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Now Northcliffe closes Kent papers

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Northcliffe Media has announced that the Medway News and the East Kent Gazette are to close with the loss of 38 jobs.

It is the result of the collapse of the proposed sale of the papers (plus five others) to the KM group following the deal being referred in October to the Competition Commission by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

Northcliffe has decided that it is no longer financially viable to publish the papers and, subject to consultation with staff, both titles are expected to cease publication in early December.

Other titles in the company's division, known as Kent Regional News & Media, are likely to be amalgamated. Northcliffe's managing director, Steve Auckland, said the OFT decision left the company "with no choice but to consider closing these titles with the resulting job losses."

The East Kent Gazette had an audited circulation in the January-June period this year of 13,975, though 45% were given away free.

As for the Medway News, more than 90% of its 53,000 weekly copies are distributed for free.

As I reported earlier today, KM group's direct response to the OFT decision has been to announce up to 10 redundancies.

I reiterate that the OFT's decision was disastrous and it was heavily criticised across the industry, from left and right and centre.

Among the leading critics were Lord (Guy) Black (here), Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger (here), Neil Fowler (here), and Trinity Mirror (here).

I cannot see how, in conscience, the OFT can defend its decision.

Source: Northcliffe Media


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Lachlan Murdoch under pressure over News Corp political bribery claim

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Former Australian senator alleges senior executives promised favourable coverage in return for political favours

A former politician has stepped up his allegations that News Corporation's Australian media business tried to bribe him to vote against a change to media law.

Former Australian senator Bill O'Chee accused Rupert Murdoch's eldest son, Lachlan, of being aware of elements of the conversation when the offer was made.

However, a witness who was present when Lachlan Murdoch spoke to O'Chee said the conversation was brief and consisted of "polite hellos".

Australian police are investigating News Corp subsidiary News Ltd which owns more than 100 newspapers including the Australian and interests including pay-TV firm Foxtel, after receiving a nine-page statement from O'Chee.

O'Chee, a Queensland senator between 1990 and 1999, alleged that an unnamed News Ltd executive said he would be "taken care of" – that he would receive favourable coverage in the company's titles – if he voted against a change in media law.

He said the offer was made at a lunch on 13 June 1998 which included Malcolm Colless, a veteran News Ltd executive, and David Russell, who was then state president of the National party.

O'Chee, whom it is reported had a "long and difficult" relationship with the Murdoch press, now claims that Lachlan Murdoch, who was dining in separately in the same restaurant, was party to at least some of the discussions.

"I'm glad that the Australian federal police is going to investigate it and I hope they investigate it extremely thoroughly," O'Chee told the Associated Press. "It would just be helpful to all concerned if Lachlan Murdoch now admitted the fact that he was present during that lunch, or portions of that lunch, when pay TV was discussed."

A spokesman for Lachlan Murdoch, who was a senior News Corp executive at the time, reiterated his previous position that he could not recall the lunch.

Lachlan Murdoch's lunch was with Chris Mitchell – then editor of the Courier Mail and currently editor of News Corp-owned the Australian – who acknowledged that they encountered O'Chee as they were leaving the restaurant but said he was unaware of an attempt to lobby for his vote.

In a statement to MediaGuardian, Mitchell acknowledged that they did stop at O'Chee's table, but said it was only for "a minute" to trade "polite hellos".

"Lachlan and I were leaving the restaurant, Pier Nine, and I saw the table in question on the way out," he added. "It is a large restaurant that seats a few hundred so it is unsurprising I did not see senator O'Chee earlier. I stopped with Lachlan and introduced him to the senator. We did not sit down and spoke for a minute before we left to return to work. There was no discussion of any particular subject. Only polite hellos."

Details emerged on Wednesday in the Sydney Morning Herald, owned by News Corp rival Fairfax, which claims to have seen O'Chee's nine-page statement to police.

O'Chee claims he was told he could enjoy a "special relationship" whereby he would receive favourable news coverage if he voted against the introduction of the Television Broadcasting Services (Digital Conversion) Act.

The proposed legislation was for the creation of digital TV in Australia, which was opposed by News Ltd because it would give free-to-air broadcasters up to six new channels each at no cost.

After details of the police investigation emerged, News Ltd published a statement by John Hartigan, chief executive and chairman of the group, "categorically denying" the allegations and O'Chee's version of events.

News Ltd said Colless confirmed that "no improper conversation" took place at his lunch with O'Chee.

"The two other guests at the lunch with Mr Colless and Mr O'Chee have said they did not hear any improper conversations," News Ltd added.

News Ltd did not name the other guests at the lunch. The Australian press has reported Russell, then state president of the National party, was present.

Hartigan said neither News Ltd nor Colless had been contacted by Australian police.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

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Leveson inquiry: 'Newspapers made my life go up in flames after celebrity dates'

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Witness tells inquiry in private of nine months of harassment and surveillance they suffered at hands of unnamed papers

An "ordinary" member of the public has told the Leveson inquiry how their life went "up in flames" after a handful of dates with a celebrity.

The witness, only known as HJK, gave evidence in private on Thursday just before Sienna Miller, but a redacted transcript of the hearing details allegations of nine months of surveillance, harrassment and blagging by unnamed newspapers which suspected this person was having a romance with a star, known as X.

He or she – their sex is not identified – said the damage caused by the paper infected both this home life and work.

The relationship with X ended abruptly because X wrongly thought HJK was a "kiss-and-tell" merchant, their boss subjected them to "bullying" and "victimisation" and they nearly lost a client after a key voicemail was deleted from their mobile phone without their knowledge.

HJK chronicled nine months of harassment starting with a blagging incident in April 2006. It was shortly after they had started dating X and they got a phone call supposedly from the Royal Mail saying they had a parcel for them but that the label had been torn off.

"Amazingly my mobile number was on it, so they were inquiring where they should deliver the parcel," they added.

HJK said the request was "strange" but they volunteered their address thinking the parcel must have come from one of their family. "But the way the individual said 'thank you' and the way he said it was suspiciously jubilant," noted HJK.

One Saturday later that month, a journalist arrived at their door and asked "Are you in a relationship with X?". At this point HJK made the connection with the "Royal Mail" call.

"I felt extremely harassed, because you have to understand when we talked about dating this person that I was in an embryonic relationship with this person, we'd just had a few dates really, so I was surprised of the short amount of time it took for someone to be at my doorstep," HJK said.

HJK alerted X to the call and X "put a stop to it" because they felt HJK now appeared to be "someone who is going to do a kiss-and-tell story".

Later that day the journalist phoned HJK and offered money for their story. HJK said they were now "absolutely panicking" that something was going to appear in the papers as they had only been dating X for three weeks.

HJK felt they would have to warn their boss, who was "unsympathetic". Over the following months "a pattern of bullying and victimisation started appearing, especially in public". There was also a row with a client with whom HJK's company had been desperate to seal a deal. Their voicemail had been deleted from HJK's phone.

Eventually HJK's mobile phone company alerted them to say their account had been compromised. HJK went to the police "at least three times" but they did not respond until the person threatened to go to Channel 4 News.

At that point they were told there were going to be arrests and the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were later arrested.

Six months after the initial call, HJK said the surveillance continued with photographers stalking them. HJK also suspected their medical records were seen by the paper after a photographer "popped out in front of us" after the person were in hospital. "They were still digging into my life," said HJK.

Later the police confirmed to HJK that their details including telephone numbers, work mobile and home, passwords and information about X were in Mulcaire's notes.

"I felt strangely relieved that I hadn't dreamed the story," HJK told Leveson. But it was "despicable". "I felt very harassed for the best part of nine months and I witnessed my life go up in flames."

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

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Leveson inquiry: Daily Mail publisher seeks to overturn anonymity ruling

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Associated Newspapers argues decision to allow anonymous witnesses 'contravenes the principles of natural justice'

Associated Newspapers is seeking a judicial review of Lord Justice Leveson's decision to allow witnesses including journalists to give anonymous evidence to his inquiry into media standards.

The Daily Mail publisher wants to reverse a decision Leveson made following approaches from a number of individuals who claimed they wanted to give evidence anonymously without fear of reprisal.

In a claim form issued to the high court, Associated cites four legal reasons to overturn the anonymity ruling.

The publisher said it "fails to give effect to the principle of open justice"; that it would "contravene the principles of natural justice"; and that it infringes the rights of the newspaper group and others under article 10 of the Human Rights Act, which gives the right to free expression. It also argues that Leveson fails to identify a public interest to justify his decision.

In his ruling on 9 November, Leveson admitted that the "best evidence" he could hear is that which comes from an "identified witness" whose testimony can be tested in open court.

He conceded that anonymous witnesses, by their nature, could not be tested fully because "the chapter and verse necessary to exemplify the evidence might identify both the newspaper, and, ultimately the source".

But, he said as his inquiry was not aiming to make any findings about the behaviour of any individual newspaper or editor, anonymous evidence would be allowed as it would help him put evidence that he heard about press "culture and practices into context".

Leveson also said he did not wish to prejudice any police investigations and agreed with a submission by Associated Newspapers' barrister that any application for anonymity "must receive intense scrutiny".

Leveson said in his ruling that the name of the newspaper to which the evidence rates and the identity of any manager who is criticised would remain anonymised.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

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Why discourage women from reporting on the Tahrir Squre protests? | Jenny Kleeman

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Reporters Sans Frontieres is wrong to call on editors to stop sending female journalists to cover the protests in Tahrir Square

It's a sad day when a non-profit organisation devoted to campaigning for freedom of the press recommends that the freedom of thousands of journalists be restricted. But that's what happened yesterday, when Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) issued a statement calling on editors to stop sending female journalists to cover the protests in Egypt's Tahrir Square. The sexual assault of Caroline Sinz, a reporter for public TV station France 3, meant it was too dangerous for women to be covering the Cairo uprisings. RSF's statement said: "This is at least the third time a woman reporter has been sexually assaulted since the start of the Egyptian revolution. Media should take this into account and for the time being stop sending female journalists to cover the situation in Egypt."

All journalists – men and women, producers and reporters, cameramen, photographers and fixers – know the risks involved in working in a hostile environment. The editors who send us generally know them too. With proper training, funding and a good support team around us both at home and in the field, we can minimise these risks. That's not to downplay them. In the revolutions of the Arab spring in particular, they have been very real, and female journalists have faced specific challenges. Sinz was attacked only hours after Egyptian-American digital journalist Mona Eltahawy reported she had been repeatedly "groped" while detained by Egyptian policemen. This follows the high profile sexual assault of CBS News reporter Lara Logan, who was attacked near Tahrir Square in February, on the day Hosni Mubarak fell from power.

The threat to women is undeniable and should not be underestimated. But then again, so is the threat to men. In 2011 so far, 58 journalists have been killed on the job, only two of them female. Yet I see no statement from RSF urging men not to be sent into the field.

It has taken years for female journalists to convince their editors they should be treated no differently from men. The success of foreign correspondents such as Channel 4 News's Lindsey Hilsum, Sky's Alex Crawford, the BBC World Service's Jill McGivering and the FT's Kathrin Hille have shown us that these efforts are justified. In any situation, a diverse mix of journalists will better serve the public. Female journalists hold a different set of cards to their male counterparts, and are using them to give a broader and more nuanced picture of the world we live in. This is particularly the case in some parts of the Islamic world, where half the population is effectively shut off from speaking to male journalists. But female journalists and their crew have been able to gain access to female activists, and to record the experiences of ordinary women who are living through extraordinary times.

This year, it's been relatively rare to hear the voices of female citizens of Arab spring countries. If women journalists are told it's too dangerous for them to go there, those voices are likely to be silenced altogether. Our perceived weakness can also sometimes work to our advantage: I've made films in hostile environments where I've been able to put tough, bold questions to dangerous and difficult people. I'm sure that in many cases they granted me the interview because they assumed that, as a woman, I must be innocuous and unthreatening. I don't think a male reporter would have been given the same opportunity.

Later this morning, RSF issued a second statement: "It is more dangerous for a woman than a man to cover the demonstrations in Tahrir Square. That is the reality and the media must face it," the modified release read. "It is the first time that there have been repeated sexual assaults against women reporters in the same place. The media must keep this in mind when sending staff there." Their position is clear, and still discriminatory: editors shouldn't be sending female staff to cover the protests, and the women who do go there to work as reporters have been warned. Does that mean that now if another female journalist is attacked in Tahrir Square, it will be her fault?

If RSF really wanted to protect women working for the media in Tahrir Square, it could campaign for editors to spend more money on the teams they send there. Sinz and Logan were both assaulted after they were separated from their camera operators. If female journalists were supported by larger teams, then the likelihood of being attacked in this way could be minimised. Instead, RSF is saying the only way to protect women reporters is to impose wholesale discrimination against them.

It's profoundly disappointing, and, for once, I hope that no editor is listening to them.


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Leveson inquiry: media victims give their side of the story

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Despite the celebrities, it was the testimony of ordinary people that proved most compelling and disturbing

Hugh Grant, as someone noted rather astutely this week, hasn't been in anything this good for ages. Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into standards in the British media may have been formally sitting since earlier this month, but it was not until this week that the plot of this procedural legal drama twisted, suddenly, into an unmissable blockbuster, played out in as much Technicolor as the crowded confines of court 73 at the royal courts of justice would allow.

It had its moments of drama and at times almost of farce, but this was, in truth, a horror story, dipping into moments of such cruel and terrifying menace that, had the script been pitched to a Hollywood executive, it would have been returned as scarcely plausible.

After he had spent months touring the TV studios, not to mention all three party conferences, there was much about Grant's appearance on Monday that was familiar – pointed, drily witty, and cross. But this was one occasion the actor was not prepared merely to play the diffident posho. An article in the Mail on Sunday in 2007 had stated that his then relationship with Jemima Khan was "on the rocks", he said, because of his late-night phonecalls with an LA studio executive, which was untrue.

"I cannot for the life of me think of any conceivable source for this story in the Mail on Sunday except ... voice messages on my mobile phone ... Well, I'd love to hear what [their] explanation for that article is, if it wasn't phone hacking."

"You haven't alleged that before, have you, in the public domain?" asked counsel to the inquiry. He hadn't. The celebrities, Grant indicated, were fighting back. In the following day's Daily Mail, however, he had his response: a vehement denial of his "mendacious smears", accompanied by one of the tabloid's routine kickings ("a man consumed by hatred for the media ... [with] a colourful and many would say unedifying love life"). "Are we to expect," Neil Garnham QC, for the Metropolitan police, asked on Tuesday, "that everyone who has the temerity to give evidence critical of the press is going to have to face this the following morning?"

It was inevitable, if ironic, that the steady stream of minor celebs and megastars to the Bell Yard entrance to the court building brought with it a four-tiered bank of photographers, past which they had to process before giving evidence. Sheryl Gascoigne, ex-wife of England footballer Paul, told the inquiry of driving in desperation, pursued by paparazzi, into a police station while heavily pregnant, and begging them to help. They could not. Sienna Miller described life as the 21-year-old girlfriend of Jude Law, being chased down a dark alleyway at midnight by "10 big men" carrying cameras, or spat at to provoke a reaction. JK Rowling, who seemed most nervous about giving evidence, said she had, on occasion, smuggled her children out of the house wrapped in blankets to avoid paparazzi.

For some, there was little sympathy. "Garry Flitcroft not really doing it for me," sniffed the singer Lily Allen on Twitter, as the former Blackburn Rovers captain gave evidence about the savage tabloid monstering he received as vengeance, he believed, for taking out an injunction to block details being published of an affair. Philandering multimillionaire footballers do not naturally attract the greatest sympathy – and yet, as Flitcroft continued his evidence, it became clear why he had asked to address the inquiry.

As the taunting in the stadiums, fed by relentless negative press stories, became worse, he said, his father, who suffered from depression, felt unable to watch him play. "His life was coming and watching me play football, and his work, and that took him out of his life," said Flitcroft. His father killed himself in 2008. His death came a long time after the tabloid assault, Flitcroft conceded, "but all I can say is, it affected him a lot".

Over four unedifying days, the stories of lives carelessly ruined kept coming. Max Mosley's 39-year-old son, a drug addict, hadn't killed himself over the press coverage of his father's sex life, Mosley was careful to say, but "the News of the World story had the most devastating effect on him. He really couldn't bear it. He went back on the drugs." Alexander Mosley died in 2009.

Mary-Ellen Field told the inquiry her own story was "like a B movie" - in fact, it was the most terrifying of psychological horror stories. So firmly convinced had her former employer Elle Macpherson become that the highly personal information that routinely appeared in the press originated with Field selling stories, that she persuaded her bewildered former adviser to enter a psychiatric facility in the US, where she was treated under armed guard for "an 'adjustment disorder'". Field was later sacked. The real explanation, of course, was that their phones were being hacked. For all the disturbing tales told by the wealthy and famous of the batterings they had received at the hands of the press, it was Field's story, and those of the other ordinary individuals who gave evidence, that really had power to silence the courtroom. "We're ordinary people so [we have] no experience in a public life situation or controlled media involvement situation," Bob Dowler told the inquiry. He and his wife just wanted the full extent and nature of tabloid malpractice to be known. Sally Dowler described the moment she had realised that some of the messages on Milly's phone had been deleted. "She's picked up her voicemails Bob, she's alive!" Milly was almost certainly already dead.

Gerry McCann's evidence to the inquiry, reliving the savaging he and his wife Kate had received in the aftermath of their three-year-old daughter Madeleine's disappearance in 2007, listed just a handful of the headlines written about them: "MADDY MUM ORGY FURY", "PRIEST 'BANS' MADELEINE", "IT WAS HER BLOOD IN PARENTS' HIRE CAR". In 2008, the Portuguese attorney general, having reviewed all the evidence of the case, ruled that there was no evidence either parent had committed any crime.

The most compelling testimony of the week, though, came from Margaret and Jim Watson. They were not the victims of hacking, and have not been stalked by paparazzi. Rather, their daughter Diane, 16, was stabbed to death in 1991 in the playground of her Glasgow school by another pupil, Barbara Glover. Days after Glover was sentenced to life in prison, the inquiry heard, an article in the Glasgow Herald suggested that she had been bullied by the dead girl and had acted under provocation, a defence Glover had put forward that had been expressly rejected by the trial judge.

"[The article] tore everything that we had of Diane apart, the essence of her life, the person who she was," said Mrs Watson. She stood outside the office of the newspaper holding a banner every day for six weeks until the journalist responsible and the paper's editor agreed to see her, but they stood by the story, she said.

A similar article appeared in Marie Claire the following year. Shortly after that piece was published, the couple's 15-year-old son Alan, their only other child, killed himself. He had a copy of the magazine article in his hand when he died.

On Tuesday, only 20 years late, the Herald and Times Group, which now owns the Glasgow paper, issued a statement saying it "deeply regrets any action which added to the Watson family's grief over the tragic loss of their daughter and later their son". Asked if had she anything to add to her evidence, Mrs Watson said: "No, just to thank everyone for being so kind and for listening to us."


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Press freedom and public outrage

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Timothy Garton Ash still can't see it (We must be free and able to defend private lives against tabloid tyranny, 24 November). Free speech is not a value that stands above most others. It is a bullies' charter. Free speech means that those who can shout the loudest and longest – the wealthy, powerful and privileged – will get their way at the expense of the rest of us. Fair, honest, respectful speech – those are values. "Freedom" as nothing but a bare slogan is not.
Rev Dr David Heywood
Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire

• It may be helpful to define the term "newspaper" and separate its intent and purpose from magazine, tabloid, comic and other epithets that could apply to printed material in pamphlet form. Objective criteria separate "newspapers" from "tabloids". Once such criteria are defined in law, newspapers could be separated in shops from other printed material with tabloids ending up somewhere near, if not on, the top shelf. If they want to join the world of the more accessible newspaper they will need to meet the criteria.
Robert Ganley
Manchester

• Timothy Garton Ash called for "self-regulation of the press with teeth". The 2003 version of the PCC Code of Practice said: "Newspapers and periodicals shall take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted material." The 2011 version said: "The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures." No confusion there, then.

A predicted 2012 version of the PCC code of practice: "The press must take care, but not too much, not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures."
Neil Holmes
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire

• I am bemused by the fact that lawyers working for the News of the World were aware of possible illegal activities on its behalf but have not been required to inform the police.

The police themselves have been aware, for some time possibly – certainly recently – of such possible illegal activities but seem to have taken no action. I refer to the reports on the payments to Gordon Taylor et al which resulted in information about possible illegal activities being kept out of public knowledge. Since this has now become public knowledge, why has no action been taken ?
Joe Birkin
Chesterfield

• Shouldn't we, the avid consumers of intrusive and salacious stories, also be in Leveson's dock? Shouldn't the reading public be asked to explain why it is only now that it professes to be outraged? The reality is, if the same stories had been obtained using lawful methods, we would not have Leveson and his inquiry because it's not the content we object to – it is the way it is obtained. Happily for the press, the market for intrusive stories will be there, long after Leveson's inquiry is over.
Nick Mason
Harrogate

• Surely the Leveson inquiry would improve its credibility if witnesses were encouraged to name the individual reporters who are currently hidden behind the shield of their newspaper employers. Every other individual seems to get named but not the reporters.
Saul Gresham
Neath, West Glamorgan

• I am appalled at the evidence I've seen and read in the coverage of the Leveson inquiry, especially the treatment of the McCanns and the utter lack of regard for human suffering, dignity or indeed privacy. But I wonder if these journalists simply were the boys at the back of the class? Those who can do, those who can't become (tabloid) journalists?
Joyce Massé
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire

• Lots of "public outrage" at these tactics, evidently. Strange that 6 million of them spend £3m every week on these disgusting rags.
Roy Arnold
Tenterden, Kent


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Leveson inquiry puts paparazzi in the frame

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With so many photographers now employed by a range of agencies, it is not clear how easy it will be to enforce a solution

Click, chase, click: it was the recurring theme of the Leveson inquiry's first week – and neither Hollywood stars, nor the victims of tragic circumstances, were exempt.

They jumped out from the bushes to surprise Kate McCann and her young twins, banging on the car to try to get an anguished or angry expression; they chased Sienna Miller down the road, armed with cameras; and they lay in wait for the mother of Hugh Grant's baby, one of their number driving towards her own 61-year-old mother in a "deliberately menacing way".

Forget phone-hacking private investigators, or out-of-control tabloid journalists. The paparazzi were the recurring villains in the minds of the celebrities and victims who gave the bulk of the evidence at the Royal Courts of Justice. Miller, repeatedly besieged at home and en route, observed: "Take away their cameras, and you've got a pack of men chasing a woman." The fact that they had cameras, she complained, seemed to make their actions legal, arguing that they were guilty of harassment.

So frustrated was JK Rowling by photographers who may have taken pictures of her children that she once ran after one while pushing a pram. "How I thought I was going to outrun a 20-something paparazzo ... my daughter was saying: 'Calm down, mum, calm down, it doesn't matter' – but it mattered enormously to me."

Max Mosley, meanwhile, criticised the photographers who turned up at the home of his son Alexander, who had died of a drug overdose, when the former motorsport boss went there to collect the young man's personal effects. "I thought it was absolutely outrageous that they took photographs in that situation. You are in a desperate situation. What to me was so horrifying was there was no sense that this matters."

It was as if nothing had changed in the years since the Sun, the News of the World and Hello! announced they had stopped using paparazzi pictures of Kate Middleton after she was mobbed outside her house at the time of her 25th birthday in 2007 – or, of course, since Diana died trying to evade the photographers at high speed in Paris in 1997. But the repeated complaints were made ironic by the banks of snappers waiting for those giving evidence to arrive at the Leveson hearing - and those who ran down the road or leaned into the car to grab images of Rowling as she drove away from the courtroom on Thursday afternoon.

It fell to Dr Gerry McCann, speaking the language of his profession, to propose a solution. He spoke of the need to change the law so photographs could only be taken in a public place with the consent of the subject – a major change in the law that would prevent all sorts of reasonably taken pictures appearing in the newspapers as well as those taken by an out-of-control pack. At times, there are plenty of pictures one might want to run without a subject's permission: witness the image on the cover of Friday's Daily Mirror which shows "Britain's most notorious knife thug" running in the street clearly holding a blade in his hands. Junior Henry, a 17-year-old just sentenced to four and a half years following a stabbing at the Notting Hill Carnival, can hardly have agreed to have his image used in that way.

Yet, if that was photography in the public interest, the endless pursuit of celebrity or otherwise is harder to justify. It took months, the McCanns said, before the press back left the outside of their home in Leicestershire.

The repeatedly maligned Press Complaints Commission proved unable to remove the pack waiting for Ting Lan Hong, the mother of Hugh Grant's child, forcing the film star to seek a court order to remove those on the scene. When Grant returned, he tried to turn the tables, taking a photograph of a snapper waiting outside, only to discover, according to his witness statement, that: "When I tried to get a picture of his face, he turned away and held up his hands and drove off. This is not untypical. I have always found that paparazzi are very protective of their privacy."

With so many photographers now not employed directly by newspapers but instead by a range of agencies, it is not clear how easy it will be for the judge to enforce a solution to the undoubted problem. No doubt Leveson will need to give thought to that question – but there are other avenues for him to explore.

Last week, the Home Office announced a consultation on whether it would be appropriate to bring in an offence of stalking. Leveson, or ministers, may consider bringing the actions of the photographic pack into that particular frame of inquiry.


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Phone-hacking inquiry: the rebel army has yet to press-gang Primetime Celeb | Marina Hyde

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While some testify at the Leveson inquiry, not all stars will be ready to give up their dysfunctional media relationships

If all the suspected celebrity victims of phone hacking were laid end to end, they'd reach from Wapping to somewhere with a more pleasant current climate. Tartarus, perhaps, or some nice nuclear exclusion zone. Yet if those celebrities who stuck their heads above the parapet to testify to Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into press conduct this week were arranged similarly, the line would struggle to make it out of the door of the small courtroom in which Leveson is hearing evidence.

In fact, I hope the small rebel army of witnesses who braved it – along with the named others who have offered to give evidence but haven't been called so far – would not object to my observing that they are not typical "celebrities" at all. JK Rowling is so intensely private that she is a kind of anti-celebrity (which made her stories of hounding so unimpeachably powerful), and her siblings-in-arms fell into similarly non-mainstream camps. Others insist their day in the sun (excuse the pun) is long over – Hugh Grant has described himself as "semi-retired" for years, while Sheryl Gascoigne is a tabloid darling from another era.

Then there were those who clearly judged they had nothing left to lose. In this category we might place the McCanns, who have passed through a series of unimaginable media pain barriers, having lived through being accused variously of selling their abducted daughter and hiding her body in their freezer. Sienna Miller will know her legal pursuit of the News of the World over phone hacking would have been seen in certain corners of Fleet Street as a terminal bridge-burning, while Steve Coogan observed that the tabloids had gone to work so thoroughly on him that his closet was now empty of skeletons, conferring upon him what he tellingly described as immunity. Meanwhile, Elle Macpherson's former brand manager wasn't a celebrity at all. Her former employer announced this week she had decided to take no action whatsoever on phone hacking because "I did not want to perpetuate stories about myself".

But if Macpherson's absence was glaring, others were even more so. Where are the big names from light entertainment? Charlotte Church will appear next week, though the erstwhile Voice of an Angel would surely concede she is no longer in her showbiz pomp. So where are the talent show judges, the stellar presenters, the breakfast anchors, the celebrity chefs, the big bucks personalities who, if you manage to speak to them, will so often tell you they are convinced they were victims of phone hacking as well as countless other forms of unjustifiable intrusion? Not only do these stars exist, but they are legion. Many have already been contacted by Operation Weeting, while others are merely waiting for the years-belated call from Scotland Yard they know will confirm it.

Yet barely one is anywhere to be seen in Leveson's courtroom, nor apparently on any schedule to appear. Their absence is almost as eloquent as some of this week's witness testimony – a powerful rejoinder to those who claim that a watershed moment in the relationship between stars and the press has suddenly been reached.

Why won't others go over the top? The easiest answer is fear – a fear of media reprisals that persists virtually as strongly as it ever did despite the fact of the inquiry. Sheryl Gascoigne told the court she was scared her testimony might bring revenge attacks on herself and her family, while Coogan said he was constantly offered private encouragement in his crusade by other celebrities who lacked "the stomach" to join him. "When I took the News of the World to court [over phone hacking]," Max Clifford told me, "no one else would. Everyone was frightened. Everyone I spoke to said 'You're mad'." Mad, in a uniquely powerful position given his line of work, and necessarily rich. Clifford's legal bills alone were well over £300,000.

Yet while fear is likely a primary motivation, and not everyone has to be a hero, it would offer an incomplete picture not to suggest there are more complex reasons for those glaring absences in Court 73. The failure of what we might call the Primetime Celebrity Demographic to field any irate witnesses is a tacit acknowledgement of that.

Some powerful – and powerfully sanguine – stars regard intrusion as the cost of doing business. Of the near-certainty that Simon Cowell's phone was hacked, the X Factor boss has said, "I don't want to know" – as well he might not, making £100m from Rupert Murdoch every year and having close friendships with many of those now under investigation.

In most other cases, the trade-off is less clear cut, but the nature of stardom has to some extent always engendered co-dependencies between star, hack and fan, ranging from benign back-scratching to the most toxic abusive relationships. Those who work with stars often maintain that insecurity and paranoia are among the defining celebrity character traits, and the panders of the press still effectively control most entertainers' access to their public.

This will remain an eternally dysfunctional relationship, and one can only hope Leveson's inquiry will spend less time failing to unravel it than assisting the ordinary people who become "famous" against their will.

• For legal reasons this article will not be open to comments


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Leveson inquiry: embarrassed tabloids pass the buck in their coverage

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Tabloids are unused to practising self-criticism so their coverage of the Leveson inquiry hearings has resulted in fascinating buck-passing exercises. Every other paper dunnit except us, your honour.

The reports have been given proportionately little space or promotion, and there were obvious sins of omission.

Just as pertinently, in the face of evidence about collective misconduct, each title has found a way of damning rivals while conveniently overlooking most of the accusations specifically levelled at their own misbehaviour.

For example, the Daily Mail managed to carry an item about Max Mosley without mentioning his widely reported contention that its editor, Paul Dacre, was obsessed with schoolboy smut.

It did find room, however, for a piece attributing sinister implications to a gathering of Leveson witnesses at a Soho club where, allegedly, they ate and drank "into the night." Gosh.

The Mail, in its report on the evidence presented by Kate and Gerry McCann, pointed out that the Daily Express and Daily Star were the "worst offenders" while noting that it had "settled out of court." Was that meant to make the Mail seem more virtuous?

The Express's report acknowledged that it had published a front page apology "in which it admitted it was at fault." This was to its credit.

The Daily Mirror devoted a spread to the McCanns, with a large picture, while The Sun not only down-played it - placing it on a left-hand page, 14 - but also failed to record the key part of their statement about trickery by the News of the World and the furious phone call from its editor, Colin Myler.

That was some oversight. Why the reticence? Clearly it wasn't a News International instruction because The Times gave the incident full measure.

A Mail report on Steve Coogan's evidence carried his extensive criticism of the Mirror. By contrast, the Mirror made only a passing reference to it.

But the Mirror did graciously mention the fact that Sienna Miller had sued it for falsely claiming she was drunk. Predictably, The Sun and Daily Star delightedly reported that too.

Day after day, you could sense the tabloids' conflict. Though these papers thrive on the activities (and pictures) of celebrities, it was embarrassing to have to report their criticisms of an out-of-control press.

What was increasingly clear from the celebrities' tales of woe was their intense upset about the disgraceful behaviour of the photographic pack, the paparazzi. (See Dan Sabbagh on this too).

I hope that when editors appear before Leveson, the inquiry's counsel questions them about the market they provide for this band of out-of-control stalkers with cameras who operate outside the remit of the editors' code of practice.

Many of the most heinous anecdotes about intrusion and harassment - told by the McCanns, JK Rowling, Max Mosley and Sienna Miller - concerned the paps.

Most of these freelance, non-unionised photographers care nothing for ethics. They exist only because the papers pay them for their dirty work.

The problem is that editors too rarely question the provenance of the pictures that appear on their screens. Because these images are sent by supposedly legitimate agencies they are prepared to publish them.

If there are later complaints about how the pictures were obtained, editors shrug... nothing to do with us, old boy. Try the agency that sent them to us.

And which one was that? Sorry, can't tell you that because it's a confidential matter. How much did you pay? Sorry, that's a commercial secret. In other words, it's another case of buck-passing.

Over several years, I have tried to track back the route of certain controversial pictures. On most occasions, having finally identified the agency, I have come up against a brick wall.

Agencies exist outside the remit of the Press Complaints Commission. Many of them are not more than "fronts" for a couple of photographers.

Some photographs pass through several hands - for example, from pap to agency one and on to agency two, maybe even three - before reaching a newspaper's picture editor.

Leveson will need to get to grips with this process, which provides editors with a built-in deniability. It's not us, guv.

The inquiry could, I suppose, call in some of the people who own agencies. However, many are no more than two-man operations.

One way or another, as the PCC has often conceded down the years, the stalkerazzi are a major cause for concern by celebrities and anyone (like the McCanns) suddenly plunged into the spotlight, and a key reason for the loathing of "the press."


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news of t

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Well, someone was bound to do it - and it is probably better that it came from a writer who knows of what he writes. Step forward Matthew Engel, once of this parish and now with the Financial Times.

In his article today, Why we will miss the Screws, he laments the disappearance of the News of the World:

"The loathsome Screws has been gone for four months now. I miss it.

On a Sunday morning I often wander down to the newsagents and stare at the paper rack, and I would always at least glimpse the Screws' front page to see whose turn it was to be monstered.

That was rarely an edifying experience... But the News of the World did at least commit journalism. Now and again, as with the corrupt Pakistani cricketers, it did so in the public interest...

The disappearance of the Screws has had two consequences. Firstly, its tabloid rivals have become risk-averse...

Secondly, they have become complacent. Shorn of their most formidable rival, they have succumbed to torpor...

The surviving tabloids did enjoy a sales boomlet from displaced News of the World readers, but it is already tapering off. And I'm not surprised.

Looking at the front pages lately, I am struck by the prevailing dreariness...

The People was the fearless newspaper that brought down Soho's gang leaders; it no longer has the resources to say boo to a goose.

Meanwhile, the once even mightier Sunday Express now just peddles apocalyptic nonsense...

The Sunday papers used to have a special place in British life. At their best, they were imaginative and contrarian antidotes to the orthodoxies of the daily news agenda...

Now hardly anyone is even playing the game, fairly or otherwise."

Engel, who wrote one of the best histories of the tabloids (Tickle the public: one hundred years of the popular press) then links the failure of Sunday national newspaper journalism to the collapse of once-vibrant regional and local press.

"News used to emerge because, from the Penwith Advertiser to the John O'Groat Journal, local hacks would get around, find out things and, on a good day, augment their always feeble pay packet by selling stuff to the nationals.

Now journalists mostly stare at screens, and such news as does emerge comes, often unregurgitated, through official channels or public relations operatives.

This is the real crisis in British journalism. Phone hacking was an unspeakable aberration but it may come to be seen as a final scream of a dying industry."

Though I'd guess that Nick Davies would not agree with Engel over the virtues of the News of the World, I imagine him nodding about the diminution of local journalism.

His book, Flat Earth News, also records the way in which passive local journalism infected by PR influence (churnalism) is the basis for wider national journalistic problems.

That crisis has been overlooked (see Neil Fowler on this too). But no-one is really considering the matter just now.

Source: Financial Times


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'The truth about Elle and me'

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Mary-Ellen Field was in a job she loved, working for Elle Macpherson. Then it all fell apart: she was accused of leaking information about the supermodel, and ended up in rehab. This week she gave evidence at the Leveson inquiry. Now she just wants it all to be over

Mary-Ellen Field is recalling the moment the supermodel Elle Macpherson accused her of being an alcoholic. "I remember it well because it was six years ago this morning," she tells me as we sit in the boardroom of Brand Finance, her brand valuation consultancy in London's Haymarket. "She came in, put her arms around me and was kissing me, and then she said: 'I'm really sorry about this but I'm here to help you.'

"I said: 'What have I done?' She said: 'I know why you drank.' I said: 'What are you talking about?'" Field goes on to repeat the claim she made to the Leveson inquiry into press ethics this week that Macpherson suggested she drank to cover up the guilt of having a handicapped child.

Field's eldest son, Justin, now aged 30, suffered brain damage during an operation when he was one year old and now requires constant care. Field shows me a family photo on her iPad. "You wouldn't know to look at him, but speak to him for a moment and you'd know he was handicapped." Justin currently works at a TK Maxx store.

Field says she was mystified about why Macpherson was referring to her son, and says she has never felt guilt about him.

Macpherson went on to accuse Field of leaking personal stories to the press while drunk. Field says the accusations were completely unexpected. As she told the inquiry earlier this week, she had "tremendous fun" working with Macpherson for two and a half years. "All the time I worked with her I found her to be very nice. She always did what she said, she was always on time, generous and kind to me. We had a great time together." They bonded partly because both women were raised in Sydney.

At the time, Field was head of intellectual property and creative services for the tax advisory and accountancy firm Chiltern. She advised Macpherson on business matters, including trademark licences for her lingerie.

During her 30-minute one-to-one meeting six years ago, Macpherson accused Field of leaking stories about the breakdown of her relationship with financier Arpad Busson. One story concerned the custody of the couple's children. Field says she had been privy to a discussion about this at a meeting with Macpherson's family lawyer, but denies being the source of the leaks. "I didn't even know any journalist to leak to … She said there were 11 things I had been responsible for. I said: 'What were they?' And she said: 'I'm not allowed to tell you. You'll have excuses.'"

Field says she was already worried about where the stories were coming from. "We didn't know about phone hacking then, but I wouldn't have had her phone swept for bugs if I wasn't worried." It eventually emerged that the probable source of the stories were voicemails that had been hacked by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for the News of the World. Not only had Macpherson's phones been hacked, but also two belonging to Field.

After the meeting with Macpherson, Field, confused and hurt, asked to see her husband, Bruce Westwood. He was called into the room, along with Macpherson's lawyer and two colleagues from Chiltern. "They repeated the accusations. My husband was furious. And then they insisted I go to the Meadows [a rehab clinic in Arizona]."

Why, I suggest to Field, didn't she tell them to get stuffed, given that she had no alcohol problem? "I know it was stupid to do it, very stupid, but they just kept at me and at me. She made me sit in her car on the Friday after the meeting, and said: 'I love you so much. We're doing this for you. We know you didn't want to talk to the media.' The idea was I was drunk and did it unintentionally."

But there was a more pragmatic reason that Field felt obliged to attend rehab. If she hadn't, she says Chiltern would have fired her. But couldn't she then have sued for constructive dismissal? "I wouldn't have had any income had I done that, and all the benefits I'd accrued would have gone. I needed the job – I still had a child at university [her younger son, Tim, now aged 29] and I had to look after Justin."

So Field went to rehab for five weeks. She stayed, she says, in Macpherson's old room – the former model checked in to the clinic in 2003 suffering from post-natal depression – at a cost of $50,000. "She thought she was doing a good turn. Her story to me was, 'I know you didn't mean to do this, you did it when you were drunk, but I was never an alcoholic."

Field had got the impression that rehab would be like a spa. It was not, she says. "There were no plugs in the basins so you couldn't drown yourself. They also didn't allow us to have nail varnish. Did you know you could kill yourself with nail varnish?" Field, who has been putting on eye makeup as we talk, in preparation for attending the Leveson inquiry, allows herself a hearty laugh.

Fellow patients, she says, included sex addicts ("they all wore signs saying 'I'm a sex addict' and weren't allowed to come within 10 feet of a woman"), celebrities whose names she declines to disclose, as well as "lots of beautiful airheads" and a disproportionate number of investment bankers. She was offered antidepressants, which she declined, and was refused her customary two half hours a day on the treadmill at the gym. "They said that meant I was obsessive."

She did, though, learn something in rehab, she says. "They said I wasn't an alcoholic, nor did I have a problem with substance abuse, but that I had clearly been bullied. They said that I had been a victim of what's called an intervention. It's like extraordinary rendition, except that the CIA isn't involved and they don't use chains."

Five weeks later, Field returned to London, ready to start work again. But she was fired by Macpherson. As a result, she says, her health suffered and she was signed off work from January. "I kept falling over for no reason. Pretty ironic for someone accused of being an alcoholic, right?" In fact, Field was later diagnosed with vasovagal syncope, a neurological condition. "My heart was pumping blood to my brain fast enough that I would pass out." She claims her condition was caused by the stress of her treatment, not just by Macpherson, but by her employers, Chiltern, who sacked her in March 2006.

In August that year, she started to realise how the newspapers had got the stories about Macpherson. News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested and she realised that her former client's phones were among those hacked at the behest of Rupert Murdoch's journalists.

Her health continued to suffer. A keen cyclist, she fell off her bike in Richmond Park. "My heart stopped working for 18 seconds and I would pass out." In 2009, she had a pacemaker fitted.

Field says she doesn't bear Macpherson any animus. "I still personally didn't hold her responsible. I don't want you to intimate that this is a crusade against Elle, because she's a victim just like I was. She's the one that's suffering. Nobody's writing anything bad about me. She's getting all the bad press."

This isn't quite true. Earlier this week, an article appeared in the Daily Telegraph with the strapline: "Lingerie magnate and evergreen supermodel Elle Macpherson talks to Luke Leitch about nipples, nudity and the 'News of the World'." Even though Field gave evidence at the Leveson inquiry the day before the story appeared, it did not mention her by name. Instead, when asked why she has said nothing about being one of the six earliest-identified victims of Mulcaire, Macpherson replied: "I believe I've made the right choice. And I made that choice years ago, because I did not want to perpetuate stories. I did not want to be involved, I did not enter into the discussions whatsoever."

But many reader comments on the online version of the interview drew attention to the timing of the piece, and what Macpherson had done to Field. One, for instance, read: "I would suggest that the timing of this article is dreadful. If this is damage limitation, it has had the opposite effect. I watched the whole of yesterday's evidence to the inquiry and was shocked by the details regarding the treatment of Ms Macpherson's aide."

Why does Field think this interview appeared now? As a person whose job it is to value brands, Field's opinion is informed, to say the least: "It was organised, we imagine, by the crisis management company they've hired."

Field has more to think about than her former client's business matters. She is suing another Australian (Rupert Murdoch) for damages and lost income. That case is expected to be heard next year. But there is a worry: "It's more than possible they could shut everything down so there's nothing to sue. People do that all the time." She tells me she is back in work and her health is much improved. "I'm doing better than my lawyer." Her lawyer, Mark Lewis, was interviewed in the London Evening Standard earlier this week under the headline: "My MS consultant told me not to do anything stressful – so I went after Murdoch's phone hackers".

That said, she is obviously still a bit fragile. She tells me that, on the way to this interview, she got a call from a journalist who said that his editor wanted to know how she could abandon her brain-damaged child to go to rehab. "It shouldn't upset me, but it really does. It's so sexist – as though Justin didn't have a dad or the rest of the family to care for him."

She was asked to testify at the inquiry, she says, because she was thought to be a victim of phone hacking who could stand up to the pressure. During the hearings, she says, she has been heartened by the camaraderie of other claimants who have given evidence at the Leveson inquiry. "But I feel such a fraud when I'm in the same room as the Dowlers or some of the other people, most of them not celebrities, who have suffered phone hacking. I was collateral damage, not someone who was targeted.

"Some papers have been trying to portray the drinks meeting we claimants had as a Trotskyist plot." She laughs. "That's pretty rich given that I'm deputy chairman of the [local] Conservative party and a member of the Carlton club."

Field also wants to make a rather more surprising point. "It's only thanks to journalists that I'm doing this. Thanks to you guys [she means the Guardian, to whom she gave her first interview about phone hacking two years ago], the New York Times, and some great journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC in Australia who backed me. It was down to them that we really found out what happened and nailed them."

As we end the interview, the 62-year-old businesswoman tells me she makes it look as though she's coping, when she isn't. She's sleeping two hours a night, her husband has been thoroughly depressed by her ordeal, her mother back home in Australia isn't speaking to her. Why? "She doesn't think I should talk about private stuff. She's 85. But my late father, I think, would have been proud of me for standing up and being counted."

And then she wells up, as she has done a few times during the interview, when she tells me: "I really want this to be over. It's been six years today since my life was destroyed. I loved my job – I used to get in at 7.30 in the morning because I loved it so much. Just pigs, they are, for what they did to me."


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Steve Coogan: Leveson inquiry not being 'distorted by celebrities'

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Alan Partridge star defends inquiry into media ethics as father of 7/7 London bombings reportedly refuses to give evidence

The actor and comedian Steve Coogan has defended the Leveson inquiry against claims that is being "hijacked" by celebrities hungry for publicity.

Coogan, who gave evidence to Lord Justice Leveson's examination of press ethics this week, said that "the McCann evidence alone was vindication of the inquiry" and repeated his call for tougher controls on British newspapers.

"The fact is that the Leveson inquiry has acted in the same way as genuine public interest journalism," he said on Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday. "It has shone a light on something which has hitherto gone unreported."

His comments come as Graham Foulkes, who lost his son in the 7/7 London bombings and allegedly became a victim of phone-hacking, reportedly refused to give evidence.

Foulkes told the Times: "I think the inquiry is a good thing for those ordinary members of the public whose lives have been touched by tragedy and intruded upon in a such a dreadful way by one organisation.

"But what does concern me is that celebrities choose to employ people like [the publicist] Max Clifford, who's a multi-millionaire out of celebrity and the media.

"And just because the media is under the spotlight at the moment, one or two so-called celebrities seem to me to have jumped on the bandwagon and they've hijacked the inquiry for their own purposes," he said.

The Guardian's Simon Jenkins, who appeared alongside Coogan on the Today programme, also said: "I do think celebrities are distorting this debate."

But Coogan said he was purely speaking out on behalf of ordinary people who had suffered from press intrusion.

"We're here because we're the mouthpiece," he said. "We don't have the newspapers to advance our argument like the press do."

The Alan Partridge star, who said he was the victim of a "sociopathic sting" by then News of the World editor Andy Coulson, joined the McCann family and actor Hugh Grant this week in calling for tougher press regulation and tighter controls on British tabloids.

While Jenkins, a former Fleet Street editor, said the media "had policed the media" in the case of phone hacking, Coogan noted the failure of self-regulation and said the press response to the inquiry was "risible".

"Self regulation hasn't worked. It demonstrably hasn't worked. Having the same people who sit on these committees as that are on these newspapers doesn't fill anyone will confidence. It doesn't look credible" said Coogan.

The inquiry resumes on Monday when those giving evidence will include the singer Charlotte Church.


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Phone hacking: Leveson inquiry is for all of our society, not just celebrities

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Famous names make headlines, but Lord Justice Leveson knows ordinary people have suffered most from press intrusion

Since the communist era, the Russian secret police have had a favourite means of intimidation. They enter a target's home, place a pie in the oven, alter all the clocks or use the lavatory without flushing it, just to let the target know that they have access to every part of their life.

The intimidating practice came to mind as JK Rowling testified to the Leveson inquiry that a reporter arranged for a note to her to be planted in her five-year-old daughter's school bag. Journalists were regularly camped outside her house, now they had infiltrated her daughter's life at school. As she spoke, it wasn't hard to imagine her shock and sense of violation.

Evidence presented to the inquiry suggests that the similarities between secret police and the British tabloid press don't stop here. Journalists have hacked phones and people's email accounts, undertaken surveillance at close and long range, sown suspicion among friends and within families, induced people to become informants, threatened, blackmailed and bullied, especially those who stood up to them, and published rumours and lies to blacken people's reputations. The first big week of the inquiry touched on all of these activities, and the irony that they were carried out by the free press we hold up as one of the key symbols of British democracy was inescapable.

The first part of the judge-led investigation into the culture, practice and ethics of the press will take many months, but we can already conclude that, on a basic human level, red-top newspapers have been responsible for an enormous amount of unnecessary and unredressed pain. We heard of Milly Dowler's parents, who for one moment hoped that their daughter was alive when they realised her phone messages had been listened to, and of James and Margaret Watson, whose daughter Diane was murdered and whose son then committed suicide because of a newspaper columnist's words about that murder.

The eye may hurry over these familiar horror stories, but what they evince is a disturbing institutionalised heartlessness.

Apologists for the tabloids have sought to criticise the first week of Leveson for its mix – for scheduling Bob and Sally Dowler's testimony on the same day as Hugh Grant's, and placing Jerry and Kate McCann's evidence near Sheryl Gascoigne's because, they say, it creates a false equivalence.

Graham Foulkes, whose son was killed in the 7 July bombings and whose phone was subsequently hacked by the News of the World, is refusing to take part because he believes that "Leveson has been hijacked by so-called celebrities".

Watching the television news, you might get that impression, but sitting in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice it was clear that the celebrities were uncomfortable and nervous. None of them pretends they suffered anything like the ordeal of those who have lost children; indeed, they often went out of their way to say so. The other point is that Leveson is bound to take evidence from the famous for the obvious reason that they are the targets of celebrity-obsessed journalists feeding the demand of a celebrity-obsessed public, and these people have equal rights under the law.

Still, the scheduling of witnesses was obviously devised with an eye to creating impact in the first week. And there was sometimes a sense of scrutiny in real time, which is refreshing given the slowness and ineffectuality of the Press Complaints Commission.

When Associated Newspapers issued a menacing statement about Hugh Grant's suggestion that his phone messages had been intercepted by the Mail on Sunday, Lord Justice Leveson pointed out the difference between a defensive denial and the paper's attack.

He has to give witnesses a sense of protection because Grant, Sienna Miller and Steve Coogan obviously had half an eye on what retribution might eventually follow their evidence, knowing that, among others, the editor of the Daily Mail – one of the most feared men in the country – Paul Dacre, is keeping score. But they were convincing and articulate, especially Miller, who described her stalking and harassment by paparazzi. There was something sexually dark about the pursuit of the actress by the papers that once hounded Princess Diana to her death. Miller now has a court order against the photographers, who sometimes spat and insulted her to get a reaction for the cameras, and she told the inquiry that her life has regained degrees of privacy and normality.

Leveson has a huge task over the next couple of years: three modules that concentrate on the relationships between press and public, the press and police, and the press and politicians, and a fourth that will make "recommendations for a more effective policy and regulation that supports the integrity and freedom of the press while encouraging the highest ethical standards".

The inquiry moves at a lick and there is little time to test the truth of every assertion; it would take many years if it did, the judge said. But questioning by him, and particularly Robert Jay QC, the main counsel, seemed to achieve about the right balance of forensic examination, sensitivity and speed. Just as important for the credibility of the inquiry will be fairness shown to newspapers, even though some feel that they may not deserve it.

The striking part of last week was the novelty of hearing one witness after the other speaking at length about their experiences. After reading the arguments from the tabloids about freedom of expression being imperilled by the eventual recommendations of the inquiry, I realised that this freedom was hardly ever extended to those who have grievances against newspapers. What mass-market editors meant by freedom of expression might simply be the power to monopolise the audience and fix the record.

Leveson has changed that by allowing the Dowlers, Watsons and McCanns a chance to give an account of their experiences in as many words as it took. Their decency was incontestable and the truth about the pain and bewilderment of the tabloids' victims could not be more explicit. So, by this measure, it would seem that freedom of expression has been actually increased rather than jeopardised by the inquiry.

That is the reason Rowling said she would attend. For periods after the birth of two her children, this extremely private and reticent person was placed under virtual house arrest by the press and subjected to the sort of surveillance and harassment normally reserved for criminals and terrorist suspects.

In a society that expends so much energy on discussing the rights of suspects, it's bizarre that one of its most revered and blameless citizens was treated in this way. Yet until it was revealed last summer that a murdered child's phone was hacked by the News of the World nobody paid the least attention to Rowling's plight or, much worse, to the numerous offences against the grief, privacy and reputation of those caught up in tragedy.

To that degree, Leveson is already righting wrongs, but there is a long way to go. In the years ahead, the inquiry will come to the crucial issues about press regulation, which seems bound to become tougher, and investigate the corruption that flowed from Rupert Murdoch's News International into the police service and came to dominate politicians and the national discourse.

It is important work about the way society is run, about the contest between privacy and freedom of speech, and it should not for one moment be mistaken for some kind of celebrity fest.


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Retreat on BBC local radio cuts should signal advance for local media policy

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Joined-up thinking with broadband at its heart can revolutionise news coverage and bring communities together

Distant bugles sound impending retreat. It's "not out of the question" that the BBC will relent on cutting 280 jobs and £15m a year out of local radio budgets, according to its chief operating officer. The director general himself adds a phrase or two of wriggle room. A vehement staff and listener campaign against the 14% savings proposed over the next five years begins to bear fruit. MPs, of course, are formidable allies in such a cause, for MPs have local constituencies, too.

But if, in the now familiar tradition of announcing BBC cuts then rowing back through the lakes and mists of consultation exercises, we're about to see local broadcasting maintained, in part or in whole, then let's try to do a proper job this time round: for local is a concept full of little local difficulties.

Would an extra £40m or so help ease some of the job-loss pain? Of course it would. But that's the chunk of the licence fee that Jeremy Hunt, as relevant secretary of state, has requisitioned to fund the start-up and running costs of local TV (in many ways the defining big idea in his tenure at Culture, Media and Sport). In short, local radio is being squeezed – mostly of local programming outside the peak news periods – to help get local TV going.

And what will the 65 possible local television stations do once they're funded, up and running? They will bring "a fundamental change in how people get information about their own communities, and how they hold their representatives to account", according to Jeremy. "There's a huge appetite for local news and information the length and breadth of the country". An appetite seemingly not sated by the BBC's 59 local radio stations – and an appetite barely reflected in the declining sales and fortunes of Britain's local papers (see the announcement last week that one of our great regionals for more than 150 years – the Liverpool Daily Post – is doomed to become a Liverpool Weekly Post).

So there's surely a growing case for turning the process on its head, asking, where, when and if local TV stations move into action (perhaps from next summer on), whether that fills a hole that the cuts in local radio might leave. Or vice versa. Crudely, how do we cover the country?

The link is there already. That's why the BBC is landed with paying for Hunt TV Enterprises Unlimited. The question now is whether it can be made more coherent and comprehensive.

Of course there can never be a perfect fit. "Regional" broadcasting in TV and radio defines its regions in grotesquely different ways. "Local" broadcasting, too, varies between giant metropolises and middle-sized country towns with scant logic on display. The local TV that the BBC wanted to start five years ago before local newspapers cut up rough is not quite the local university television station that Hunt now seems prepared to embrace.

Nevertheless, it ought now to be clear to everyone involved that planning – not quasi-entrepreneurial pronouncements – are the order of the day, especially when the department of culture is also spending nearly £600m introducing high-speed broadband nationwide. Sweeping broadband access makes a huge difference here. It offers one very cost-effective way of producing hyper-local TV coverage. It unites radio and news with pictures in a single device. It ignites social networks – and new ways of bringing news to communities that have lost a local newspaper of their own: places like Port Talbot, once served by the Port Talbot Guardian (deceased).

In sum, all we need, from Broadcasting House to Whitehall to local papers and business investors, is a little joined-up thinking. Local papers are struggling in a world where Leveson, frankly, is totally irrelevant. Local news seems to be losing its appetite. Why not start putting the pieces together now, at the double, rather than watch the BBC go through all manner of contortions, cutting or not cutting hundreds of local jobs, when more rational answers and local news opportunities are out there, waiting for someone to pick up all the pieces?


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James Murdoch's lawyers confirm Tom Watson was put under surveillance

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News Corp lawyers say three NI staff were involved in setting up monitoring, but it is not appropriate to name them

James Murdoch's lawyers have confirmed that Labour MP Tom Watson was put under surveillance for a week in 2009, in a letter sent to Parliament.

Three News International employees were involved in setting up the monitoring of Watson, an outspoken critic of the company, the letter to MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee published on Wednesday added.

Linkaters, the lawyers for Murdoch and News Corporation, added that "we do not think it appropriate to name names" and said they had discussed this with the Metropolitan police who "share this view".

Responding on behalf of James Murdoch, the law firm also said it is involved in an ongoing internal inquiry as to how a private detective was hired to follow Watson and document his movements.

However, Linklaters, who act for Murdoch and News Corporation, has been able to confirm that Derek Webb, a private investigator, was hired to tail Watson between Monday 28 September 2009 and Friday, 2 October 2009.

The law firm's letter adds that there is no evidence that any other MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee were put under surveillance.

The affair is being investigated by News Corporation's management and standards committee, following allegations that investigators had targeted all the members of the select committee who took part in the inquiry into phone hacking that year.

"The MSC has seen no information yet to suggest that any other member of the committee (or their family or friends) was under surveillance," law firm Linklaters wrote.

Last month MP Louise Mensch, a Conservative commitee member, called on News International to make "full disclosure" following claims that the entire committee had been followed.

"The committee will want to know if the same person who ordered the surveillance of the lawyers is the same person who allegedly ordered it on select committee members," Mensch said.

Watson said: "These are new disturbing allegations in this new evidence trove.

"I'm personally curious to know which three executives were involved in commissioning the surveillance, but there are other revelations more relevant to the inquiry."

The Linklaters letter also provides fresh detail on the close relationship between the Murdoch publishing empire and PR veteran Max Clifford.

It discloses that the former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks reached ageement with him to provide stories for a retainer of £200,000 a year. There was no written agreement for this arrangement.

The arrangement was negotiated in Febuary 2010 and contract Clifford to "help with stories and would be paid a retainer of £200,000 per annum for two years".

Webb, a former police officer, claimed last month that the News of the World paid him to target more than 90 people, including Prince William, former attorney general Lord Goldsmith and Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe's parents, over eight years until this July.

He was also asked to tail two of the solicitors acting for phone-hacking victims as part of an alleged plot by News International to prove professional misconduct and force them off their legal cases.

In a separate letter to the select committee, the News International executive accused of hiring Webb to tail the solicitors said he did not "commission private investigators to carry out surveillance".

Former NI head of legal Tom Crone said he viewed Webb as a "journalist", not a private eye, and this was a "very clear difference".

He admitted that he discussed the personal lives of the two lawyers acting for phone-hacking victims – Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris – with the head of news at the News of the World after concerns that confidential information about cases was being passed between the two lawyers.

The head of news said he could get Webb "to have a look" and Crone agreed "with that course".

"My understanding was that Mr Webb had worked for the News of the World regularly as an accredited freelance journalist and not as a 'private investigator'," said Crone.

Lewis represented some of the most high profile victims including Milly Dowler's family and last week told the Leveson inquiry that News International had "sought to "destroy" him with "horrific" surveillance.

But Crone said: "There is a very clear difference between asking the newspaper's news desk for help in gathering facts and commissioning private detectives."

However, the legal boss prefaced his comments in his correspondence to the committee by saying his answers were based on his "best recollection" which "judging by recent experience may be fallible".

Crone said he and Julian Pike, a partner at Farrers, considered making a complaint of professional misconduct" about Lewis and Harris but did not do so because they did not have "direct admissible evidence" of wrongdoing.

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News Corporation's letter to MPs - full text

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Response to select committee's questions to James Murdoch confirms Tom Watson was put under surveillance


PCC proposes wide-ranging shakeup of press self-regulation

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Press Complaints Commission hopes front page adjudications would help restore confidence after phone-hacking scandal

Newspapers would be obliged to trail brokered corrections on the front page as part of a wide-ranging shakeup of press self-regulation proposed by the Press Complaints Commission.

Responding to the frequent criticism that apologies lack prominence, the PCC hopes that highlighting its adjudications on the front page would help restore public confidence in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

The proposal is part of a package of measures that the PCC will put to a summit of newspaper and magazine editors scheduled for 15 December at the London offices of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

Several celebrities giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry have complained that apologies printed by newspapers are far smaller than the offending article, and not always on the same page – a point acknowledged by the PCC's new chairman, Lord Hunt.

Steve Coogan said in his witness statement that the Sunday Times apologised after it had printed a photograph, taken by a picture agency, of his children without permission. "It was a one-inch item on page two or three and I had to tell my friends where to find it," he said.

The Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror have both recently introduced a short page two corrections column. Despite this development, the PCC wants to boost the prominence of full rulings in any newspaper it has found against. Insiders at the body recognise substantial reform is necessary, although there is some nervousness as to whether it is appropriate presenting a final package of measures before Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry has concluded. The PCC does not want to be seen to be forcing the judge's hand.

PCC reformers want to set up a "standards arm" to deal with broader problems raised by specific cases, such as the reporting of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and the case of Christopher Jefferies, who was briefly arrested in connection with Joanna Yeates's murder. Neither the McCann family nor Jefferies complained to the PCC, although both won substantial libel payouts through the courts.

PCC sources indicated that under their scheme, the standards arm would be able to investigate issues raised by high profile controversies that might not otherwise come to the body. The unit would have the power to levy fines. Any punitive payment would not go to the victim, but to help fund the system.

Newspapers would also be asked to step up their own internal compliance mechanism. A board member separate from a title's editor would be responsible for compliance and the revamped PCC would audit the system, with the help of annual reports produced by each newspaper.

Titles would be required to justify decisions that could be challenged subsequently. If a newspaper wanted to send a journalist undercover, it would have to record who authorised the decision and why. The PCC would then audit that.

A crucial part of the system would see each publisher sign a contract with the PCC. Each newspaper owner would have to sign up to the complaints mechanism, submit to investigation and accept financial sanction, with each contract lasting between three and five years.

The idea is to create a mechanism tighter than the existing model of self-regulation but not as stiff as a statutory intervention. It would be possible for the PCC to enforce against errant newspapers because the publisher would have signed up by contract. Insiders describe it as a "self-licensing system" – and any breaches would amount to contempt of court.

At the same time the PCC would seek to formalise the advice it gives out to newspaper editors. Senior journalists regularly seek the PCC to ask for guidance on whether news stories planned could be justified in the public interest, but such advice is given informally and carries no legal weight.

In future, under a reformed body, this advice could be noted down, and be used as part of a defence in any legal action – with the newspaper showing that it acted "responsibly" by seeking advice. Newspapers refusing to sign up to the system would not have access to this "responsible journalism" defence – thereby potentially exposing them to greater damages – but it is not clear if this would be a strong enough incentive to persuade Richard Desmond, the owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star to join a revamped PCC.


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James Murdoch: I did not authorise Max Clifford phone-hacking settlement

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News Corp boss claims he did not sign off deal with publicist worth more than £650,000

James Murdoch has written to MPs claiming that Rebekah Brooks reached a settlement with Max Clifford in 2010 over his phone hacking-claims against the News of the World without seeking authorisation with him or discussing its terms.

The settlement was worth £200,000 a year for two years, according to other evidence sent to parliament by lawyers working for News Corporation. Clifford also had his costs of £283,500 plus VAT paid.

James Murdoch's letter – sent to the culture, media and sport select committee – claims that "Mrs Brooks did mention agreement with Mr Clifford to me but did not seek any authorisation from me, nor did she discuss its terms with me."

Clifford, the public relations adviser, was one of a group of public figures that had his phone hacked into. The publicist subsequently brought a phone-hacking action against the newspaper.

Murdoch is executive chairman of News International, the UK company that owns News Corp's British newspapers, and used to own the now closed News of the World. His letter was released with a string of others last night by the culture, media and sport select committee.

Further detail is provided by Linklaters, lawyers to News Corporation's in house management and standards committee, which said there was no written agreement for the Clifford settlement, in a separate letter to the committee.

The arrangement was negotiated in February 2010 and contracted Clifford to "help with stories and would be paid a retainer of £200,000 per annum for two years," according to the Linklaters memo.

Linklaters note claims that News Corp's management and standards committee "understands that Mrs Brooks was authorised to conclude this agreement by virtue of her position as chief executive of News International."

According to Linklaters, News Corp's management and standards committee had also seen no information to suggest that the Clifford settlement was "discussed by the boards of News Group Newspapers, News International or News Corporation".

Colin Myler, the former editor of the News of the World, said that he had only a "limited" involvement in the Clifford settlement, in another letter sent to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, and published by that body last night.

But Myler said that he was present at one meeting in which Tom Crone, the News of the World's chief lawyer, and Julian Pike, who worked for News International's lawyers Farrer & Co, in which he claims that the two lawyers advised Brooks that "the amount she indicated she was prepared to offer Mr Clifford ... was more than they advised was necessary". Myler's letter does not state what sums of money were under discussion, nor does he recall the date of the meeting.

The former editor also said that payments to Clifford were to be "met from the News of the World's editorial budget" and from time to time that he would be "shown invoices" from the publicist that would be processed for payment.

However, Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, said she could not provide any further detail to the committee as to why she agreed to settle Clifford's claim.

She said that while she was "keen to co-operate as fully as possible with the committee" that could not do so because she was "still under investigation by the police" following her arrest on 17 July on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.

Brooks said that "one of the matters being investigated" are the circumstances surrounding the Clifford settlement, and that she was "questioned by the police on this issue". She said that she could not respond further on the topic because to do so would "directly affect the fairness of the investigative process".

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Neville Thurlbeck's letter to MPs - full text

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Full text of the former News of the World chief reporter's letter to culture select committee chairman on News International's handling of the phone-hacking scandal


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