Leveson: Up pops another surprise to carry it into 2012

Raymond Snoddy: If the behaviour of NotW journalists should turn out to be only bad, shocking, disgraceful and illegal as opposed to be beyond the pale of anything recognisably human, we have to wonder whether the Leveson inquiry has been set up on what is at least partially a false premise?

Whatever you think about the activities of Lord Justice Leveson, at least the inquiry is never boring – at least not for very long.

Just when any sane person would have begun to get extremely bored by the never-ending stream of self-serving press haters, mixed in with genuine citizens who have been treated in a disgraceful manner by tabloid hacks – up pops another surprise.

This week we had no less than two rabbits pulled out of the hat to give the Leveson inquiry new legs to carry it into 2012. One is fundamental and might even call for a reassessment of what the inquiry is all about.

Milly Dowler and a public mood of disgust

It was of course truly disgusting that anyone on any national newspaper should have thought it appropriate or acceptable to hack into Milly Dowler’s phone. On its own it would have caused a huge row and would rightly have got politicians of every hue jumping up and down with righteous demands for vengeance.

But two further elements of the story gave it added emotional traction and took the ignominy to a new level. They were that the phone-hackers deleted voicemails on the poor girls phone to make room for more, perhaps tasty pieces of information to be supplied, thereby possibly interfering with police investigations.

Even worse, if that is possible, as a result the Dowlers were given a modicum of hope that their daughter might still be alive.

The unspeakable cruelty of that action, and its impact on the family, was movingly described by the Dowlers themselves in their recent evidence to Leveson. The claim contributed hugely to the public mood of disgust.

Mere hacking or something much, much worse?

Then this week came what the tabloids would call “the bombshell”.

Neil Gardner QC, the barrister representing the Metropolitan police, said it was “unlikely” that the News of the World had in fact deleted the Dowler voicemails and denied that the police had told the Dowler family that such a thing had happened.

We can all accept that The Guardian, which broke the entire phone-hacking scandal, acted in good faith throughout and with normal and appropriate journalistic checks before publishing its story.
But it verges on the disingenuous for The Guardian to claim that the voicemail deletions were only “one element” in the affair.

This is true in the simple arithmetical sense but actually the issue goes to the heart of the matter. In the hierarchy of moral blindness the heinous crime was the deletions.

Lord Leveson is smart enough to realise the difference between “mere” hacking and something much, much worse. As his lordship emphasised, he is now determined to “get to the bottom of what happened”.

At the same time Leveson acknowledged that The Guardian‘s claim had been a factor in setting up the inquiry. Mere hacking could have been dealt with by the criminal law. Public outrage demanded a formal investigation.

Would Murdoch still have closed the NotW?

You don’t have to be an apologist for the illegal journalistic methods of the NotW to ponder what the implications have been of an inadvertently inaccurate story in The Guardian, which until now has been accepted by all and sundry as gospel truth.

Would Rupert Murdoch have still had to close the NotW, with the loss of 180 jobs, and cast adrift hundreds of thousands of newspaper readers now gone forever?

Sorry but with the best will in the world, the Sunday Mirror doesn’t cut the mustard in the same way that the NotW did on the doormat every Sunday morning.

And as Lord Leveson is clearly beginning to wonder, has his inquiry been set up on what is at least partially a false premise? Leveson can hardly un-invent himself or ignore all the harsh words already spoken into the public record.

But if it is finally demonstrated that The Guardian got it wrong in this important particular, then that fact could reasonably influence the remedies that Lord Leveson begins to reach for towards the end of next year.

If the behaviour of NotW journalists should turn out to be only bad, shocking, disgraceful and illegal as opposed to be beyond the pale of anything recognisably human, it should help the case for protecting self-regulation of the press.

It should also provide a cue, if any were required, for all journalists who have never broken the law, hacked into phones or knowingly invaded anyone’s privacy without good reason to begin the fight-back against the general taint and stain, which has engulfed an entire industry.

James Murdoch – incompetence to negligence

None of this will do much to help the business reputation of James Murdoch, who was almost certainly instrumental in persuading his father to take what increasingly looks like a wrong turning – and close the NotW.

Across his public appearances the choice facing James Murdoch has always been stark – either he knew all along and could end up in jail – or much more likely that he didn’t know and was therefore incompetent for not being curious enough to find out.

The incompetence allegation became more strident with the second big revelation of the week – the chain of emails sent to the young Murdoch setting out “the nightmare scenario” that others were involved in hacking. It was the weekend, they arrived on his BlackBerry and he didn’t read the entire chain goes the case for the defence.

As media commentator Steve Hewlett said on the Today programme, James Murdoch’s behaviour thereby moves from incompetence to negligence given the scale of his responsibilities and enormity of the issues involved.

The only thing left to do now is wish Lord Justice Leveson a Happy Christmas and a successful New Year getting to the bottom of all the implications of phone-hacking… and above all else reaching judicious and proportionate conclusion in the sure and certain knowledge that more revelations lie just around the corner.