Witness Statement of Alastair Campbell

8/3/2019 Witness Statement of Alastair Campbell

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For Distr ibut ion To CP s

SUBMISSION TO TI=I-E LF.VESON INQUIRY FROM ALASTAIR.CAMPBELlo

Thank y ou for your. tetter drawing a ttention to my stateme nt of 2004 that if the public knew .the tru.th about the way C ertain sections o f.the med ia opera te, they would be absolutelyhorrified and ask ing m e. to. elaborate.

I would like to preface m y rem arks.by saying, that although there is mu ch that is wrong withBritish journalism, there rem ains a good deal of quality joumafism , and m any journalists whosee journalism as.a noble calling an d.practise it in that spirit, with a com m itment to inform,educate, and entertain. One of Rupert Murdoch!s Australi.an execu tives once said to m eBritain has the b est press in the world, and the worst press in the w orld, and som etimes it isin the sam e edition. Indeed, wh en I mad e the statement to wh ich your letter drew a ttention,. Isaid in the sam e breath that there .. are plenty of good journalists, in the UK and it w as in theinterest of everyone that the m any g0 odjoumalists stand up .against the bad. There is now.,with this inquiry an d hopefully a chang e in regulation and o.ver time a chan ge in.culture, theopportunity for the best to regain the upper hand on the w orst, wh o have. undoubted ly set.thetone in recent years.

I was a journalist for most of m y adu lt life before w orking for Tony Blair. I went into journal-ism b ecause it is fun, exciting and because it matters. It is an im portant part o.f our culture.andnational and local life. It can mal~e , a difference for the b etter. It can provid e people with in -formation, understandirtg and ace ess to people, places and issues they w ould not otherwisehave. Being a journalist is a privileged position. If any of my ch ildren said they w ished tobejournalists,. I would b e happy with that. It is partly the.journalist in me, ev ery bit as. m uch.as

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the political figure wh o has been on the receiving end of m edia excesses, that rages at wh atthe media has become..The centre of gravity in our press has m oved to a bad place; the comb ined forces, of techno-logical change, intense compe tition, an obsess ion with celebrity, a cu lture of neg ativity, andamorality among. SOme of the industry s leaders and practitioners have accelerated a down-market trend, and accelerated too the sense of desperation in the. pursuit of stories. Speed nowcomes ah ead o.f accuracy, imp act comes ahead of fairness, and in parts of the press anything.goes to get the. story fus.t.. Wh ilst a free press should alw ays b e fought for~ the im pact uponour culture and our punic life of w.hat the press in Britain has becom e has a large debit sidealongside the credit that freedom brings~

A SUMM ARY OF TH I~ DEBIT SIDESo though I admire m any journalists and m uch journalism, as the quote you refer to and othercomm ents I have mad e over the years make obv icms, I also beiieve that there are serious andendem ic shortcomings in the culture, practices and ethics of the. British med ia. I believe thesehave caused and continue to cause unfairness to many individuals and organisations affected,as welI as often being against the pub lic interest and dam aging to important aspects of ourpublic life. I believe that for too long these h abits have b een ignored or de nied by the m ediathem selves, and accepted w ith resignation and fatalism b y the political classes as a whole.

Specifically, when I said that I believe the public would b e shocked if they k new the truthabout the w ay sections of the m edia operate,, in addition to dubious practices like phone-hacking, and other sl~ecific activities on w hich I say m ore towards the end of this subm ission,.I had in mind:

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a. new s values in which .whe ther something is true counts for tess than whe ther it m akes agood story;

b. a culture of negativity, in wh ich the prominen ce and w eight given to coverage is notproportionate to the significance or newsw orthiness of the m atter being reported, but wh etherit fits the agen da of the outlet., and particu larly whethe r it is dam aging to the target of theorganisation;

c. a Iack of anyth ing approaching the. sort of transparency or accountab ility w hich p:eoplewould expec t in any other organisations w hich played a sensitive and sign ificant role in ournational life;

d. a system of supposed regulation of the m edia w hich is .ineffectual ,, dominated b y them edia them selves, and wh ich allows inaccu racies, distortion, unfairness, invasion of privacyand dub ious practices to continue w ith impunity;

e. a culture in wh ich any .attempt to check or question the role of the media is m et withdenunciations of the m otives of those concerned, and instant claims that freedom of speech isunder threat. This is a form of "m edia exceptional.ism" w hich attempts to m aintain the "position that, tmlike every other institution in public life, the media cannot be regulated,checked , held accountable or made transparent w ithout a descent into totalitarianism.

THE CONTEXT OF CHANGF~

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Your letter asks for an assessm ent of the context of chang e. It is importan t here not to seenew spapers as being en tirely separate from the rest of the med ia. The broadcast m edia too hasmoved downm arket. Journalism on the in.ternet is often of a style even m ore vicious andinaccurate than mainstream journalism. Tke m ove to a m ore do.wrmaarket, sensatioriaiiStapproach has seen that age old aim of m any in the m edia - inform , educate and entertain - to alarge extent last in the pursu it of sales and view ing figures thoug ht only possible via im pactand sensation rather than inform ed let alone batanceddebate.

The background is the pace of change wh ich has swept through m any industries, but fewmore so than the m edia. In addition, to putting newspapers u nder enormous financial pressure,so that some fear for their very survival, the adven t of 24-7 news and the intemet has forcedthem to adapt substantially from the.role they once played. They are n o longer the mainproviders of new s, because m ajor events are now covered instantly and in detail, both new sand com m ent,, on TV, radio and the web . This has had two m ain effects - i t has forced thenewspapers theinselves to. shift much of their effort online, with as yet little financial rewardand considerable loss; and it has forced them to rely even more on creatir~g the extra im pactwhich gets them to stand out from their rivals.

Perhaps the two m ost impactful stories of recent times w ere The G uardians investigationsinto phone-hacking, which to som e extent have led to this inquiry - and The DailyTelegraphs expose of MPs. expenses. The Guardians success has b een the result of doggedand talented journalism b acked by "editors prepared to invest t im e and comm itment. T h eTelegraph story cam e in a different w ay, with the wholesale purchasing of information whichm ay have been illegally obtained, but whose significance, and impact w as such that the pu blic

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interest defence w as easily made an d rightly accepted. It was then for the paper t pursue thestory in a way that dominated the agen da over a sustained period, which it did successfully,getting the rest of the m edia to follow in its w ake, to the exten t that at times it felt likenothing else was happen ing in the w odd.

These enorm ous stories are the exception. Yet even w ithout them - which is the reality formost papers on most days - newspapers have to keep m aldng the extra im pact, because theyhave to .get noticed in an ev er bigger; noisier and more com petitive m arket place. W here oncethat battle took place across, the new s-stands.now it takes place relentlessly and noisily acrossthe 24 hour m edia of the technologicaI age. The powerful hold of the celebrity culture overthe m edia has exacerbated the m ove down m arket. Stories which used to be .. . And finallyitems On the new s often come close to the top of bulletins. Stories which in years gone bywould have m ade the go.ssip colum n can now lead a paper. Papers are competing in the samespace as a slew of celebrity mag azines. The exp osure of people s private lives, particularlytheir sexual relaiions, is now the staple diet of large parts of our m edia, indeed the b usinessm odel for some. It is this they fear losing, for some w orry that without it, their alreadydw indling share of the marke t will erode further.

Editors are und er enormous pressure. Journalists are under en ormous pressure. In. most of thenewsrooms, there are few er of them w ith more pages an d online space to fill, and less time todo it. These are important factors, but they should not be excu ses tO let standards and ethicsslip. Many of the w orst examples, of media ethics are not innocent mistakes m ade und erpressure, but sustained and deliberate actions: born of a change in culture.Of course to some extent it has always been the case in journalism that the story is all thatcountS. But because the online revolution m eans there is no longer such a thing as a dead line,

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or a geographical bound ary, speed is of the essence and in m uch of our media now , the raceto get the story first takes precedence over taking time to get the story right.

In the days of compe tition on the new s-stands papers heId back the from pag e until as late aspossible, including internally, becaus e wh at mattered w as the impac t on the street. Now, evenbefore the paper has been printed, front pages are being pu t Online and sent to broadcasters inthe hope that the. impact can be more im med iate. Then the story, if interesting enough, istaken up im m ediately by rivals keen to catch up. Again, this includes the broadcasters. It usedto be the job of journalists w orking a nigh t shift to wait for the other papers and check outany stories these rivals had. Today, there is no time to. check. Deb ate on such stories isinstant. It m eans journalists and broadcasters now routinely republish stories from elsewherewith no actual knowledge a s to their veracity. The. pressures are of course increased b y ~efact that memb ers of the public are doing so i~ the same fimefram e across the intemet.

The phrase if true has entered the m edia lexicon and can b e heard an d read m ost nights. Ifthis story is true, ttie impac t is a, b, e,. The idea of the journ alist as establisher of truth as.opposed to interpreter of story has gone. The process es of journalism.are now played out liveacross the med ia. On the. TV and radio new s stations, this has always b een the case ... W e aregetting reports of an explosion in x ... We w ill bring y oum ore details as we get them .New spapers, having h.ad to move substantial parts of their operations online, now do thesa/Tle.

In addition to if tree, another phrase wh ich is now m ore comm onthan b efore is forced:todeny. This is a device, which allows new spapers to report allegations mad e against some one,again w ithout knowing them to be: true. And of course forced to deny carries w ith it a sense

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of defensiveness,, if not guilt, designed to convey there is no...smoke w ithout fire. This is partof the same "speed m ore. important than accuracy trend; tile time it takes to check out thefacts may be w asted and others wLll get to the story first.

This is an inevitable response to the pace of change. But it has meant that rather thanj0umalism being .about the pursuit of truth, much of it is the coverage of the process ofgetting to the math, which often gets lost in that process. The old editorial rhythms that gavepeople time to think before they went on air, or committed to print, have gone. Discussionswhich used to be part of a backroom editorial process - have we checked this .story out, wh~should we bespeaking to, what are they likely to Say, what are the impiications iftme? arenow a staple diet of broadcast news dialogue, live on air, in direct competition withnewspapers, printed and onIine. Not wrong for long is the amusing phoney slogan given toSky News. There is a .gain of math within the joke.

A CHANGED DEFINITION OF NEWS

This has created a situation, accelerated bY the internet and the.social networks, in w hichfalse stories Can becom e new s for the fact of being said or reported, rather than becau sejournalists have checke d them out. A recent examp le was the prominent reporting in someUK newspapers of turnouts that the British husb and of a prominent D anish polit ician w asgay. The use of the w ord grotesque in the hea dline next to the word turnout, and the factthat the context w as a h ardfought election, were clearly thought to be justification for

running the story. Then the broadcasters would use the fact of the. papers reporting it t.o passthis news on. The stories were based on no eviden ce wh atsoever. I think it is the pressure ofcom petition, the fear that someone else w ill do the story first, that leads to this kind of thing,

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where stories get pub lished regardless, of the truth, or any actual knowledge of w here the. truthlies. I believe this is relatively new . I can think b ack to ma ny rum ours wh ich circulated in mydays as a p3tit ical journalis t, dam aging in their w ay, but w hich new spapers refused to printbecause of lack of evidence.

Again, the internet is a m ajor player in this. It .gives access to news, inform ation andconsum er choices unimag inable before its advent. On the other hand, it has furthercontributed to the g eneral shorterdn.g of our attention spans when it comes to new s. And incivic or citizens journalism , which sound s so benign there, can su rely be nothing wrong withit, it has becom e hom e to a form .of journalism in wh ich there are things constantly said andwritten which in old media would lead to papers .and radio stations fearing for their future.W orking. out wh ere news an d view s are coiffing from, and w hat weight to attach to them, at at ime w hen a new blog is probably created every second of every day, is now an essential partof the m edia consum ers toolkit. It has m ean( an acce ptance that certain basic journalisticstandards w hich used to be taken for granted have been eroded . Bloggers about wh om oftennext to nothing is known g et used as sem i-official sources. Not only can new s be new ssimply for the fact that someone repo.rts something, regardless ofveracity, but any one can b e

a journalis t , anyone can be a cam eraman, a m m our can be launched on a m essage board andfind its w ay quick ly, if interesting enoug h,.onto a radio phone-in, or into the heart of anelection debate. It is. a new landscape and everyone, media~ politicians and other newsm akersalike, is having to ad apt to it. But it is only traditional journalists and pu blications - bar thosewh o have opted out of self-regulation - who :are sub ject to any regulatory oversight at all. Sothe civic journalist may report what they like, often with little regard for truth or comeback .This puts the traditional joum aiist at some thing of a disadvan tage. The internet was once see n

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as the great w hite hope for a return to decent values in journalism. The trends would suggest that hope has. been dashed..Indeed, to be fair to newspapers, there .are some rumours which do not surface in the press,even when they are. circulating on the internet. It was on the internet that "rumours" ofGordon Brown and anti-depression medication began to circulate. To their credit, newspaperslargely ignored them, and accepted official denials without publishing the story. It was thebroadcaster Andrew Man- who took the rumours into the mainstream by asking GordonBrown about the rumours direct, live on TV. Unsurprisingly, newspapers felt they couldlegitimately report on this, though severn did so as much as a story about mediaethiCs. Sothough I .argue mmour without foundation is now more likely to surface than before, it is notalways the fault of the press that it does.

W HEN HYSTERIA BECOMES INHUMANF~Howev er, when b ig news stories break, the written press continues to have the capacity to setthe agenda for the rest of the media, as Tre~cor K avanagh said proudly to the inquirysseminar, and wh en they are in full cry, a hy steria can take hold which infects the broadcastme dia too. Of recent times,the McCa nn case is a good exa m ple of this. Sometimes , storiesbecome so big, in the ey es :of large parts ofthe m edia, that an anything goes m o.od sets in.The disappearance 0f Madeleine M cCann w as a m oving and im portant story, which quicklybecam e a comm odity in which m ost of the med ia got close to hysteria, which took it at timesin the opposite direction to the pursuit for truth.. Even those parts of the m edia w hichacknow Iedged the hy steria - one or two of the broadsh eets, some of the broadcasters - couldnot resist going along with it. A point cam e wh ere it was felt by some that the w ordMadeleine w as a seller, almost at tim es on a par w ith Diana in the h eyday of the Princess of

:L

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W ales, and any story, no matter how cruel, no matter how inSubstantial or unche cked out,would go on the front, regardless of the pain it m igl~t cause, and regardless of its veracity.The Express .and Star were the w orst offenders, which is why it is right they were the m osthurt by the subsequent libel claims. It is at least understandable, if Often unfair, fornew spapers to decide that people.used to being in the p ublic eye - politicians, Royals,business leaders, celebrities and so forth - can hand le i t or that they wan t pubiicity sotheycant complain when things turn.against them . But I think m uch the sam e approach is nowtaken to anyone w ho. finds themselves in the public eye, through choice or not, withexperience or not~ and leads to coverage which at times can only be described as inhum ane.Anyone w ho for whatever reason got.caught up in the h unt for Madeleine became fair gam e for anything, Not just the MeC anns, but the. friends they w ere on holiday w ith, one-timesuspe ct Robert Mura t, and his girlfriend, have all successfu lly sued for libel. It is. hard toimag ine, however, that any fmancial settlem ent could compensate for what happen ed to themwh en the m edia frenzy was at i ts height. They just became an other news comm odity.I have no time for the Big B.rotherfIm a celebrity get me out of here hold on modem TV,and its. symbi.o.tic relationship with new spapers in desperate need of m ore and m orecelebrities with stories to tell, and private li~es to hav e exposed. Bu t I would use the sam eword - irthum ane - to describe some of the coverage of Jade G oody in her journey fromsudde n fam e to early death, or Kerry K atona at various difficult points in her life. In February20.08 1 w rote an article.for The Times on the 24/7 hound ing of Britney Spea rs, sug.gesting themed ia who chased her to hospital in.a huge convoy of cars and vans at a t ime she was clearlydisturbed had 10St any sen se of hum anity at. all. I have b een un able to locate the article eitheronline or in my own files,.but here is an interview I did on the Subject at the tim e.

, http:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtX5MmHXRIY

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The press will argue - as Skys Kay Burley does in the interview - that the desire for famemade the people we were discussing fair game for .all they could throw at them. Interestingly,she mentions both politicians and the McCanns as people who court publicity - the former toreach the public, the latter to keep the hunt for their daughter in the public eye - and thereforehave to take the downside. But what happens with maj or celebrities" now is that once theyare established as such, there are few ifany timits placed on what kind of story is. deemedpermissible, or limits on the tactics to get the story. When former Welsh Secretary went forhis infamous moment of madness walk on Clapham Common what happened and whatensued was clearly newsworthy. But as the story dragged on day after day, and the presssought to wring every last nugget from it, I eventually lost it a littte when doing a regularFriday briefing with a group of Sunday newspaper correspondents..i said "you lot clearlywont be happy till the. guy has topped himself, but I am now shutting up shop on the issue.

This led to stories about Blairs suicide fears for Ron.Shortly after I w rote, the p iece in The Times, a paparaz.zi photographer resigned from Splashagency , admitting that the. hounding of-Britney Spears had g one beyond any thing hisconscience w ould allow. Rarely do editors- here the m agazines are as b ad as the pape rs.-geem to stop and think of people as hum an beings. This can happen even when a target of thestories is generally popular, with both pu blic and m edia. Paul Gascoigne is an exam ple.: Notonly was he a v ictim of phone-hack ing. But at various points, whe n he ha s clearly bee n ill, tothe press there have been n o limits to. their pursuit of a story about him. I now work part-timewith m ental health charities. It is an-area in w hich,, for both fam ous, and non-famous alike, theway the issues and people involved are covered can have a real .and d etrim ental im pact uponpeoples health and w ell-being. I believe thi~ is rarely if evertaken into account b y editors. Ata dinn er last year, I was introduced to the e ditor.of Heat m agazine~ I did my usual dia tr ibeabout the ro!e of the celebrity culture and the celebrity m agazineS; He seemed a reasonabld

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enough person. He had a very interesting defence. "W e perform a useful role. W hat would.you rather have - m agazines like. ours, or public executions?" I rather admired h is honesty.

To some ex tent, the press are right to differentiate between those who seek publicity, andwh o hire PRs to help them do so, and those who becom e new sworthy through no fault oftheir own. I set out the above not for any innate feelings for celebrities, bu t:to show that infact the differentiation has ceased to. exist. Whe n the McCann s becam e new sworthy,, in them ost horriNe of circumstanc es, oncethe hysteria set in, the m edia treated them in ex actly thesam e wa y as they w ould a rock star dying from drug abuse, or a reality TV .star failing toadapt to the fam e he or she h ad sough t. And it is the culture of denigration and of desperationto get the story at all costs, that leads som eone w orking for a new spaper to think itpermissible., despite the law, to hack the phones of celebrities, and for editors and executivesto comm ission, condone or to turn a b lind eye to such criminality. Once that moral and legallim it has been b reached,, it leads the sam e person to. think nothing of hack ing Milly Dow ler sphone to.o. It was this that provoked th e national outcry that finally forced the countrys.;politicians to adm it the extent of the cultural problem, and the establishment of this inquiry.But long. before that the press could be extraordinarily hard-hearted in its coverage of peoplewh o through no fault of their own sudden ly became newsw orthy comm odities , and utterlydishonest when challenged over som e of the tactics em ployed.I referred briefly above to the Princess of W ales. She. was certainly someone wh o courted themed ia. But she was also someone sub ject to more. than her fair share of inventions .andmisrepresentations by.the m edia. In the w ake of her death, clearly a hu ge global event b~y an ystandards, the role of the chasing paparazzi in Paris attracted far less media ,and politicaldebate than it should have don e. Indeed, one could argue thai the m edia deliberately focusedon, and indeed fann ed, a sense of hysteria about flagpoles, and supposed publicdissatisfaction at the m anner of the Royal familys mourning , simply to silence and d istract

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from the real outpouring of public outrage against the intrusive practices of the media, and inparticular the paparazzi who had played a r0le in her death.

TI-l~ FUSION OF NEWS AND COMMENT/INVENTION

Alongside all this, news .and comm ent have fused, w hich m akes it harder and harder for thepunic to establish where fact ends a nd com m ent begins. This is particularly prevalent :inthose newspapers - now the m ajority - which h ave an agenda, polit ical or otherwise, and w hooften make their impac t by relentlessly pursuing their campaign s, using news as w ell ascomm ent columns to paint a wholly One-sided picture of an issue or personality: Onc~ again,this is not new, as .anyone wh o worked for m edia m oguls of the past w ill testify~ But theacceleration of the trend has been clear, as new spapers have relied more on front page im pactcampaigns an d m anufactured news, less on hard new s in the traditional sense. It mean s thatas a m atter of editorial policy, newsp apers ess entially refuse to set out two sides to a story.The Sun on Eu rope, or the trade un ions, might b e.an exam ple of this. The Mail on prettym uch any thing that does not coincide w ith the peculiar w orldview of its editor. The Expresson Europe. The Star on asylum seekers .

Tabloid newspapers in particular pride them selves on the robustness an d aggression w ithwh ich they putsue their cam paigns. The question is whether they allow their zeal for thecam paign to infect their comm itment to accuracy, which is central to the code under wh ichthey are supp osed to have bee n operating. The answ er is that they d o. Several ~f our nationaldaily titIes - The Sun, The E xpress, The Star, The M ail, The Telegraph in particular- arebroadly anti-European. At various times, readers of these and other new spapers may haveread that Europe or Brussels" or the EU.superstate has b anned, or.is intending to b an;

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kilts, curries,, mushy peas, paper rounds, Caerph illy cheese , cha6ty shops, bu lldogs, bentsausages and cu cum bers, the British Arm y, lollipop ladies, British loaves, British mad elavatories, the passport crest, lorry drivers w ho we ar glasses, and m ~ny more. Jn add ition, ifthe Eurosceptic press is to be be lieved, Britain is going to-be, forced to unite as a sin gle.country with France, Chu rch schools are being forced to hire atheist teachers, Scotch w hiskyis being-classified as.an inflam ma ble liquid, British soldiers m ust take orders in French:, theprice of chips is being raised by Brussels, Europe is insisting .on one size fits all condoms,new laws are being proposed on how to climb , a ladder, it will be a criminal offence tocriticise Europe, Num ber 10 m ust fly the European flag, and finally, Europe is brainwash ingour children with pro-European propaga nda.! Of the UK press ~d the European institutions -I speak as som ething of a Eurosceptic by B lairite standards - it is clear w ho does m orebrainwashing. Some of the exampleS, may appear trivial, comic even. But there is a seriouspoint: that once some of Our new spapers decide to campaign on a certain issue, they do sowith scan t regard for fact. These stories are.written by reporters, rewritten by subs, an d.editedby editors who. frankly m ust know them to be untrue. This. goes beyond the fusion of newsand com m ent, to the area of invention.

"Ibis approach m eans new sp.apers really can ha ve theircake and ea t it: So the Mail can :run anonsense story ctaiming "the EU is going to ban grocers from selling egg s by the dozen ...

http ://ww w.dai lymail.co.uk/news/article- 12 89882iEU-ban-se~li n~-e~,.~s-dozen-Shopkeepersfurg-told-food-wei~hed-sold-kilo.htm!

. .. and then run the opp osite story, claim ing the victory of a U-turn from som ething that w asnever actually going to happen in the first place

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ba~cklash-Britain,htm[.,.

.... based on the fact that the. European ParIiamen t put out a statem ent m aking clear theoriginal story was n onsense.

htt .:]/www.euro arl et~ro a eu/sides/ etDoc doglan a e-en&t e-IMP~RESS&reference=20100629IPR771.86

There is no sub ject too sensitive for papers like the Mail to be able to squeeze in one or m oreof its prejudices. Take this examp le of a story of a.young girl who k illed herself. She wen t toa gram mar school (a good thing in the Mail worldview.). Theheadline and intro suggest thepretty (good thing,).schoolgirl killed herself after being b ullied by.girls from acomprehensive sch ool (bad thing).

Yet even w ithin the story there are the words. the inquest heard no evidence of bullying, andthe headline is effectively supported only by the w ords in the intro amid fears. It is classicMail-speak. Hund reds, thousands of stories are manu factured in this way.htto:/!www.dailYmail.co.uk/news/article_ 116897 ltGramm ar-schgolgirl- M-hanged-rowpupils-nearby-comprehensive.htm!

Another com m on tactic of papers w ith an agen da, but w ho fail to stand up a story factually, isto pose a question in the headli.ne~ I w.ould support new spapers Camp aigning against A1Qaida. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that this story, asking if A1 Qaida w ere

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conducting test bomb ings on the banks of Loch Lomond, might just as well have been aboutanother fiction in Loch N eSs. In this case, the age nda is n ot political,.but the c reation of fear,wh ich is central to the w ay crime: is covered in the UK.

httla:i/ww w.dailym ail.co.uk/news/article_ 1330975/Loch-Lom ond-forest-blast-linked_A 1Oaeda-Was-trainin g-eercise.htm!

The shift toward s even m ore agenda-driven journalism is atso a consequence of new spapersfeeling they h ave a d ifferent job to do. than in years gone b y. Far from separating new s andcomm ent,., agenda driven journalism relies on their fusion. I cam e from this strand ofjournalism m yself when on the Mirror . I defend it. Howev er, I think two b ig change s are therefusal of ma ny ed itors to allow ~ y ba lance at all - such as right of reply,, even w ithin a story- or to allow any inconve nient facts to dispel the impre ssion of a story they seek to create.

TIlE STORY RIGHT OR W RONG

There remain man y joumalistswhostrive hard to be accurate, who refuse to write s toriesunless they know thereto be true, who lose sleep if they have g ot something w rong. For allthe.sneering b y people from the M ail .and the Sun about the m ake-up of the inquirys panel,m y broad expe rience of them tells me you have two such journalists sitting on it. That approach used to be the case for the m ajority. I am not sure it is any longer. Because of thepressures editors and sen ior executives apply, I believe the com mitm ent to accuracy is nolonger a.comers tone of muc h journalism . I recall once in the 80s writing a trailer of the.Budget, speculating what m ight .he in i t . The editor asked m e if I had seen the Budg et. OfCourse not, I said. Then why are you w riting this crap? W ith so much .space to fill,

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journalists have to speculate all the time. W hen w orking in Dow ning Street, I wa s alwaysconscious of this before Cabinet reshuffles. Before one. reshuffle, I recall ministers beingreported on different occasions in different newspapers as being m oved to nine differentdepartm ents. In the end they d idnt move at all. There is rarely if ever any com eback on thejournalist wh o writes these stories. Indeed , I recall some say ing the m inisters had stayed intheir old jobs as expected. It is my con sidered view that m any of these stories were sim plyinven ted. Once one p aper starts to specu late, others fee l they have to follow suit. Ironically,given w e have m ore media now , the .herd tendency is even greater. Brave is the journalistwh o tells the editor, asking for a reshu ffle story, or a line in adv ance of a m ajor speech, thathe doesnt have a clue w taat the Prime. Minister is pl.anning. Yet in adv ance of all thereshuffles I was involved in,. that was almost certainly the case, so few were the people; whoknew what w as planned. The stories get written. The stories are shown to be w rong by

events. But by then the caravan has m oved on, and nobody is held accountable for presentingfiction as hard new s.

As the inquiry has already heard , Richard Peppiatt resigned from the Star because of h isdisgust at the kind of s tories - many u ntrue - that he and others were b eing asked to w rite topromote the papers line on Muslims, He confirmed too that he wrote invented stories toorder about celebrities. It is surely w orth beating in m ind that he n ow spea ks from a positionof having resigned in disgust, whereas those who on the sam e day painted to-the inquiry asomew hat rosier and m ore W holesome picture of life in the modem new sroom are stilI there,defending the. trade they ply, including, in the case of Trevor Kavanag h for exam ple, thosewh o for a long tim e m ounted the "lone rogue reporter defencein relation to phone-hacking,and w ho have ied the papers editorial cam paigns on issues like Europe. The bu lk of thosewh o spoke to your sem inar are wei1 paid, reasonably secure, and part of a campaign toensure

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the status quo is not overly troubled by the inquirys conclt~sions. Mr Peppiatt came o~er assomething of a lone voice, but I believe his v oice carried m ore weight .and m oral authoritythan the editors. There are many more w ho feel and think as he does. But they are badly paid- casual shift reporters tam little more than they did w hen I w as in Fleet Street thirty yearsago - they are under m assive pressure, and they know that if they step out of line, the bosseson their six and seven figu re salaries can find plenty of cheap young repIacem ents elsewhere.In his. evidence to yo.ur first semin ar, Mr Peppiatt spoke of the canon of ideologically andcomm ercially driven narratives that mast be adh ered to as. a basic approach in newsrooms ofagenda-driven new spapers. That description was far cIoser to the truth than m uch of w hatwas said to you. by the editors and reporters from those.papers.

In papers hostile to the governm ent.of the. day, such as the Mirror today, .or the.M ail in mostof Labours tim e in power, on The Sun once it had shifted its political position be fore the iastelection, it is rare that any story is pub lished w hich m ight reflect well on them. Or tactically,they m ay do the occasional one to pretend they are som ehow b alanced and objective. Paperswith an ed itorial line for or .against changing thev oting system then sianted new s coverage tosuit the tine. The recent debate on the Human Righ ts Act has been a good exam ple of an issuewh ere pape rs only report the stories that fit their editorial line. The S u n is currently enga gedin a cam paign to get the Prime Minister to sack Ken Clarke as Justice Secretary. Headlines,pictures, new s reports and editorials are .all ben t in th.at direction. I have r~o problem w ithnewspapers running campaigns. They are. a.hugely important part of what a new spaper is . Butthey.do have a responsibility to base them on facts,, and there are almost as m any inven ted

. stories about the im pact of the I-IRA as there are about Europe.

POLITICS AND THI~ ME~I~IA

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I know that.your letter indicated I w ould be asked Separately about politics and the m edia, butI would like to say som ething about this. here, because I think it is central.to the. debate~ a sultimately so m uch m edia coverage em erges from the political system, and b ecause it is afailure of politics, as we ll as a failure of the m edia, that w e are in the cu rrent situation. Poli-tics has been m ore affected than m ost walks, of life by the changes I set out above. W hen Im ade the statem ent you referred to. aboutthe m odem m edia, I also noted that if the publicknew the troth ab.out politicians, they w ould be pleasantly.surprised. I remain of that "dew ,and app ly it to all the m ain parties, including th ose wh ose politics, policies and .values I dis=agree w ith. But politics and public life are. now ffltered through suc h a neg ative and cyn icalprism that i t is very hard for any ofthem to maintain the und erstanding let alone the backingof the public they are seeking overw helming ly to serve. Except in times of:crisis and scan dal, coverage of Parliamen t and parliamen tary debate is now reduc.ed to.the occasional com edy

sketch. W hat the politician says gets less coverage, in both print and on the broadcast me dia,than what the journalist says about it. Policy debates are reflected more via the personalitiesinvolved than orl the issue unde r question.This might b e a useful place to set out some of the chan ges w e introduced to make politicsand m edia coverage, of it more on the record in ,an effort to make it more accessible to thepublic. W hen I wa s a political joumaiist the m edia were n ot even allowed to refer to the factof Dow ning Street briefings, Journalists from the lobby in Parliam ent w ould troop over toDow ning. Street, be briefed by the Prime Ministers press secretary, and could report what hesaid, but only by referring to sources." Journalists w ho quoted him directly risked ex pulsionand therefore the loss of an important source, of inform ation. It was an .absurd position w .hicheroded over time . I putthe briefings on the record so that anything I said could b e directlyattributed to the PM s official spokesma n, and accoun ts of all briefings were p ut online. TonyBlair agreed to a monthly Prime M inisterial press conference and to becoming the first to

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appear be fore select com mittees in add ition to PMQs, and to going out to: do regular on therecord meetings w ith the public, practices which have continued un der Gordon Brown andDa vid Cam eron. But all of these, attempts to put the debate on a m ore open and healthyfooting tended to be dismissed as spin.

I acknowledge that some in the m edia believe that we were a bu nch of control freaksdeterm ined always to set the agenda on our terms. I have also acknowledged b efore that wh enW e moved from Opposition to Government in I997, we hun g on to some of the med ~am anagem ent techniques m ore suited to Opposition for too long, which gav e the med ia theexcuse.they w anted to present all governm ent comm unications - essential :and legitim ate - asm ore spin, and m ore control freakery.It is certainly the case that w e felt we had to do a b etter job of setting the agenda than Ou rpredecdssors of both Tory and Labour hue. Modern governm ent is hard enough without beingrun ragged b y the m edia, which is what happened to John Major, and to Labour leaders.Margaret Thatcher had much more. press support, partly for political and ideological reasons,in that most owners, and editors are right.wing and g enuinely supported her., but also becauseshe operated wha t today w ould be seen as a corrupt system of patronage using the hon0urssystem to reward su pportive owne rs and editors..She also, as set out in Harold Evan s newpreface to his book, Good T imes, Bad Times, turned a b lind eye to the law to allo.w RupertMurd och to take a greater control over the m edia, which h e used not just to his advantage; butto hers as well. She gave the m edia a sense of their own pow er, and m any used it against hersuccessor, John Major.I was a lways determ ined to do what I could to avoid the. same fatebefalling Labour und er Tony Blair. Though th e press largely turned ag ainst him at variousstages of his Premiership, and some continue to campaign relentlessly .against him even now ,

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we did have a fairly benign m edia environment [or some year.s, and by th~ t ime they turned,m ost of the pubiic knew h im w eIl enough to have a fairly settled view.

But thou.gh we did have . a proacti~e strategy to .rninimise the potential negative im pact Of thepress, our attempts to be more open w ere genuine if ultimately unsu ccessful in terms ofmeeting the Ob jectives we set for them. Freedom of Information is a goo.d exam ple. It was areal attempt to mak e governm ent more open and accoun table. I am not sure that has been thenet effect, because the w ay m any in the m edia use it - to pursue often trivial inquiries whichtake up huge .amounts of civil service t ime and m oney - has m ade government em ployees,

" both m inisters andofficiats~, often less willing to comm it to print thoughts and actions w hichprobably they should. There has to be space w ithin governm ent for a process of debate an ddiscussion, and it is. arguab le whether the extent to which FoI claims can d isrupt that has been -good for gocernme.nt. FoI.wili only w ork if there is a gen uine com mitm ent by bothgovernm ent and m edia to use it for the purpose it was intended - better to inform publicdeb ate. By some, thatis indeed how it is used. But it isfar from un iversal.W hen your inquiry com es to investigate the relationship between politics and the media, Ihave little doubt some journalists will seek to cIaim that they had to b.ecome m orenegativeand aggressive in respor~se to our and in particular my chang es in the approach to governm entcomm unications. Even the reasonable ones like to say it is "six of one and h alf a dozen of the.other. I reject their claims. W e m ade chang es to adapt to the modem med i.a.age and to ensurewe could com mu nicate the reality of what w e were .doing to.the pub lic over time through theclouds of m isrepresentation and trivialisation put up by the m edia.. Comm unication is anecessary and legitimate function, indeed in m y view a duty, of government in a dem ocracy.The focus by the press on spin was an attempt to deligitimise any com m unication aboutpolitics and g overnmen t but ~eir own, to m ake them selves the sole arbiters" of whist mattered,

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what w as newsw orthy and interesting or im portant, , wh o was good, who. was bad. I haveargued b efore that both politics and med ia need to b e m ore accepting of the role of the other.But I would defend the hon esty and integrity of the bulk of politicians and those w ho workfor them against the honesty and integrity of m any Ow ners and editors and those who w orkfor them.

THE DECLINE OF GENUINE INVESTIGATIVE OURNALISM

At a joumalism con ference in Italy two years ago, I did an event w ith Carl Bernstein, one ofthe two W atergate" reporters. He said it w as a great story, but a disasterfor journalism; be-cause ever since, as evinced by the .num ber of -gate stories, journalists have assum ed therem ust be a scandal lurking behind every pu biic figure, and they can only really prove them -selves if they b ring down a top publicfigure. As Michael W hite Of The Guardian said in therecent In D efence of Politics series on Radio 4, w hich I hope the p anel fir~ds time to. hear, it isnow not enough for the m edia to say public figures make m istakes. They m ust be venal andcorrupt too.. Most are neither.W hen new spapers defend them selves and their role in society, they tend to cite great investi-gations like the Thalidomide scan dal as the kind .of story they are in business for. The fact w estill talk and hear so m uch of it underlines how few great investigations there have been am idthe m illions of stories since. The time, energ y and res ources ava iIable to journalists go pri-marily towards the instant hits and the ceiebfity exposes, so. that real serious investigativejournalism sucli as is represented by W atergate and Thalidomide is actually under threat. Thattoo is the responsib ility of those wh o. now lead the indus try and ed it its paperS. I hope the in-quiry is able to look into wh at might b e done to boost genuine investigative journalism .

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RELATIONS BETWE EN POLITICIANS AND OWNER S/EDITORS

Politicians are often criticised for seeking to cultivate relationships with owners and editors.The reality is that m ost would probab ly wish they d idnt have to. But in add ition to the:advantage of political support that can be g enerated by favourable me dia access and s upport,it is also an act of self-defence because of the political damage that can be done by the m ediaiii full cry. The same goes for high profile celebrities or businesses who h ave ever moresophisticated teams to try to deal with. the media. Ed M iliband stood up for what he believedin the stance he took on phone-hacking, and he is right in saying political leaders of bothm ain parties ignored w rongdoing in the med ia in the past, in part becaus e they wished eitherto gain the support of new spapers , ensure the ab ility to get their point of view across to .thepublic via their pages, or minimise the d am age.they could do. But in truth.he is already,paying a price in term s of the hostility, of coverage, and the negative fusion of new s andcomm ent about his leadership. It is also possible to see within the governm ent an attemp t toensure that though they h ave to. make critical comm ents about the events w hich led to theinquiry, part. of their calculation is about how they keep the m edia broadly onside as theyapproach the next election.

The m odem m edia is so omn ipresent, loud and agg ressi.ve that any politician or prominen tpublic figure wh o does not to som e extent court it ,. or at least find strategies for dealing w ithi t , is likely to be dam aged by it . In any event, the t ime and energy spent s imply dealing withthe volume of inquiries, and false stories which require rebuttal, make m edia ma nagem ent anecessary p art of a punic figures operation. The internet has certainly opene d the space,hopefuIIy, for a more distant relationship betw een politics and m edia own ers, but I would notbet on it.

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PAPERS AS PO LITICAL PLAYERS/jOLrRNALISTS ASSPIN DOCTO II

It is also the case that new spaper ow ners, editors and senior journalists have increasinglybecome political players as w ell as spectators, using n ew.spapers either as instruments ofunaccountable p olitical power, or to prom ote their own comm ercial interests (as oftenhappens in the Mu rdoch and D esm ond papers coverage of issues related to their broadcastinterests for example), Or to promote their own poIitical agen da, not just in :comm ent colurrmsbut across new s pages too, which often continue to carry a ven eer of.objectivity~ but w hosesubstanc e is geared almost w ord by w ord to promoting the papers line on an issue or anindividual. It is this phen omen on that leads m e to say the real spin doctors are.the journalists,and politicians and their spokesm en spend inordinate t ime an d energy tryingto countermediapropaganda w ith explanation of what they actually said and w hat they .actually mean t.

There w as an interesting description byPolly Toynb ee in The Guardian recently of w hathappened in the press room after Ed Miliband s speech to Labour.s conference. " If you wan tto see the herd m entality in action, stand there and wa tch them gather to agree this is a plungeback to Labours dark days or some such n onsense. Murdoch may be m aimed, but dont:imag ine any weak ening grip by Britains 80% righ twing press wh ose gale force influences theprevailing wind am ong the broadcasters too."

Of course it has to be said Polly Toynbee has her own agenda . But she is right to point outwh ere the political balance lies, and to note the imp act this has on our b roadcast me dia. It iswh y I think it important not to see the press as a .separate entity, isolated within the res t.of thischanging m edia 1.andscape, but as having a fundam ental impact upon the. rest of the m edia~

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and a consequen t decline in standards of fairness and accuracy across the board. W hen I drewattention.to Polly Toynbee s observation on my w ebsite, the fol!owing com me nt was postedby D avid Blake, a former e ditor. I used to go to party conferences every year as a journalistworking on a national newspaper. W hat s truck me was that m y fellow journalis ts spent verylittle time listening to speeches , no time at all talking to delegates and h uge. am ounts of timetalking to each other. So the ma n from The Telegraph would ask the man from The Mail whathe thought, who w ould pass. on wh at he had heard from a b loke on The Sun. And next daythat would be wh at the Conference w as thinking. And du ring the next day BBC radio andthen the news chann els would spend the day discussing w hy conference was thinkingthat. This wasn t really a party point. The sam e thing happen ed at Conservative conferences,tl?. ough naturally most of the.journalists had a m ore favourable view. He did ad d how everHaving 80% of the press against you is still a problem, bu t it is a diminishing one as people.read it less and less and dont increase the amount of time they spend" on TV m uch. And atlast On the intemet they get different voices unfiltered. There may b e.something in this. But-it does raise the question: is ttiere anywh ere anyone can go for a healthy, fact-based d ebate?

THE RELIANCE ON ANONYMOUS ~.AND OFTEN INVENTEDLOUOTES

In coverage of politics and m any other areas, there, has been a growing reliance onanonym ous quotes, which on exam ining stories are often found to justify the scream ingheadline. W e have no. way of know ing how m any of these quotes .are real, and how man yinvented, but. I am in no doubt w hatever that many of them are invented. A.rare example thatproved this practise came recently w hen the M ail Online inadvertently published the wrongversion of two stories prepared for the Aman da K nox appeal verdict. They m istakenlypublished the v ersion prepared for her appeal being rejected, complete w ith reactions, from

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her and he r family, and quotes that justiCe has been d one by the prosecutor. This wasspotted by Tabloid W atch.

http:/itabloid-watch:blogspot.com /2011110 /mn itonline-rn akes-up-events-quotes-from .html

The build up to Budgets w as an area w here the invention of s tories via invented anonym ousquotes was w idespread. Now it is true that there has b een a recent.and un fortunate trend ofadvanc e briefing of Budg et details. I can have no criticism of a journalist wh o, if briefed b.ysenior people in the Treasury, reports that. But that does not negate the fact that so m uch pre-Budget coverage is invented. Of course it is .also the case that sometimes the anonym ous quotes w ere real and accurate, .and that can b e a legitimate form of journalism. But I stronglybelieve now that the inven tion of quotations.by senior sources, insiders, senior minis~ersl,close friends, etc is widespread_ As Michael W hite has pointed out, quotes are neverattributed to junior backb ench M Ps wh o dont See the Prime M inister very often. It is .alsonoticeable that m ost of the people quoted anonym ously speak in the house-style of themed ium in w hich they are quoted. Short sentences in the tabloids, longer in the broadslieets,pithy hom ilies on TV.

It is also my b elief that most editors do not challenge theirjottrnalists; even wh en the story isproven to be w rong. There was a considerable furore recently w hen it w as. revealed tha(., theIndependent. columnist Johann Hari took quotes from other people"s books :and interviewsand m ade them part of his own. There w as a s imilar furore over the broadcaster Alan Yentobpretending to have been in interviews w hich w ere actually done by a producer or researcher.Yet I am not aware of a s ingle case where a s tory based on anonym ous quotes has, on beingshown to be wrong, led to a reporter being disciplined or the paper acknow ledging the

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possibility of invention. Whenthe.Sunday Times apologised to John Prescott last year over ananonymously based front pagestory, which turned out to be an invention, the paper,ludicrously, attributed their mistake to a production error. This is in stark contrast to manyof thebroadsheets and magazines in the US say, where not only is there, a Systemof fact-checking, but where a journalist whose anonymously based story turned out to be falsewould at least face the opprobrium, of colleagues, and possibly disciplinary action. Thoughthe online revolution is changing things there too, and standards are certainIy lowering insome sections of the med, ia, most American broadsheet journalists see themselves as.professionals, with professional standards to uphold. I can recall one weekend beinginterrupted by persisrent calls from reporters following up a story in the Sunday E xpress that Iwas leaving Downing Street to take up a position at Manchester United. This was based onso-calied quotes from so-called friends and colleagues. I called the. newspaper - which had

not put the story to me in advance - to complain and to issue a strong denial. I said there wasno troth in it whatsoever. "I know, came the response. But its a good story. The PCC codeon putting stories to the people concerned is broken routinely in this way. They knew thestory was untrue, so did not put it to me because a denial would weaken it.

To sum up, in my experience Of over a decad e dealing with the political media, exaggeration,ernbeilishmen t and pure invention are endem ic, and are tolerated and indeed encouragefl bysome editors and senior executives.Nor does it just apply to politicians and celebrities. I .attach he re an intere sting blogp ost, fromwh at migh t be termed an ordina ry person wh o was the victim of this practice of journalisticlies and invention. It is long, but bears rea ding.

http://nosleeptilbrooktands.blogspot.com/2011/Ol/true-storc-of-daily-maiI-lies-guest.htrnl

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CULTURE OF NEGATMTY

Im afraid I reached the conclusion that. many journalists, including and indeed e.speciallysenior figures in the industry, did not wish to get the.d~bate to a healthier place. It. suited theculture of negativity being fostered to resist any such moves, it suited too the use of theirpapers .as instruments of political power and influence without accountabiiity.

That the Murdoch-Dacre-Desmond approach has created a cultu~e of negativity is clear~Before his death, Robin Cook used to cite a report by an academic which suggested thepositive to negative ratio in our papers had moVed from 3-1 in 1974 to 1-18 in the early21stcentury. Even if that overstates possibly, it certainly reflects a trend. It reflects the widespreadbelief that negativity, hysteria, sensation and crisis are all that sell. In fact, I believe the press.

has made a collective and strategic error with this .approach. In addition to technologic.Nchange, the negativity is one of the factors, that has turned thepublic away from the press as aprime source of news. They know in their own lives that life is not all bad, yet that is theprime message they get from large parts of.the press.. The public .are smart enough torecognise overblown nonsense and hype, and the decline of newspapers has been hastened bypeoples weariness..and frustration at the lack of any sense of.proportion or balance in whatthe papers offer. So people are going elsewhere to find inforrnafidn they trust. The rise insocial networks is in part based on the concept of friends - we do not believe politicians aswe used to; we do not believe the media; we do not believe business and other vestedinterests; we believe each other,, friends and family, those we know.

Yet sometimes the geale of negativity can have. a material impact upon the security, ec0.nomicperformance, health and well being of the country. To give an example: in a decade with

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Tony Blair, I think we h ad half a dOzen genuir~e crises. W e had hun dreds .described as such.Two of the genuine one s were the Foot and Mouth ep idem ic of 2001 and the fuel protest of2000 . In both of these, it became clear that much of tIae m edia saw its role not to report or toanalyse, but to slant that reporting and a nalysis in a way design ed to mak e the situationworse.

The fuel protest was one of those m omen ts when the m edia genuine ly and collectively lostthe plot. Starved of a genu ine Opposition in Parliament, they saw in the rag-bag arm y outsiderefineries a w ay ofcurbing the G overnments power. As I said in a speech on the issue .a fewyears ago, they pretended a show of hands , of afew farm ers and track drivers was som etiowrepresentative dem ocracy or the stirrings of the same sort of political movem ent w hichbrought down comm unism. They saw themselves as activists and agitators not journalis ts andcomm entators, not least when it cam e to their reporting of panic buying, w hich helped tocreate it, and were left feeling.rather stupid w hen the p ublic decided it had gone on longenough. It was an inevitable consequence of the m edia increasingly s .eeing their role as active"participants in politics, seeking to m ould and influence even ts, rather than to report them , anddoing so without any accoun tability;

I think it was around then, as Tony Blair realised the media was doing everything it cou!d to.make the crises worse, rather than simply cover them, that he started to worry less about theiropinions .and more about their role inour society. His analysis, setout in a speech he made:shordy before leaving office, was that"the changed media context meant that all that matteredwas impact. "Of course the accuracy of a story counts,, but it is secondto impact," he said. He.went on, and I agree with this too, "It is this necessary devodon to impact that is unravel.ling

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standards, driving them down , making the diversity of the media .not the strength it should bebut an impulsion towards sensation above all else..

I believe the speech, m ade shortly before he left office, and w hich failed to spark the.debatehe hoped it would, merits reading ag ain in the light of all that has em erged since. At the tim e.,feral beasts took the head lines, he w as accused of w hining, and the caravan m oved on.

http:/!news.bbc.co.uk/1/hiluk t)olitics/674458 l.stm

As I said to him at the t ime, I would rather he had nam ed nam es and focused on those parts ofthe press - Murdoch and the Mail Group.- which ha d been m ost influential in creating thetrends he outlined. But even his reference to one paper h e did single out - T he Independent -was d eliberately m isinterpreted and dismissed as b itterness about their disagreeing with himover I_raq. In fact .he was m aking the point that the paper had been founded as a reactionagainst the m erging of new s ~d opinion, but moved w ithin 20 years to place itself.explicitlyat the forefront of "viewspapers", and s o was som ething of a metaph or for the fusion of newsand comm ent as the predominan t theme .in British newspapers.

Jeremy Paxma n~s response, in the Mact.aggart Lecture.a few m onths later, was interesting."I though t the way w e. responded to Tony Blairs speech w as pretty pathetic," he. said2 "Onthe central charges - that the media behave like a herd, have a trivial and collectivejudgement, and prefer sensation to understanding - he said "Im sorry to say, but I thinktheres something in all of these argum ents." But there w as a collective refusal to engage onthe. subs tance ....The m edia just "preSsed the FI2 key. Yah. booh. Youre a p.olit ician. W erem edia yahoos. Get over it." He was a rare, almost lone voice, to take the speech se riously, andanalyse its contents rather than take the bits. that fitted the pre-ordalned p.ro-media agend a.

!I

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http://www ltelegraph.co..uk/news/ukn ewS/15612871!n-full-Jeremv-Pax ma ns-MacTaggart-Lecture.htrrd

LABOUR SHOU LD HAVE ADD RESSED THI~ ISSUE WHF~N IN POWER

It is also the case that whilst from around 2000 onwards I argued government had aresponsibilii-y to be open w ith the public about his an alysis of the press, and if necessary tOmak e changes to the system of regulation and possibly .ownership, the Prime Minister feltsuch a m ove at that t ime would not comm and pub lic support, and it would simply appear l ikean already pow erful governm ent seeking to control the press. He also felt that with so m anyother major issues to deal w ith, this was not one to add to them . I do understand that. Butequally I believe we could and should have done m ore to .address the issue, w hatever thepolitical consequences may have b een. He referred to my sug gestions that the go.vernmen t confront this issue - possibly via a replacemen t of the PCC.with .a new body w ith the right tofine, and order placement of corrections and right of reply, .alongside new cross med iaownership laws - as m y stuck record. At one point, he agreed to my office preparing andpublishing a d aily rebu ttal of the m any false s tories in the D aily M ail, cal led Mailwatch.Some day s this ran to several pages. But after some fairly intense lobbying from m inisterswh o were closer to the Mail than we w ere, he asked m e to suspend it .after several m onths.W e singled out the Mail because, in particular after the death of Dav id English~ who had beensomething of a civilising force on PauI Dacre, it becam e by far the worst offender in terms oflies, misrepresentations and a d istorted and d istorting view of governm ent and coun try alike.I wish w e. had kept up w ith Mailwatch, because at least we w ere able to show to. others, dayin and da y out, the level of dishonestyand distortion that ran through th e paper.

Tony Blair shared m uch of m y analysis of what the press was becoming b ut felt a-rationaldebate on it would be im possible because.: the media w ould control the terms of that debate. I

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felt the. politiciarts could do so, but only if they chose to eng age pub licly in a deb ate aboutmed ia standards. But the appetite for .action, or even a review of standards, regulation aridownership, was n ot strong across .governm ent, and there were too. many other com peting.prio.rities. Howev er, I was in no doub t the extent to which the decline in standards, and theculture of negativity were impinging upon open dem ocratic debate and good governance w asa real problem. All too often, l~ecause of the sheer volume of events governm ents have to dealwith, issues only get the attention and the ch ance to repair that they nee d w hen a crisis hasbeen reach ed, or a set of circum stances has com bined gen uinely to shock and revolt publicopinion. After years of build-up, and b ecause of the scale of wrongdoing exposed in the pressand the p olice, the full extent of the phone-hacking scandal did so, but it is imp ortant not tooverlook the m any cha nges in the years.leading to that. Phone-hacking is the direct cause ofthis inquiry. But the broader trends and changes that have given us the.med ia we have todayare m ore significant even than the. criminal .activity already exp osed.CULTURE OF NEGATMTY EXTENDS WELL BEYOND.POLITICS

This culture of negativity relates not.only to politics and governm ent, but bu siness, the Iaw,public services, sport, charities, celebrities. Newspapers tend only to be interested in the storythat is bad for the above . England sport internationals complain that som etimes they feel.thepress wan ts them to lose rather than win, because savag ing them in defeat is .an easier gameto play. Virtually every role m odel worth the n am e, either individuals or professions, hasbeen b uilt up to be knocked down . Of course journalists have a duty .to expose wrongdoingand to reflect on failure. But for m any - The Mail is the m ost extreme exam ple of this - tlaeirmission is to comm unicate the w orst aspects of all aspects of our national life. The worst ofBritish values posing as the best. And I rem em ber an old colleague on the Mirror , whosestock in trade was stories wh ich show ed the NHS in a positive light - doctors and nurses

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doing wond erful things .to save lives, miracle babies, new drugs , new hospitals, em ergencyservices stories of rescue, and courage - being laid off becausethere w as no longer a

. market for stories of that nature. There is not a pub lic service w o.rth the nam e w hoseprofessionals do not com plain about the constant n egativity. In polls, people overwhe lminglysay that their last experienc e of the NHS was a good one . Polls asking .gene ral questions.about the service as. a whole m ark it down b elow the ratings based on actual experience. Thatis the result of fairly relenfless media.negativity, which has an effect on m orale and on theway thatpeople treat those delivering the service. The sam e goes for teachers and socialworkers, in the latter case with.a negative effect on recruitment.

The MM R issue is a good exam ple of agenda-driven journalism regardless of facts. It wasiargely based on the criticisms of a single campa igner and ignored the prev ailing,overwhelming evidence of the MMR vaccine s virtues by government, mainstream heal thbodies, doctors and epidem iologists. This hysterical press-led cam paign, reinforced by ~ ebroadcasting echo cham ber, w ith its penchant for reporting~on-the-reports, was grosslyirresponsible. It was driven by the belief that any story wh ich dam aged the governm ent was. agood story, regardless of the facts or consequences. The rise in m easles should of course beon the conscience of the Cam paigner w ho firSt started the cam paign. But it should also be.onthe conscience of those ed itors, again n otably the Ma il, who created as m uch fear as theycould, under the spurious .cover of trying to make the. PMs young son an issue, with theinevitable effect of a de cline, in take-up. The: desire to believe the critics of the governm entwas so strong that normal journalistic scepticism w as suspende d, and campaign s mountedwith w ilful disregard for the impact they w ere having on take-up on an important Vaccine.The PCC, as so often, failed to show any leadership on the issue at the time.

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Of course, the idea of news as something that someone, somew here would rather not see~pub lished is a good one. But it is partial. W hen a prev ailing wisdom takes hold that new s isONLY new s w hen it is bad for someone, and especially someone in power, and any thing isperm issible in pursuit of a story, then it narrows a nd distorts the view of the world, andmak es the rational open debate necessary for good governm ent in a healthy .democracyvirtually im possible, It is also the case that our m edia puts g ood people off the idea of goinginto public service. The public, ted to some extent b y the m edia which feeds a relentless dietof negativity about politicians and others w ho w ork in public service, m ay feel justified incomplaining about them . But there, comes a point where as.a country we need to ask w hatimp act this is all having on the q uality of p.erson prepared to go into pub lic, life at all,especially w hen the rew ards - whateve r the.im pression of the expen ses scandal - are farlowe r than in m ost other profession.a] walks that m any M Ps could tread. The above de finitionof news cam e from Lord Northcliffe. Another tabloid legend, Hugh Cu dlipp, .said "Asensationalist tabloid new spaper should strive.- more d iligently perhaps than a seriousquality newspa per - to be acknowledge d as m ature, stable and fair in its attitudes to peopleand pu blic issues." He also. said he w ould sack .any reporter who intruded on private grief.The two view s together might m ake for a healthy press. The. Northcliffe negativity haslargely taken hold alone.THE MEDIA CONTROLS THE TERMS OF DEBATE ABOUT THE M EDIAAs to what Parliame nt or governm ent can ac.tually do abou t this culture of negativity- Nat isa very difficult .question, becau se..the m edia to a lar.ge exten t controls the terms of deb ateabout the m edia and w ilt always b e able tO claim any political attempts at chan ge are politicalattempts at control. I have said m any tim es over recent years that m edia standards areunlikely to change for the better unless there is a proper debate w ithin.the m edia about them edia. Even now , as I believe the contribution of most editors and senior journalists to your

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first sem inar showe d, they are approaching that deb ate in a largely self-serving w ay. Had knot been for the relentless pursuit ofthe phone,hacking scan dal by The. Guardian~ the storywould probably have died aw ay, which is wh at most papers wanted be cause of the Iight itwas likeiy to .shed on the profession as a whole; it is .what the police w anted because of theirrelationships w ith New s International and.other parts of the med ia; and it is w hat - onceAndy Coulson w as hired by D avid Cameron from the News o f the World - the governmentwan ted too.

Any attem pt to challenge.the stares quo, w hether in relation to regulation, own ership or anyof the other m ajor issues in the indu stry, is quickly condem ned as an attack on the freedom ofthe press. Evert now, despite, all that has b ecome k nown, that rem ains the prevalent attitudewithin the m edia about the m edia. Those w ho challenge from within, l ike John Lloyd or RoyGreenslade, are often seen as lone voices~ Yet if you look at polling figures (YouGov 2 009)which show 75% of the public saying that newspapers frequently pub lish stories they kn oware inaccurate.., and only 7%. saying they trust national newspapers, to behave responsibly - alower trust score, even than ban ks at the. height of the global financial.crisis - and 60 % ca llingfor greater governmen t intervention to protect privacy, with 73% saying they w ould like thegovernm ent to do m ore to correct inaccuracies in the me dia, surely they have a problem ev enthey would wish to address.

For it is an interesting paradox that while we h ave m ore med ia space than ever, comp laifitabout the lack of healthy debate, has rarely been louder; fewer stories and issues are bei.ng.addressed in real depth in a way that engages large.audiences; there has. been a decline inevidence-based reporting; and despite the explosion in outlets, there are very few days inwh ich there is not a single hom ogenous them e or talking point dom inating the vast output.

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That ought to worry ed itors and owne rs. Yet even w ith the backd rop that exists to thisinquiry , arid the events tha t led to it, the contribu tion o.f most ed itors to the deb ate since theinquiry was set up has largely been m arked hy com placency about stJandards, arrogance.aboutthe value and integrity of modern journalism, and a continuing belief that they are ab le tore.late themselves.

DUBIOUS PRACTICESOf course mu ch of the focus has b een on phone-hacking. But [ believe the listening in to;voicemails is just one d ubious: practise that journalists and those: working on their b ehalfhaveengaged in. Of far more serioasness, potentially, is the threat from com puter haCking, i haveno personal evidence of newspapers hack ing Comp uters, but Operation Tuleta was startedbecause of activities of private investigators hired by the News of the Worm under~

~t0 Obtain emails from ex-intelligence officer Ian Hurst in 2006. We know thecapacity to hack com puters exists; we k now .some w ere prepared to breach moral and legallimits on phones. I see little reason to see why the y w ould not, if they could, do the sam e tocomputers.The N ews of the World routinely used covert recording, covert film ing and subterfuge as partof elaborate plots to entrap victims on the thinnest of evidence an d often even thinn er publicinterest justifications. It made m uch of this in lauding its investigations editor, MazherMah m ood, the so-called fakesh eikh. He did catch genuine villains on occasion but m uch ofhis highest profile work involved luring people into comm itting illegal acts they m ight nothave considered without his provocation. People like the Earl of Hardw icke.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/19991sepi27/newsoftheworld.mondaymediasection

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Sven Goran Erikssonhttp://www.timesonIine~co.uk/tot/news/uldarticle716329.ece

Snooker player John Higginshttp:/ /www.~ardian.co.uk/media/~eenslade/2010/sep/09l]ohn-higgins-newsofthew0rld

A couple allegedly w illing to sell their baby.http :/ /www .guardian.co. uk/medi a/2 00 5 /octf17 /rie wsofth.e w orld.pressandpublish in g

W h e n the.NewS of the Worm defended its. great investigative and campaigning record aroundthe time of its closure, it focused on cam paign.s like Sarahs law (somewh at underm ined sinceby the revelation that Sara Paynes phone, given to her by the paper, was also hacked by thepap.ei). But let us not kid ourselves, that the papers driving purpose w as to change the tawand the. world for the better. Acamp aign w hich leads to paediatricians being a ttacked on.thegrounds they w ere confused with paed0ph iles says something about the tone of camp aignsthey ran. In any even t, more usual e~am ples of intrusive News o f the World stories, in w hichsubterfuge took placeor peopIe were en couraged, by the u se of the chequeb ook, to tellintimate secrets were these - mo.det Sophie Anderton is a coke-snorting hooker; SarahFerguson trades on her ex-hus band s royal status; Kate Middletons uncle in drugs and viceshock; Kerry K atona takes cocaine; Peaches G etdof does a drugs deal ; swimm er MichaelPhelps smokes can nabis; chef Gordon Ram say cheats on his wife; boxer Joe Calzaghe takescocaine; b.oxer Ricky Hatton takes cocaine; Way ne Rooney cheats on his w ife with a hoOker.Their tactics we re largely aimed a t filling the paper w ith stories about celebrities, notchanging the world for the better.

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Perhaps w orse than the. use of Subterfuge is the use of age nts provocateur. This practice ~ed tothe arrest of five men for plottingto kidnap Victoria Beckh am , a case the prosecutionwithdrew before the trial.

http://www .guardian.co.u.k/uk/2003/iun/03/ukcrime.roggreensladeandht tp ://ww w . guardi an. co. uk/media/2003/i u n/13/pressag, dpubli shi ng. crimeandhttp://www .guardian.co.uk/m edia/2007/feb/i 4/r~ewsoftheworld.pressandpublishing

andhttp://www,guardian.co..uk/media/20.O6/]uld25/newsoftheworld.pr.essandpublishin g2

Several similar cases have.collapsed, such as the so-called red mercury plothttp://www.~ouardian.co.uldmedia!2OO6/jul/lO/newsoftheworld.pressandpublishingandhttp://www , guard ian.o.uk/m edia/2006/jul/25/new so fthew orld.pressand.publishing

In the case of Besnik Qem a, he served a jail term , but his conviction was later held to beunsound and has been quashed.http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/jard31/newsoftheworld-mazher-mahmood

THE GROWTH INDUSTRY - PRIVATE DETECTIVES AS ~[OURNALISTS

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It may be that I was mistaken, or excluded from.knowing about such practices, but I do notrecall any of the papers I worked for using.private detectives, routinely if at all. Yet it is nowciear many of our newspapers have done so in recent years, on what looks like somethingclose to an industrial basis. This growth industry has been allowed to grow because it meansowners and editors can then get stories more cheaply, without the.inconvenience, of traivSngjournalists and most importantly because the people in question are likely to do the thingsthat journalists can not, should not or will not do. It is clear that in some circumstancesprivate detectives have-been able. to .access private information including not just phonerecords but bank account details, credit card details, building society details, medical records,information from DVLA. There may be occasions when these are being pursued with agenuine, public interest. But when it is being done routinely, or with the pursuit of celebritiesor people who through no fault of their own become of interest to the media, I believe that

defence falls away.

In addition to having been sh own b y police references to me and m y partner in GlennMulcaire.s notes, I have. seen invoices in relation to myself and others, being p aid by T h eMirror to private investigator Jonathan Re es. Ido not know the stories he was pu rsuing,, socannot judge either w hether a "norm al journalist w ould have been u nab le properly toinvestigate., or whether a public interest defence could be m ounted w ith regard to theinquiries being, mad e. But the trend towards greater use of private.detectives has w ithouf:doubt b een a factor in an overall decline in standards. Did the ed itor and senior executivesknow ? was a que stion asked often in relation to the scandals wh ich led to this inquiry. Theym ay not have kn own ev ery single thing, that every single journalist or private detective did ontheir behalf. But they certainly kn ew m ore was b eing spent on private detectives, and they

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knew more stories were coming via that route, .and they certainly knew the kind of thing..private detectives appeared able.to do mor~ easily than journalists. .

It is rem arkable, and evidenc e of the laxity of both media an d MPs in this area, that theInformation Comm issioners report of 2006 , W h a t ~ Price Privacy?, attracted very limitedcoverage or political comm ent, despite revealing widesp readtrading in Hie.gaily obtainedinformation, and has only become a part of the debate because of the phone-hacking scaiadal.

http:/lwww.ico.gov.ulffuploadddocumentstlibrar~/corporateffesearch and reports/ico-_w. ppnOw-OrO2.pdf

Had Operation Motorman been a bout any bu siness other.than the m edia, I am s ure the publicwould hav e been told about it. It is also remarkab le that Paul Dacre~ editor of the M ail, canstate publicly, as he has done to a House of LOrds comm ittee, that he never pub lished a reportbased on illegally obtained information. Yet his p.apers are Num ber 1 and Num ber 4 in the.list of which organisations had the m ost transactions w ith private detectives trading in privateinformation - over 1,000 b etween them involving alm ost 100 journalists or clientsHisstatement to the comm ittee m ust surely mean he h ~is checked our, and can answ er for eachand eve ry transaction, and the stories they led to. The public.have never seen Mr D acre orany other editor properly questioned abou t the use of private investigators: why they w erehired, how m uch they were paid, what they did that journalis ts could not do, what s torieswere published w ith their help., did journalists check the stories they provided, and d id theeditor know and sanction the me thods used by b oth? The I~formation Com m issioners reportnoted that in none of the Motorman Cases w as a pub lic interest defence entered.

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PHONE -HACKING

W orking in D owning St , we were advised a lways to be careful about how w e used, and wh atwe sa id, on mobile phones. This was m ainly because of possible surveillance by foreignintelligence age ncies. But equally we w ere aw are that the technology existed not just tohackvoicem ails but to listen to .calls. Fam ously, the Prince of W ales discovere d this to his cost.Howev er, that was a rare exam ple of the tapes of conversations being m ade pub lic. Thegreater likelihood was of stories being ru n based on information gained in this wa y, withoutthe victims ever know ing that was the source. I suspectthe sam e goes for accessed emails,Papers will use the contents, rather than the fact of possessing them . W e know of GlennMulcaires hacking activities. W e do not know all the stories that were pub lished as a resu ltof them. Nor do we kn ow the extent to wh ich ~ther private detectives and journalists werehacking phones, but not keeping such copious records. But I thinkwe can assum e m any m orepeople than Mr Mulcaire were. dging it, and m ore papers, than the News of the World.

Paul McMullen, one of the few former journalists to have a dm itted the. extent of illegalactivity, has described hacking as the. tip of the iceberg. W hen m aking a short film for theBBC One Show on ph one-hacking, I interviewed M r McMu llen. Some of the remarks he.m ade w ere not broadcast on the advice of BBC lawyers. They included his observations thatphone-hack ing w as wide spread across Fleet Street, and not confined to the.News oftheWorld, that senior editors and executives at the News o f the Wortd were. aware that this andother illegal practices were taking ptaCe, and on Occasions listened to some Of the messa ges.In other meetings I have had w ith him, he has said that the use of private detectives waswidesp read across new spapers, .and that in addition to hacking, private detectives andjournalists on occasions satoutside the hom es of targets in vans fitted w ith technology

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capable of listening in to conversations: taking place inside (based on the assum ption m orepeople now use m obiles at home than iand lines).

There were a num ber of occasions when w e were concerned that stories were getting out viasome kind of interception. The first point to make here is that wh en stories are getting out inthis way , it has an extraordin arily debilitating im pact on an organisation. Leaks happen oftenin government. There may be a political motive,, or someone m ay be using the media to Seekto influence an internal debate. But when information know n only to a few people w hogenerally w ork together well appears tO have been leaked this can have a dreadful impact. Anexam ple of this is.the story of Elle Macpherson, the Aus tralian m odel, who believed herbusiness m anager M ary Ellen Field was leaking informa tion about her. It t.ranspired this cam efrom the fact both of them were b eing hacked by the News of.the W orld. But by then M aryEllen Field had b een sacked , accused of leaking .stories about her employer. She lost boda herjob and h er reputation. I attach a TV report on this story.

ht tp:/ /www.abc,net .au/7.30~content l2011/s3272250.htm

Elements. of David Blun.ket.ts private iife are thought to have been obtained via listening in tovoicem ail messag es. Ultim ately it could be .argue d that led to his political demise. I have noevidence Of Carole Caplin being hacke d. However, there were times w hen I believed she orsomeone close to her w as leaking information to the Mail and others about the a ctivities.:, andmove m ents of Cherie Blair. Given that Carole is now sue ing the Mail over something else,and as she h as never talked pu blicly abou t the Blairs, I am now ce rtain that. I was m istaken in these suspicions. I do not know if her phone w as hacked , or if cheries w as; but know ingwh at we d o now ab out hacking a nd the exten t of it; I think it is at least possible this is how

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the stories got out. They.often involved details of w here Cheriew as going, the kind of thingroutinely discusse d on phones wh en planning v isits, private as w ell as pub lic. I have .alsonever understood how the:Daily Mirror learned of Cheries preg nancy . As I recall it, at thet ime only a t iny num ber of people in Dow ning Street knew that she was pregnant. I haveheard a ll sorts of stories as to how the information got out, but none. of them strike m e ascredible.

The reason I becam e suspicious my ow n phone m ay have.been hacked arose when I arrangedto meet Tessa Jowell at her request at the time her husb ands busines s affairs werethe subjectof an Italian court case and considerable m edia attention. She was su spicious someone in heroffice wasleaking out inform ation about her m ovements (m uch as Elle Macarthur had b een)and w e set up the meeting via m obile phone, rather than through our offices. Wh en wearrived at my house, where w e had arranged to m eet, a photographer was outside.

OTHER ACTIVITIES~ o f w h ich I hav e p er sona l exper ience

Rooting through dustbins - I suppose this could hav~ been by others, but at least twice I was.woken by sound s outside and looked out to see people going through the bins. My colleague.Philip Gould had a large num ber of mem os stolen in this way w hich were pub lished in aseries by the Sunday Times.

Blagg ing - on different occasions I was contacted by m y bank , and by m y telephonecompany, to inform me som eone pretending to. be m e had sought access to my accounts. Ihave no w ay of know ing if this w as a journalist or private detective working for one. My GP(now retired) kept my m edical records at his.home rather than his surge~ becau se he was

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Witness Statement of Alastair Campbell

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Transcript of Witness Statement of Alastair Campbell