Why Britain Needs Leveson Part 2 by Dan Evans, the Man at the Centre of the Phone Hacking Scandal

GRATIS April 2016 PODCASTING A MURDER Alastair Morgan and Peter Jukes tackle the most- investigated unsolved killing in British history Why Britain needs Leveson Part 2 By Dan Evans, the man at the centre of the phone hacking scandal JImmY SAVILE COULDN’T HAVE BULLIED THE PRESS UNDER LEVESON’S PROPOSALS Says former Sunday Times Insight team journalist, Joan Smith Also. Jeffrey Kofman, Jacqui Hames, Steve Bell, Juha Rekola, Kerry-Anne Medoza FREE & FEARLESS Your essential guide to new free speech protections And yet there is a growing sense misled the inquiry with evidence ormer Sunday Mirror and News that Leveson 2 is somehow Leveson later condemned as “wrong, not of the World reporter Dan Evans Too Far. Which invites a glaring just disingenuous” by Mr Justice F question - why bother with any of it in Mann in a devastating Mirror Group the first place? For an answer, look at hacking judgement. Since those knows better than most how sections the motivation behind setting it up. mealy-mouthed statements were given (under oath), police operations David Cameron, suffering the Weeting, Pinetree, Golding and of Fleet Street behaved above the law, laxative effects of getting caught Elveden, have uncovered huge out with a rogue Director of amounts of evidence to contradict appearing in the Old Bailey dock himself Communications on the books, them. And yet there is no timetable did what came instinctively – he for Leveson 2. after pleading guilty and as a witness of protected himself. As the (utterly shameful) Milly Dowler revelations What does that do for public faith truth in the Phone Hacking trials. He gives turned the smoke surrounding phone in the inquiry system? In the context hacking into an inferno, he used a of on-going delays around Chilcot the Dan Evans his take on the need for Leveson Part 2. public inquiry as a firebreak to protect answer must be: rather a lot of harm. his career. And in the end it was about The Establishment’s prevailing as meaningful as that, wasn’t it? mood toward Leveson 2 seems to Yes, victims of Press abuses be a collective rolling of eyes. The had - for a moment - a platform ground, it will be claimed, has been from which to relate their less- covered in criminal and civil trials, or than-edifying experiences at the else fingers will point to the cost of hands of her Majesty’s finest. Then adequately concluding the Leveson FROM DARK ARTS Sir Brian Leveson used his vast process. But the reality is different. judicial experience to distil these A public inquiry, with its inquisitorial collective experiences into a central nature, has freedom to explore recommendation for genuinely newsgathering cultures of the time independent self-regulation with with a proper overview of criminal TO NEW DAWNS… external oversight. And then that and civil actions since. recommendation was roundly As someone who knows the snubbed by the industry while the When I saw the brief for this so widely infected Fleet Street in inside of an old Bailey witness box Government, cravenly, looked the article, I couldn’t suppress a wry the 2000s, and went so egregiously better than most, I can say with hand other way. smile: “Do Press bosses still have under-investigated by police in on heart that those with the most questions to answer in the context 2006, its delay is an away win for That was the first confirmation expensive lawyers usually control of Leveson Part 2?” both Scotland Yard and a lot of that Leveson was a tactical diversion the narrative. It requires a cool, – Punch and Judy to help the little dispassionate eye to cut through all Well, where to start? And how national titles. people forget their PM brought a that adversarial legal jackanory and to limit it to press bosses while the All the worst offenders – and criminal into Downing Street see the reality. Government looks ready to hoof I mean the nexus of editorial Now the man who brought the that particular ball into the long power players who cultured and That eye belongs to Sir Brian heat on to Fleet Street - my old boss grass right at the bottom of the propagated an era of industrial- Leveson’s successor. Now, at the cost garden, near the brambles, broken Andy Coulson - looks unlikely to be of saving public confidence, it is time scale privacy invasion - are so bikes and fox shit. facing questions any time soon. to see the process through. Just don’t far evading proper public hold your breath. In so far as Leveson 2’s central scrutiny, like so many Panamanian Then there are the former remit is to ask how phone hacking offshore trusts. Mirror Group editors who already 1 2 FREE & FEARLESS Your essential guide to new free speech protections eter Jukes and Alastair Morgan have P crowd-funded a ten-part podcast serial about the Daniel Morgan Murder and 30-year cover up that has followed… PETER on the case. Duncan Campbell of the will be breaking new and shocking I’ve been writing about the Daniel Guardian did some good reporting, information quite soon. And within a Morgan murder for over three years. but he was an exception to the rule. year the Independent Daniel Morgan When I first came across the story Laurie Flynn and Michael Gillard Panel, chaired by Baroness O’Loan, - while researching a book - I was later tried to report on the case for should also report and that should staggered that I’d never heard of it. the Guardian, but resigned because cause a stir. As an aside it should be Then, as I dug deeper, I began to an attempt by the Met leadership to stressed that the Panel does not have understand why. Not only is murder smear them was hidden from them by the same powers to compel witnesses and three decades of cover up a very senior editorial staff at the newspaper. or evidence as a Public Inquiry. The complex story to tell, it also involves family – and I assume the Panel itself - PETER shameful amounts of press and always understood that Leveson Part I’ve met several journalists now media complicity. 2 would be there to follow up on what who admit they cannot cover this the Panel reported. ALASTAIR story for ‘political reasons’ or are At the inquest in April 1988 into scared to ‘put their heads above the I’ve met several journalists my brother’s murder, there was huge parapet’. The sub heading of our press interest, starting with a SUN podcast series might give a hint: ‘If headline “COPS IN MURDER PLOT” on you haven’t heard about this, ask The Daniel Morgan Murder the second day of the proceedings. All yourself, why?’ podcast, produced by Flameflower now who admit they cannot of the national papers then reported ALASTAIR Studios, will be available for almost daily on the case. After the When Peter came up with the idea general release in late May. inquest, this stopped and when the of producing a podcast, I jumped at outside inquiry by Hampshire Police cover this story for ‘political the chance. Most of the British press is concluded the London-based media compromised in this case and the idea then went completely quiet on the of me telling our story with complete case for years, despite our persistent reasons’ or are scared to ‘put editorial freedom was extremely concerns of a cover-up. What we attractive after our experience of the didn’t know at the time was that mainstream British press. Mirror Group and News of the World their heads above the parapet’. had already involved themselves in a PETER lucrative business relationship with As Alastair points out we have to the two suspects in the murder Sid effectively bypass the normal media Peter Jukes Fillery (unbelievably, a member of the outlets. At the moment there’s no way original investigating murder squad!) in hell that News UK, the Mirror Group and my brother’s business partner, or even the Guardian want to cover Jonathan Rees. This only came to this too extensively. So the podcast light many years later. The Welsh route - a new phenomenon of mass media did take an interest however circulation that avoids the usual media and, over a period of 15 years, controls - has turned out to be a great produced three TV documentaries one. In terms of journalism I think we 3 4 FREE & FEARLESS Your essential guide to new free speech protections arly in my career, when I worked for So much bile has been poured E the Sunday Times Insight team, the threat on the Leveson report that one of a libel action was never far from our minds. The prospect of a having to pay damages and especially of its key recommendations - Joan Smith huge costs had a chilling effect on newspapers, Former Executive that press freedom should be Director of Hacked Off especially when the potential complainant was enshrined in English law – a household name. seems to have been overlooked. Jimmy Savile fended off journalists thwarted by ‘draconian’ libel laws. Indeed so much bile has been for years with threats of libel actions, Two women had given ‘credible’ poured on the Leveson Report that to justice for the public whilst protecting investigative but he wasn’t the only celebrity who accounts of how Savile abused them one of its key recommendations Section 40 journalists from the costly legal threats of rich litigants. boasted about how litigious he was. in the 1970s, but Connew had to warn - that press freedom should be At a dinner party in the 1990s, I was them that they would face a ‘gruelling’ enshrined in English law – seems IN 40(ish) seconds… It works like this: if a publisher does not join a astonished when a well-known man cross-examination in court.

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