# 60
You can’t accuse Lord Justice Leveson of not being cautious, conciliatory or entirely affable. Otherwise, why did he take nearly two thousand pages distributed across four hefty volumes to lay before us the blindingly obvious? Please remember, it wasn’t an over-bearing, censorial or interfering politician who shut down the News of The World. No, it was that old incorrigible press baron Rupert Murdoch; a man who can be relied upon to be suitably “humble”, but only as a last resort and only after the shit has well and truly hit the proverbial. Formerly an Australian, currently an American for business purposes, Murdoch would willingly go Chinese or Martian if that was the price of access to the world’s fastest-growing market for satellite television. He was - and continues to be – subject to no obvious scrutiny, accountability or democratic control over here, over there or anywhere else on the planet.
For at least the last twenty years – no, to be fair, let’s say ‘since the sacking of Harold Evans from The Times’ (and that was 1981-2) – Murdoch’s News International has employed any number of feral door-steppers, cynical careerists and outright media thugs, allowing each to masquerade as a journalist. Now that they have been exposed, this parcel of rogues seeks to claim an undeserved constitutional protection as members of The Fourth Estate. Leave it out! If our precious freedom of speech depends on these phone hackers, that bad-hair-day woman, those two Murdochs, Paul Dacre or the Barclay brothers, then we’re well and truly mullered before we even start. The concentration of media ownership and control in so few, so secretive and such grubby hands continues to be a far greater threat to freedom of expression than anything conjured by Leveson.
To judge by the reactions of David Cameron and his friends at The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Sun, you might think that the problem we need to solve is one of self-serving politicians interfering with a free press. In fact it has lately been the other way round. Politically motivated and largely irresponsible media barons have shamelessly interfered with our democracy. It’s difficult to believe that the ‘significant’ press needs any protection from political interference when for thirty years (or more) editors and their proprietors have corrupted the ethics of our public realm, cheapened and dumbed-down our public discourse and trashed both dissent and dissenters. Vaingloriously seeking to play the role of kingmaker they have alternately proffered and withheld their patronage and favours from a bunch of political pygmies. Blair/ Campbell
Listening to Cameron’s hyperbole about ‘crossing the Rubicon’, you wouldn’t think that what we are talking about here is merely a complaints procedure. It’s not censorship, Dave. Even the Rubicon analogy is questionable. As Dave might know if he had remained on speaking terms with Boris, when Julius Caesar led his legions towards Rome in 49 BC, ‘crossing the Rubicon’ was the start of a military coup. The PM repeated that phrase so often in the Commons the other afternoon, it makes you wonder if he knows more – or, just possibly, less - than he’s letting on.
An independent, trustworthy and reliable tribunal for dealing with complaints against the press is not censorship, nor is it a prelude to political interference. Self-regulation under the auspices of the Press Complaints Commission proved a dismal failure because it was not independent, not comprehensive and lacked statutory formulation. The McCanns and the Dowlers truly were victims of outrageous conduct by certain newspapers and journalists. To say that the conduct of the intruders and the phone hackers was illegal and that therefore all the victims had remedies at law is insufficient. Ordinary citizens, suddenly thrust into a media feeding-frenzy, are not ‘lawyered-up’ and ‘media-savvy’. They are traumatised and grieving. Even those with ‘celebrity status’ are not fully able to protect themselves from bullying, intrusion and criminality – even if they know that it is occurring. Famous or infamous, they are still citizens and they still have rights. They (and we) need to know that the press – all of them - are beholden to an agreed Code of Conduct which can and will be enforced. Importantly, that enforcement comes after the event, not before. It’s balance and redress we seek, not censorship and by now – post-Leveson – we should all be sufficiently well informed to know the difference. As Polly Toynbee wrote in The Guardian today (Saturday, 01.12.12) “Law or no law, no one will remove Dacre’s right to be nasty.” On the same page, Simon Jenkins suggested, rather desperately I have to say, that “Leveson and his supporters seem to be converts to Sharia Law.”
Pull your head in, Simon, if you can’t do better than that then the opposition to Leveson is clearly running on empty…
[Think of this blog as just 800 words to be added to Leveson’s millions…]
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