The Guardian’s betrayal over Leveson part two
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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/04/the-guardians-betrayal-over-leveson-part-two Version 0 of 1. Your editorial (The Guardian’s view on Leveson 2: look ahead, not behind, 2 March) constitutes a fourfold betrayal. It betrays your own journalists, who, with Nick Davies leading the way, laboured bravely and brilliantly to expose criminality and wrongdoing at national newspapers. It betrays the blameless and often vulnerable victims of those crimes, who were promised a full public inquiry, including the all-important Leveson part 2, but whom your editorial does not deem worthy of mention. And it betrays the public at large, including your readers, who, as Brian Leveson has pointed out, are entitled to know the true scale of what went wrong, how newspaper managements allowed it to happen and what lessons can be learned. In endorsing the cancellation of Leveson 2 you place yourself on the side not only of this Conservative government but also of its close allies, the newspapers that perpetrated the crimes and the wrongdoing. And what is your rationale? That we should look forward rather than back – a logic that negates all accountability and one that is always favoured by the unscrupulous and the unethical. This was unworthy of your newspaper’s great traditions of independence, of service to the public and of intellectual rigour. That is the fourth betrayal.Professor Steven Barnett University of WestminsterProfessor Georgina Born University of CambridgeProfessor Brian Cathcart University of KingstonProfessor John Corner University of LeedsProfessor James Curran Goldsmiths, University of LondonProfessor David Deacon Loughborough UniversityProfessor Bob Franklin Cardiff UniversityProfessor Chris Frost Liverpool John Moores UniversityProfessor Ivor Gaber University of SussexProfessor Justin Lewis Cardiff UniversityProfessor Sonia Livingstone London School of EconomicsProfessor Joni Lovenduski Birkbeck, University of LondonProfessor Graham Murdock Loughborough UniversityProfessor Julian Petley Brunel UniversityProfessor Angela Phillips Goldsmiths, University of LondonProfessor Greg Philo Glasgow UniversityDr Justin Schlosberg Birkbeck, University of LondonProfessor Jean Seaton University of WestminsterProfessor Jeanette Steemers Kings College, University of LondonDr Damian Tambini London School of EconomicsDr Einar Thorsen Bournemouth University • What a disappointing editorial on Leveson; “looking in the rear-view mirror” indeed. Every investigation is a backward look at events and Leveson 2 would have allowed a thorough look at the relationships between the press and public officials. Less an attack on press freedom and more an investigation into possible corruption.Andy TrotterFormer chief constable and media lead for the Association of Chief Police Officers, Tonbridge, Kent • The Guardian is the only newspaper I read and I am therefore disappointed, when the topic is a subject I know quite a lot about, to find false and pejorative phraseology. It makes be doubt the veracity of articles on matters where I have no personal knowledge. You refer to the “tiny, state-sanctioned press regulator Impress”. The state has not sanctioned Impress. Parliament set up the machinery (a royal charter) for an independent body, the Press Recognition Panel (PRP), to recognise any press regulator which fulfilled set criteria. This was to ensure that appropriate regulators of the UK press are independent, properly funded and able to protect the public. The PRP chair, David Wolfe, is quoted as saying: “The PRP works in the public interest by supporting and promoting a free press in a free and fair society.” The Guardian has chosen not to be regulated by an independent body qualified to do so. I consider that it should not use its position to publish “fake news” about such a regulator.Caroline InstanceThakeham, West Sussex • One can only imagine the disappointment which must have been felt by the family of murdered Milly Dowler at the announcement that the second part of the Leveson inquiry has been cancelled. They – and no doubt many others – must have hoped that before too long questionable past relationships between police and the press would be fully investigated. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, despite all that has happened around the original phone hacking scandal, government ministers are still inclined to bow to the will of the press barons. Jeremy Corbyn was right to press for change.Andrew McLuskeyStaines, Middlesex • The interview with Max Mosley (Interview, 3 March) shows how little his views have really changed from when he was actively helping his father’s fascist movement. Despite being asked to apologise over the notorious racist leaflet in the 1961 byelection, he refused to do so. And he still finds reasons to have supported apartheid in South Africa. There is certainly no criticism at all of Oswald Mosley’s politics before and after the war. The Labour party should never have accepted funding from Max Mosley, though it is now stated it would not do so again. However, the £500,000 already received should now be returned and all the more so after Saturday’s interview. It is tainted money.David WinnickLondon • Fifty-six years ago Max Mosley published a fascist leaflet (Labour to cut off donations from Mosley over links to ‘racist’ leaflet, 1 March). He now gives money to the Labour party, which is not a fascist party. Surely we should welcome it when people change their political views in a good direction. Why on earth is Labour refusing future donations from him?Chris BirchLondon • While nothing could or should justify the nature and language of the young Max Mosley’s (purported) byelection leaflet for his father’s Union Movement, a reading of his half-brother Nicholas Mosley’s memoirs, Rules of the Game/Beyond the Pale: Memoirs of Sir Oswald Mosley and Family (1998) might at the very least put into context the bullying demands Oswald Mosley set upon his children, most especially his sons, Max and Alexander, from his second marriage to Diana (nee Mitford). Alexander, the older by a year, managed to escape to university in the US, but Max, while a student at Oxford and after, was certainly his father’s Union party “right-hand man”, not least in 1962 when he rescued the unrepentant fascist from serious injury after an attack on a London Street. Oswald Mosley’s postwar Union Movement was truly despicable and the young Max should have released himself from it at the earliest possible moment, but…Bruce Ross-Smith Oxford • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters Press regulation Newspapers & magazines Leveson inquiry Leveson report Newspapers The Guardian letters Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Google+ Share on WhatsApp Share on Messenger Reuse this content |