun had published on the Prime Minister’s behalf. Similarly when Cameron told the Inquiry that his meeting with Rupert Murdoch in Downing Street in May 2010, within days of the Coalition government taking office, was an opportunity to ‘thank him for his support’23 there were no follow-up interrogation as to why the backing of the News International titles had been so important. When Rupert Murdoch was asked about his visit to the Prime Minister, he recalled Cameron having thanked him ‘for the support of our papers’24 but again there was no attempt to probe the significance of the backing Murdoch’s newspapers had given to the Conservatives. Rather than tackle the real substance of a press proprietor’s political patronage the judge’s report reproduced chapter and verse of Robert Jay’s amusing but fatuous grandstanding with Murdoch about why he went through the back door of No 10 rather the front door in Downing Street.
Other absurdities peppered the report: Leveson thought it noteworthy to mention that despite the pre-election support afforded to Cameron by the Murdoch press there had been ‘noticeably critical coverage’25 in the News International titles since the phone hacking scandal reached its apex. Detecting a shift in the tone of the Sun’s reportage once the Inquiry began taking evidence was perhaps only to be expected; what was of far greater significance was their support for Cameron which continued in the months immediately after the 2010 election, a factor which seemed to have completely escaped the attention of the Inquiry’s legal team.
In the judge’s assessment the ‘language of trades and deals’ was ‘far too crude’ when trying to get the measure of ministers’ relationships with Rupert Murdoch; sometimes the ‘very greatest power’ was exercised without having to ask and Murdoch’s editors knew the basic ground-rules, so did the politicians. Nonetheless Leveson concluded that a case by case examination of the policies introduced over a long period, failed to demonstrate that ‘politicians compromised themselves or their policies to favour Murdoch’s business interests directly’. 26
Cameron’s amendments to Ministerial Code made a mockery of the need for transparency
In my evidence to the inquiry I said the absence of any mention of the way the Prime Minister had worked hand in glove with the Sun on campaigns such as ‘benefits scroungers’ and the ‘Big Society’ demonstrated the ‘sheer inadequacy’ of the additional declarations which Cameron had asked all ministers to make in July 2011 as part of his response to the phone hacking scandal and the appointment of Lord Justice Leveson. An immediate amendment to the Ministerial Code required ministers to ‘record all meetings with newspaper and other media proprietors, senior editors and executives – regardless of the nature of the meeting’.
Within a matter of days Cameron, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and the leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, listed their meetings since taking office. But their declarations made a mockery of the need for greater transparency because except for identifying who, when and where they met the lists gave no hint as to either the purpose or the outcome of their deliberations. Cameron used the catch-all term ‘general discussion’ alongside eight of the entries for meetings with Rupert or James Murdoch or one or other of their News International editors. There was no indication of the topics which had been discussed nor was there any clue as to what transpired during Rebekah Brooks’ visits to Chequers or the Prime Minister’s social engagements with James Murdoch and other News International executives.
Negotiations with the Sun’s editorial team over the Prime Minister’s two signed articles might have been brokered by Andy Coulson or could have been conducted by the Downing Street team of politically-appointed special advisers but the point remained: politicians and their ‘spin doctors’ socialised with media proprietors, editors and executives for a purpose and the outcome needed to be declared. I said in my evidence that any recommendations which Leveson made about the ‘future conduct of relations between politicians and the press’ would have to require greater transparency. If such contact was to be policed effectively, then Leveson had to insist that ministers could no longer hide behind terms like ‘general discussion’.
In the event the judge focussed almost entirely on what he said was the ‘limited nature of the problem...the arena within which decisions about public policy relating to the media are lobbied about and, ultimately, taken’.27 Politicians had spent ‘too much time and effort on the press’ and had risked ‘actual or potential conflict of interest’ and had done so ‘in dealing with sources of influence which are, in themselves, powerful and unaccountable’. Given the strength of Leveson’s strictures about relationships having for some years been ‘too close to give sufficient grounds for confidence that fear or favour have not been operative factors’,28 his conclusion that he did not need to concern himself with the ‘day to day business’ of political journalism was inexplicable. His conclusion was all the more confusing because he acknowledged there was an ‘inevitable “trading” element’ to the relationship because politicians could offer journalists ‘exclusive news and exclusive relationships’.29
Having failed to take on board why Cameron’s declarations amounted to an empty gesture, the judge’s template for an enhanced Ministerial Code lacked the teeth to deliver a new era of openness. Leveson ignored my call for greater clarity about the purpose and outcome of discussions which had taken place on either formal or social occasions and without an explanation about the nature of such contact, and the outlawing of such euphemisms as ‘general discussion’, the declarations would remain a meaningless charade. While Leveson was to be applauded for recommending greater transparency about the frequency and intensity of such dialogue he had skirted round the elephant in the room: newspaper endorsements and favourable press propaganda were at the heart of the relationship between proprietors and politicians and deserved far greater attention than a few passing mentions in the judge’s report and recommendations.
Paying the penalty for turning a blind eye to impact of newspaper campaigns
As a first step towards ‘more transparent relationships’ Leveson suggested that one way to build on the Ministerial Code would be for all the political leaders to face up to the erosion in public confidence. He recommended they should:
‘Reflect constructively on the merits of publishing on behalf of their party a statement setting out, for the public, an explanation of the approach they propose to take as a matter of party policy in conducting relationships with the press’.30
Leveson believed the value of such an approach was that it would force the party leaders to recognise the potential pitfalls of such relationships and require them to set out the rules by which they expected to be judged when it came to ‘safeguarding a free and responsible press’. Leveson offered no explanation as to why he had singled out the Press rather than make a recommendation which would have applied to the media at large and required political parties to publish a statement of intent regarding their approach not only to the press but also to radio and television, as well today’s burgeoning on-line output. Any political party which was tempted to follow his suggestion would have no alternative but to promise an even handed approach in their dealings with all media organisations and journalists otherwise it would lack credibility and, in such a highly-competitive market place, only cause division between the press and other news outlets.
When it came to his proposals for extending the scope of the Ministerial Code, the judge thought there was a real risk of a blurring of the boundaries between ‘political or private activities’ on the one hand and the ‘conduct of government business’ on the other. Amendments to the code introduced by David Cameron in July 2011 did not provide sufficient clarity about the difference between ‘party’ or ‘private’ time and he urged senior politicians to give ‘very serious consideration’ to providing ‘a more rounded picture’.31 Future obligations for greater transparency should also apply to the leader and front bench of the Official Opposition and to opposition parties which aspired to holding a balance of executive power; Leveson welcomed the commitment by the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband to accept similar standards. To ensure that senior politicians respected public perceptions ‘fairly and squarely’ party leaders, ministers and front bench Opposition spokesman should also consider publishing the ‘simple fact of long term relationships with media proprietors, newspaper editors or senior executives’.32 In order to prevent the circumvention of transparency by third-party agents or ‘back channels’, he recommended that the interaction of the respective agents of senior politicians and proprietors, editors and senior executives should also be declared, such as:
‘junior political colleagues, special advisers and civil servants on the political side, and representatives and professional lobbyists on the press side’. 33
A further improvement in the visibility of such relationships could be achieved through specific guidelines for contact other than by face to face meetings, by introducing a transparency obligation to cover correspondence, phone, text and e-mail. Exhaustive new requirements would be impractical, unnecessary and counter-productive but Leveson did not consider it need be:
‘either intrusive or burdensome for politicians to indicate on a quarterly basis, in relation to any individual senior principal within the press (or their agents), by way of general estimate, something about the frequency or density of such interactions...I do not suggest there is any case for descending into detail or content’.34
.By restricting his remit simply to cover lobbying about the commercial interests of the press, his recommendations were limited to requiring a declaration of the ‘general nature of any discussion of media policy issues’ at meetings; the same requirement applied to other contact:
‘A fair and reasonably complete picture by way of general estimate only, of the frequency or density of other interaction (including correspondence, phone, text and email) but not necessarily including content’.35
But unless there was some clue as to the purpose or content of meetings other than those solely related to the business interests of media companies or issues relating to press standards, a simple calculation of the ‘frequency or density’ of such contact was hardly likely to throw any light on the hidden trade in political endorsements by the press, the deliberate leaking of government announcements or the supply of exclusive stories, privileged access and signed articles.
Leveson and his team had failed to pick up on the inadequacy of the declaration procedure within the existing Ministerial Code. In their daily round of engagements on government or political business, or at social occasions, ministers might have all kind of conversations or contact with media representatives; a minister’s quarterly declaration should at least give some hint of the topics discussed. By allowing the continued use of terms such as ‘general discussion’ Leveson had ignored the reality of the ‘everyday’ discourse between politicians and the press and I considered his recommendations for ‘a moderate, achievable move in the direction of further transparency’ were hardly likely to produce the improvement in public confidence which he thought was needed.
Free Speech by Proprietors?
Despite having missed his own opportunity to probe and reflect on the potential impact of newspaper campaigns, and having fallen well short of providing a framework which might have succeeded in exposing the propaganda value of collusion between politicians and the press, Leveson did not let the proprietors’ offensive against him pass entirely without comment. He had clearly been irritated by a barrage of negative publicity in the weeks leading up to the publication of his conclusions and recommendations. He made no direct reference to the effectiveness of the Free Speech Network in marshalling a united front against him among newspaper and magazine editors or its success in orchestrating a timely run of exclusive interviews and signed articles from sympathetic Conservative politicians which urged the government to safeguard the freedom of the press. Nevertheless the judge’s annoyance was all too obvious notwithstanding his convoluted phraseology. He emphasised the ‘immediate need’ for politicians to reflect on his suggestions for greater transparency about meetings and contacts, not least in relation to ‘interactions’ relevant to contents of his report:
‘I encourage politicians to reflect on the legitimate public interest in understanding at least something about the interactions they have had with the press (whether direct or indirect) on the subject matter of the inquiry. It is clear from all that has been put into the public domain that the press and the politicians have been closely engaged on this and doubtless will continue to be. The opportunity for transparency is obvious.’36
‘Don’t even think about regulating Britain’s free press’37 was the clarion call of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, as the campaign by the Free Speech Network reached its crescendo in the weeks before Leveson published his recommendations. Conservative politicians lined up with interviews and articles to support full page advertisements in the national dailies which painted a lurid picture of how state regulation of newspapers would turn the clock back more three hundred years to the days of a licensed press. ‘If the press was shackled would any of this ever have happened?’38 was the bold question over reproductions of front-page exclusive stories which illustrated how successive British politicians had been held to account. Another advertisement featured photographs of dictators around the world who did ‘believe in state control of the press’39, a point echoed by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, in his declaration that Britain should ‘Stand firm for a free press’.40 John Whittingdale, Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, feared the judge was about to send ‘a very dangerous message’ that needed to be challenged: ‘State controls on press would be a green light to tyrants’.41 Journalists from around the world provided supportive commentary: ‘Shackle UK press and world suffers’, said the Pakistani journalist Afzal Butt:42 ‘Your press is envy of the world because it’s free,’43 was the verdict of Jurgen Kronig, German head of the Foreign Press Association in London.
Given the way Conservative-supporting newspapers had mobilised their campaign against state regulation, David Cameron inevitably had newspaper editors and many political commentators singing his praises after he told MPs it would be a dereliction of their duty to the House of Commons, which had ‘stood up for freedom and a free press year after year, century after century, to cross the Rubicon by legislating on the press without thinking about it carefully first’. His warning that the press had a ‘limited period of time’ to accept Leveson’s proposals for a regulator independent of editors heralded the start of detailed negotiations. But the call by the judge for politicians to reflect on the ‘immediate need’ for greater transparency about their ‘interactions’ in the weeks leading up to the publication of his report seemed a vain hope.
The networking that had gone on behind the scenes involving press proprietors, editors and sympathetic Conservative politicians was precisely the kind of ‘interaction’ which was well below the radar of the existing Ministerial Code and the enhanced regime proposed by Leveson. When the judge had the opportunity to probe the collusive relationships that help sustain Britain’s politicised free press he turned a blind eye and as a result paid the penalty. Having failed to explore how newspaper owners could collude with the government of the day to promote and sustain a shared ‘political agenda’, Leveson was hardly in a position to complain if he found his own objectivity was being questioned and the Prime Minister was signalling his intention to side step the full force of the Inquiry’s recommendations well before they had even been published.
1 Leveson Report, Vol. III, page 1430
2 Daily Mail (3 November 2012) ‘The New Dark Age’
3 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1118
4 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1118
5 Leveson Report, Vol. III, page 1194
6 Leveson Report, Vol. III, page 1195
7 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1450
8 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1458
9 Leveson Report, Vol. III, page 1213
10 Leveson Report, executive summary, page 29
11 Leveson Report, executive summary, page 25
12 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1439
13 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1156
14 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page1161
15 Jones, Nicholas, unpublished evidence submitted to Leveson Inquiry April 2012
16 Sun (12 August 2010) ‘Help us stop £1.5 billion benefit scroungers’
17 Cameron, David, article, Sun (12 August 2010) ‘People will not get away with fraud’
18 Elizabeth Finn Care/University of Kent (2012), Benefits Stigma in Britain
19 Sun (8 October 2010) Britain’s verdict on PM’s vision
20 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1179
21 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1182
22 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1195
23 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1216
24 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1216
25 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1217
26 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1432
27 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1450
28 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1119
29 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1446
30 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1452
31 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1454
32 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1457
33 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1454
34 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1456
35 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1457
36 Leveson Report, Vol.III, page 1459
37 Daily Mail (22 November 2012)
38 The Mail on Sunday (25 November 2012)
39 Sun (22 November 2012)
40 Daily Mail (26 November 2012)
41 Daily Mail (18 November 2012)
42 Sun (27 November 2012)
43 Daily Mirror (26 November 2012)