Pop-up Politics, Press and Rain

Michael Hedges May 14, 2018 - UPDATED May 18, 2018 - Follow on Twitter

The passage of time brings many favors. Most obviously, there is wisdom. In the post-modern social media age caustic events rise to prominence on momentary outrage. Given time, another outrage rises, cutting oxygen to the former. Wisdom gives understanding that memories can be shortened by a lack of air. The other great favor is spring rain.

The UK House of Commons last week rejected a Labour Party proposal to move forward with a second inquiry into press misconduct. The majority against the measure - referred to as Leveson 2 - was thin, just nine votes. The first Leveson Inquiry hearings in 2011 and 2012 embarrassed, at the very least, the Conservative Party and newspaper publishers who love them.

The Labour Party tabled this continued review of press mis-function as an amendment to the pending Data Protection Bill. In the current zeitgeist, it would add social media and fake news to the inquiry. Publishers also would have been required to pay legal fees of all claimants - win or lose - in libel lawsuits if they had not signed up to the official press regulator Impress.

Following considerable public outrage over surreptitious interception of telephone communications of private citizens - also known as phone hacking - by investigators and reporters in the hire of UK newspapers, prime minister David Cameron, now retired, authorized a judicial inquiry led by Lord Justice Brian Leveson. There would be two parts. The first would examine the “culture, practices and ethics of the press.” Part two was to explore “unlawful or improper conduct within News International, other media organisations or other organisations.” That was delayed until the conclusion of various police inquiries.

The Leveson Inquiry hearings were painful for some and entertaining for others. Who can forget Rupert Murdoch’s third wife saving him from a protestor on live television? In the end, there was a report, two thousand pages released in November 2012. One of the recommendations was to replace the Press Complaints Commission with the semi-official Impress.

PM Cameron said it was a nice report but declined to implement the recommendations. Most UK newspaper publishers heartily agreed. Guardian News and Media, in the minority, said the government should take “great care” before drafting legislation. Publishers went on to form, with considerable deliberation, the self-regulatory Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

The Conservative Party made clear, officially in 2017, it wanted nothing to do with further investigating. “Given the comprehensive nature of the first stage of the Leveson Inquiry and the lengthy investigations by the police and Crown Prosecution Service into alleged wrongdoing, we will not proceed with the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press.” Newly appointed Culture Minister Matt Hancock called the defeat of the Labour Party amendment “a great day for a free and fair press,” reported the BBC and others (May 9).

Much has changed in the UK publishing scene since the Leveson Inquiry report. Tabloid News Of The World closed. News International was renamed News UK, remaining a subsidiary of News Corporation, which split off its television and entertainment businesses into a separate company, same owners, 21st Century Fox. Executives were shuffled around. News Corporation bought several UK radio stations. But the blight of phone hacking continues to haunt the Murdoch family; stalled is its attempt to buy-out pay-TV company Sky plc in the midst of a friendly sale of certain 21st Century Fox assets to the Walt Disney Company, made complicated by a hostile bid for all of it by US telecom Comcast.

Despite the efforts of anti-phone hacking activists Hacked Off and a few friendly politicians, those disreputable practices have fallen from the public radar. Now it’s Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference in the referendum to leave the European Union - BREXIT. UK politicians need a friendly press more than ever.

Justice Leveson, in a February letter to government ministers, quoted by the BBC (March 1), said the “full truth” about the behavior of UK tabloid publishers warranted further inquiry.The House of Lords agreed to its version of the press regulation amendment (May 14) that would bring on Leveson 2 showing, again, its willingness to prime minister Theresa May's government. But the House of Commons, the next day, voted it down. over the provision to force publishers to pay legal fees. The debate, then, continues. So, what has changed except the passage of time?