Press WON’T face a second Leveson probe
After newspapers backed independent watchdog...
MINISTERS yesterday abandoned plans for a second inquiry into the Press.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock said there had been a ‘ seismic change’ in the media industry since the Leveson Inquiry was set up in 2011 during the phonehacking scandal.
He also confirmed that a draconian law that would have forced newspapers to pay all legal costs in a libel case even if they won will be scrapped.
A second stage of the Leveson Inquiry had been due to examine relations between journalists and the police, but the Government yesterday announced it would be formally scrapped. In a Commons statement, Mr Hancock said: ‘We do not believe that reopening this costly and time-consuming inquiry is the right way forward.’
He highlighted reforms to the police as well as the challenges faced by publishers, especially local newspapers.
He said: ‘ The world has changed since the Leveson Inquiry was established. Since then we’ve seen a seismic change in the media landscape.’ There had been ‘ extensive reforms to policing practices and significant changes to press self-regulation’.
The new Independent Press Standards Organisation had ‘taken significant steps to demonstrate its independence as a regulator’, he said.
Some 2,500 publications, including the Daily Mail, have joined Ipso, which Mr Hancock said ‘now regulates 95 per cent of national newspapers by circulation’.
He added: ‘We have seen the dramatic and continued rise of social media, which is largely unregulated. And issues like clickbait, fake news, malicious disinformation and online abuse, which threaten high quality journalism.
‘A foundation of any democracy is a sound basis for political discourse. This is under threat from these new forces.’ Mr Hancock also announced that the Government would not put Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, which would have made media organisations pay legal costs of libel cases whether they won or lost, into effect.
‘We do not love every story that is written about us in the Press, but the idea that the solution lies in shackling our free Press with the punitive
‘Seismic change’
costs of any complainant is completely wrong,’ he said.
Former culture secretary John Whittingdale welcomed the announcement, saying the Government should ‘support newspapers in meeting the challenges of the internet’.
Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, praised the ‘common-sense approach’.
But Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson described the deci- sion not to go ahead with the second part of Leveson as ‘a bitter blow to the victims of press intrusion’.
Last night tycoon Max Mosley criticised the decision. In a statement, he said: ‘The massive coverage in the Daily Mail for a second day concerning events 55 to 60 years ago is another extraordinary attempt to attack and intimidate me.
‘I will not be deterred from pursuing what is right and nor should those who have campaigned for Part Two of the Leveson Inquiry. The Government’s decision today on this is a disgrace. I think that significant evidence of corporate criminality and other wrongdoing would emerge if the conduct of newspapers was properly investigated.
‘ Powerful press interests should not have significant influence over our police and it’s time to end their unhealthy power over government.’
CONFRONTED this week with damning details of his racist past, Max Mosley claimed his record in motorsport shows he ‘does not tolerate racism’, and that he stopped endorsing such views in 1963.
Yet today, the Mail reveals how he was a passionate supporter of Apartheid South Africa – a regime he exploited to build, with Bernie Ecclestone, a £6billion F1 empire.
They handed the white supremacist state a propaganda victory by holding F1 races right up until 1985 – while other sports were boycotting the country in disgust.
Elsewhere, we reveal the infamous £1million donation from F1 to Tony Blair’s Labour in 1997 – at a time when the sport was exempted from a tobacco advertising ban – was also allegedly intended to smooth the way for Mr Mosley to secure a safe Labour seat.
All this is proof – as our series has shown this week – of Mr Mosley’s habit of airbrushing his story. It will heap pressure on Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and the board of state-approved Press regulator Impress to hand back all of Mr Mosley’s money.
Despite all the evidence, an arrogant Mr Watson yesterday clung on desperately to his benefactor, and attacked ministers for not launching another hugely expensive Leveson Inquiry and new laws to shackle the Press.
It was outrageous of Mr Watson to start a paedophile witch hunt against prominent Tories. It was outrageous of him to take money from such a man as Mr Mosley. His position is indefensible.
The Mail, for its part, welcomes Culture Secretary Matt Hancock’s review of one of the most important questions for our democracy – how the news industry can survive in a digital age.