The Leveson Inquiry: threat to press freedom

Knowledge of how the press represented an inquiry into its affairs, in this case, the Leveson Inquiry, is vital to an understanding of how the press functioned as a democratic

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public sphere during its coverage of the debate that arose from the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry. To find out how the inquiry was represented by the press, I created a variable entitled ‘Description of Leveson Inquiry/its report or envisaged report’ (Appendix A, Variable 13). A list of 9 codes was generated for the variable. The codes include ‘A threat to press freedom’, ‘Harmful to UK’s reputation’, ‘A chilling effect on journalism’, ‘A fair deal’, ‘Solution to efforts at curbing press excesses’, ‘Other’, ‘Illegitimate/unfair’, ‘Anti-democratic’ and ‘Not applicable’ (see Table 6.3).

All appropriate answers to Variable 13 were ticked for each news article. Multiple choices were made for this variable. References that were made to each description of the Leveson Inquiry on the list of codes for Variable 13 were counted for each newspaper to ascertain the degree of its usage in that paper. The sum of its usage in all the newspapers provided results for the extent to which that description of Leveson Inquiry was used in the whole study sample. Not all the codes for this variable will be examined in this chapter. They will be elaborated on at different points in this research when they become relevant. The aspect of this data relevant to this chapter is the code ‘A threat to press freedom’.

The results for this variable show that ‘A threat to press freedom’ featured prominently as a description of the Leveson Inquiry. It was used to express concern that the Leveson Inquiry, especially its proposal for a statutorily backed press regulatory body (Leveson Inquiry 2012, paras.41-46), and to a lesser extent its suggestion that voluntary pre- publication advice be made available to the press to enable it to verify if a potentially controversial story is of the public interest (Leveson 2012a, p.15, para.62), were threats to press freedom. The strategy of ‘catastrophization’ was used to protect the press’ (all newspapers in the study sample apart from Guardian) preferred system of regulation: one with no statutory backing or pre-publication advice.

Table 6.3 shows that the Leveson Inquiry was described as a threat to press freedom in 27.1 per cent of the study sample; in 38.0 per cent of the Sun newspaper’s descriptions of the Leveson Inquiry, 33.3 per cent of Daily Express’s, 28.2 per cent of Daily Mirror’s, 28.6 per cent of Daily Telegraph’s, 28.9 per cent of Daily Mail’s and 20.5 per cent of Guardian’s

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descriptions of the Leveson Inquiry. The threat to press freedom argument was surpassed on Table 6.3 by “solution to efforts at curbing press excesses” which emerged in 28.4 per cent of the study sample. It appeared in 48. 9 per cent of Guardian newspaper, 20.5 per cent of Daily Mirror, 16.7 per cent of Daily Express, 15.8 per cent of Daily Mail, 13 per cent of Daily Telegraph and 8.7 per cent of the Sun (see Table 6.3).

Table 6.3. Description of Leveson Inquiry

Description _{Guardian Daily}

Mail Daily Mirror Daily Telegraph Daily Express Sun Total A threat to press freedom 20.5% 28.9% 28.2% 28.6% 33.3% 38.0% 27.1% Harmful to UK’s reputation 2.3% 3.9% 5.1% 7.8% 5.6% 12.0% 5.4% A chilling effect on journalism 8.7% 17.1% 20.5% 26.0% 22.2% 15.2% 15.0% A fair deal 12.8% 3.9% 2.6% 11.7% 0.0% 0.0% 7.9% Solution to efforts at curbing press excesses 48.9% 15.8% 20.5% 13.0% 16.7% 8.7% 28.4% Illegitimate/unfair to the press 0.5% 18.4% 10.3% 3.9% 5.6% 15.2% 7.1% Anti-democratic 3.7% 9.2% 10.3% 7.8% 16.7% 9.8% 7.1% Other 2.7% 2.6% 2.6% 1.3% 0.0% 1.1% 2.1% Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

While it is expected that Guardian would have a high percentage of references to the Leveson Inquiry as a ‘solution to efforts at curbing press excesses’ due to its preferred interpretation of press freedom which is in step with much of Leveson’s proposals, the high percentage of references to Leveson Inquiry as a ‘solution to efforts at curbing press excesses’ by the other newspapers looks contradictory on face value. An exploration of

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the context within which those references were made, however, showed that the press, apart from the Guardian, in an effort to promote their proposed self-regulatory body, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), described it as Leveson compliant and, as such, a solution to efforts at curbing press excesses. This accounted for the seemingly contradictory data of the Leveson Inquiry being described both as a threat to press freedom (27.1 per cent) and a solution to efforts at curbing press excesses (28.4 per cent) in Table 6.3. It can be argued that all newspapers in the study sample except

Guardian interpreted press freedom from the neoliberal perspective where press

freedom is interpreted as freedom from state intervention (Siebert et al. 1956, p.70; Harvey 2005, p.2; Freedman 2014, pp.62-63; Pickard 2015, pp.4-5; Schlosberg 2017, p.5). The insistence by some in this sub-interpretive sphere that enforcing existing laws, such as libel and the competition rules is sufficient to guarantee an accountable press, also falls within the confines of neoliberal or corporate libertarian arguments (McChesney 2001; Freedman 2014; Schlosberg 2017, p.5).

I argue that the neoliberal concept of press freedom is a paradigm which the commercial press fought hard to protect rather than scrutinize to see if there is need for change or modification. As discussed in Chapter 4, the goal of propagators of the neoliberal press ideology may not be to promote investigative journalism or enhance democracy as the proponents’ claim, but to serve the commercial interests of media owners by preventing stringent controls that will check the invasion of privacy and other means through which the press gets sensational stories that sell (McQuail 2010, p.176; Pickard 2015, p.4). The neoliberal interpretation of press freedom has been criticised for being too market focussed (McChesney 2001, n.p.; Freedman 2014, p.12). As Freedman (2014, p.12) and Pickard (2015, p.4) argue, the vital role the press plays in the sustenance of democracy warrants that it is not treated as a commodity. Pickard (2015) advocated a social democratic approach to journalism.

As explained in Chapter 2, social democracy propagates ‘positive freedom’ which welcomes state intervention in press regulation with the aim of enhancing democracy through the promotion of social equality (Miller 1998, cited in Craig 2000, p.836;

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Heywood 2017, p.123). It can be argued that in the coverage of the debate that arose from the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry, the Guardian served as the social democratic challenger of the neoliberal press ideology which, arguably, governed the coverage of the debate by all other newspapers examined in this study. Whether or not

Guardian was a selfless crusader speaking up for the voiceless; a left-wing press pitting

up against some right-wing counterparts; a newspaper trying to protect its crusader image by advocating measures to regulate the press that it had no intention of succumbing to; a rival newspaper trying to keep afloat in a bullish media oligopoly or anything else, can be debated.

Having examined how the strategy of ‘threat to the paradigm’ was used in the coverage of the debate that followed the phone hacking scandal, the following section presents and discusses my findings on how the strategy of historicisation was used to cover the press reform debate. This section as well as the next provide answers to RQ1 “What strategies did the press use to cover the media policy debate that arose from the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson inquiry; and to what extent was each strategy used, if at all?”