Sir Harold Evans accuses press of cynicism over Leveson report

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/29/harold-evans-accuses-press-cynicism-leveson

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Former Times and Sunday Times editor Sir Harold Evans has accused sections of the newspaper industry of "cynicism and arrogance" in its response to Lord Justice Leveson's report on the future of press regulation.

Giving the annual Hugh Cudlipp lecture in London on Monday night, Evans said some in the industry had grossly distorted Leveson's proposal for statutory underpinning of the press. He added he had been "staggered" by the misrepresentation of Leveson's key recommendation by leading industry figures.

The proposal has divided national newspaper editors and executives since Leveson's report was published on 29 November. Some senior industry figures, led by the former Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright, have fiercely resisted any form of new law that binds the press; others are more open to the idea, providing there are important benefits and safeguards against political interference in such a system.

"As depressing as exposure of the dark arts has been, it is deepened by the cynicism and arrogance of much of the reaction to Leveson, coming from figures in the press who did nothing to penetrate – indeed whose inertia assisted – the cover-up conducted into oblivion by News International, a cover-up which would have continued, but for the skill of [Guardian journalist] Nick Davies and the courage of his editor [Alan Rusbridger]," Evans said, delivering the Cudlipp lecture at the London College of Communications.

He added: "A certain rowdiness [in the press] is a given, but the misrepresentation of Leveson's main proposal is staggering. To portray his careful construct for statutory underpinning as state control is a gross distortion."

Evans, who gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry in March last year, said he was greatly attracted to the idea that the freedom of the press would be enshrined in law for the first time – a hallmark emphasised by the inquiry judge last year.

He described the British press as "unduly restricted" when investigating serious matters in the public interest and suggested that statutory underpinning would have assisted the Sunday Times during his editorship in its long campaign covering the thalidomide scandal in 1972.

In all, the Leveson reforms showed a way to "protect privacy and encourage high standards while enlarging, not diminishing, the freedom of the press," Evans said.

However, he said he had "serious reservations" about other recommendations in Leveson's report. Evans described as "dangerous" proposals to reform data protection laws that would allow subjects of news stories access to information that journalists hold about them. A lack of media plurality and the implications of the concentration of power should also have been addressed in the report, Evans said.

He concluded: "I regard the Leveson plan, with the exceptions mentioned, as I regard the proposals on statutory underpinning – as an opportunity, not as a threat. What further might the British press do if it were free of internal and external restraints inimical to excellence? If the intellectual analysis of the heavies' tremendous flair in tabloid journalism were bent to more positive outcomes – such as Hugh Cudlipp dreamt in his youth and achieved so well in his prime?"

Cudlipp edited the Daily Mirror in the 1950s and 1960s and is regarded as one of the greatest British newspaper executives of the 20th century.

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