Police ‘using Leveson to withhold information’
THE Leveson Inquiry into Press conduct damaged democracy because the police have used it as an excuse to withhold information, a report warned yesterday.
The Metropolitan Police Service is accused of restricting information to the public to that which gives a ‘favourable impression’ of their work. The lack of co-operation has ‘severely impacted’ crime reporting.
Marianne Colbran of the London School of Economics said: ‘The balance of power has swung too far in favour of the police.’
Recommendations in the Leveson Report into phone hacking, and a further report by ex-standards watchdog Elizabeth Filkin, advised that all meetings between police and journalists should be recorded. But the report said this resulted in a ‘big freeze’ with the police shutting down the information they give to the media. This in turn has eroded public trust in the police.
Police who in the past may have come forward to speak to the Press to draw attention to abuses of power and corruption are now unable to do so because ‘this channel has now been closed’. One police respondent quoted in the study said: ‘What was needed was a sticking plaster and instead they have put a bloody great cast on the problem.’ Dr Colbran based her findings, published in the British Journal of Criminology, on 35 interviews with senior Met officers including murder detectives, crime journalists and press officers from Scotland Yard, between 2012 and 2015. She said the relationship between the largest force in the UK and the news media was now ‘parlous’ and ‘hostile’.
She added: ‘The integrity of investigative reporting has been severely compromised and there are serious repercussions in terms of operational policing.
‘The clampdown has led journalists to seek other sources which are usually online, not accountable, and often result in sensitive material being released into the public domain, prejudicing investigations.’
A spokesman for the Met said: ‘We do not agree with the finding that the public are not kept aware of policing concerns.
‘In just the last few weeks there have been media briefings on child protection, the flow of guns in to the country, and meetings between journalists and detectives from the murder and sexual offences commands.
‘It is disappointing the research finds so little space to carry the Met’s views on the complexities of communicating in the age of digital and social media.’