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Sunday 27 May 2012

Lord Justice Leveson and the danger of the great and the good

The Leveson Inquiry has all the makings of an establishment disaster. In saying that, I am not defending the behaviour of the tabloids. I find it contemptible that no story in the 'hackgate' scandal can be justified on public interest grounds. Not once did James and Rupert Murdoch hirelings break the law to expose an abuse of power, or the corruption of an official, or corporate wrongdoing.

It is a measure of their degradation that they did not think they needed to act in their own self-interest by covering their backs with a few reputable investigations. Although there is no jurisdiction in the world that allows journalists to hack phones, the jury system of the Anglo-Saxon democracies would have protected reporters who had been pursuing worthwhile stories. If the state had charged them, they would have been able to say to the jury words to the effect of 'well, yes, technically, what we did was illegal, but we did it for good reasons so would you please acquit us'. In all likelihood the jury would have done. (It is for this reason that the Crown Prosecution Service hardly ever brings Official Secrets Act cases against civil servants who can argue that they broke the law in the public interest. It knows that juries will mutter 'bugger the law, we will deliver justice'.)

So confident were they that the police would not investigate them, and that the Blair and Cameron governments Murdoch had bought off would not move against them, the News of the World and other tabloids did not bother to furnish themselves with a handful of stories the public might have thought justifiable. Therein lies the danger. Because the law breaking was so comprehensive and indefensible, I cannot see what the Leveson Inquiry can usefully do.

It cannot say that we need a criminal offence to stop journalists hacking phones because it already is an offence to hack phones.

It cannot say that we need a criminal offence to stop reporters bribing police officers because it already is a criminal offence for reporters to bribe police officers.

As I said in the Observer, it ought to be looking at the cashless corruption Rupert Murdoch perfected

'He did not behave like a common criminal. Instead of giving the ruling party money to spend on political propaganda and demanding business favours in return, Murdoch instructed his editors to provide propaganda free of charge... Now the hacking racket has been exposed, we need an inquiry to ask if the law should make it an offence for media conglomerates to use threats and inducements to enrich themselves.'

But Leveson has not begun by calling David Cameron, Jeremy Hunt, Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell before him and demanding to see all papers and emails on their dealings with Murdoch. This is hardly a surprise as Jeremy Hunt appointed Leveson and his panel of advisers. He appears to have picked them with some care.

Leveson is a judge with virtually no experience of freedom of speech cases.

One of the journalists on the panel Hunt chose is Elinor Goodman, who was the political editor of Channel 4 News in the Blair era. In 1999, Jackie Ashley, then political editor of the New Statesman, explained that 'a group of lobby members, often comprising John Sergeant of the BBC, Mike Brunson of ITN, Elinor Goodman of Channel 4 News and Phil Webster of the Times, will sometimes wait behind after the lobby meeting for a private huddle with Campbell. It's then, and in private phone calls, that much of the valuable "feeding" takes place.'

Alongside her is George Jones, a lobby correspondent for the Telegraph from 1969 to 2007. In 2000, Campbell stopped briefing journalists and retreated to his Downing Street office. Jones responded with a heart-rending lament in the Telegraph. Under the headline, 'Alastair Campbell stops me doing my job', the poor man demanded that Campbell return to Westminster and start spoon-feeding the starving Westminster hacks again.

Meanwhile, the panel member who is meant to guard basic liberties is not from Sense about Science, English Pen or Index on Censorship, organisations with a hard-earned and honourable record of defending freedom of speech but Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty. As I said in the Observer, compared to its counterpart the American Civil Liberties Union, 'which will defend freedom of speech to the last bullet, Liberty is a work-shy organisation which rarely takes to the battlefield'. To put it bluntly, I have never seen Chakrabarti or one of her deputies at a meeting or campaign rally in defence of freedom of speech or of the press.

Like Leveson, Goodman and Jones, I suppose Chakrabarti is well-meaning in her way. But like Leveson, Goodman and Jones nothing in her life has taught her how difficult it is to practice investigative journalism in Britain and how heavily the law – particularly the law of libel, but increasingly judge-made privacy law – weighs on reporters, scientists, the editors of learned journals and bloggers.

Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan say that honest men and women should welcome their proposals to extend privacy law. 'The phrase that is always used is "don't throw the baby out with the bath water",' Grant told Leveson. 'I have always said I don't think it is that difficult to tell what is bathwater and what is a baby. To most people it is pretty obvious.'

I sympathise with what the press has put them though, and would listen to Grant and Coogan with attention and respect if they were to lecture us on how to play light comedy, but they are hopelessly wrong about freedom of speech. It is very difficult to tell the baby from the bathwater, particularly when the English judiciary gives rich men the power to use the brute force of their wealth to obliterate the distinction.

The law already protected Grant and Coogan. The scandal is that a corrupted police force did not enforce the law against phone hacking. The Met is now remedying its faults. But I suspect that will not be enough for the great and the good on the Leveson committee. 'Something must be done!' is their tribe's battle cry. What will they do when they find that everything that should be done has already been done? Rather than admit their redundancy, I suspect that they will hammer the worthwhile journalism they so unthinkingly affect to support.

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