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BBC 5 Live: Kavanagh says Sun police investigation is “wildly disproportionate” to potential offences

John Thompson — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:40:20 +0000

In a series of interviews to UK broadcast media today, Trevor Kavanagh, associate editor at The Sun, criticised what he sees as police heavy-handedness during the dawn arrests of key Sun staff over the weekend.

In the above clip, Kavanagh tells BBC Radio 5 Live’s Richard Bacon he gives his most controversial interview of the day, critising both the police operation and News Corporation’s own investigation by its Management Standards Committee. “There’s never been a bigger crisis than this [at the Sun].” Kavanagh tells Bacon.

Here’s the full transcript:

RB: Trevor Kavanagh told me about the atmosphere in the Sun news room.

TK: “Well despondent I would say and a feeling of being under siege I suppose.”

RB” [paraphrase] Re: Rupert Murdoch planning to fly in later this week – will he face a hostile newsroom?

TK: “Well I think the newsroom is full of people who feel deeply unhappy about the way that their colleagues, who they worked alongside for sometimes decades and who they respect and admire as supremely professional operators, have ended up being arrested, searched, put on police bail and suspended from their duties and so there is a huge amount of anger at the fact that this has happened. And, as I would point out, not a single one of them has been charged, let alone tried or convicted.”

RB: Do some people at the Sun feel their parent company has hung them out to dry a bit?

TK: “Well there’s certainly a mood of unhappiness that the company’s proudly, certain parts of the company, not News International I hasten to add, not the newspaper side of the operation, are actually boasting that they’re sending information to the police which would put these people I’ve just described into police cells.”

RB: Forgive me, I know the structure of the company is quite complex, when you refer to another bit of the company, what does that mean, what are you talking about?

TK: “Well there is a parent company, News Corporation, and that has set up this management commitee to look into the evidence, the documentary evidence and so on, if there is any, against any members of staff. Now I think it’s fair to say that we are not opposed to the fact, that we are co-operating with the police, that’s what we should be doing and I think that if we are to get through this we need to provide them with all the co-operation we can. I think that perhaps what we best do is if we left them go through the evidence and found out what they can.”

RB: That word ‘boasting’, what do you mean by that?

TK: “Well I meant that when the arrests were made it was made clear that they had been arrested on the basis of evidence provided by this management committee.”

RB: Are you saying that they shouldn’t have provided that evidence, they should have let the police come for that evidence?

TK: “Well I think that, I don’t know how it works frankly but it does make us feel, make people in the company feel, that evidence which as of far as we know, I have to point this out, that on the basis of the evidence that’s been suggested to those who have been arrested so far, is pretty flimsy stuff. I can’t describe it in any further detail than that but it doesn’t really stand close scrutiny and people are wondering what on earth is happening.”

RB: A lot of the evidence has come from the parent company now. It gets complex because I know that a lot of emails have been handed over. These are emails that were thought to be missing and now have been recovered and there’s something like I think 11 million of them. When you say the evidence is flimsy are you saying you more or less know exactly what evidence the police have at the moment?

TK: “No I don’t and I’m not going to go any further into what evidence may or may not be available.”

RB: Why do you say it’s flimsy then if you don’t know?

“Well because I have been told what the police have been asking about and those, you see the people that have been arrested have been told why they have been arrested and on the basis of that I would say that the evidence is flimsy. What other evidence is about I simply don’t know but my point today is that this police operation is wildy disproportionate with what might be the potential offences that may or may not have been committed.

RB: How many police are involved in this investigation?

TK: “You have 171 offices who are involved in three separate investigations and this is the biggest single police operation in the history of British policing. It is bigger than the operation on the PanAm Lockerbie bombing, it’s far, far bigger, totally dwarfs the operation on Millie Dowler and nobody’s died, nobody’s committed any hideous offences that I’m aware of or even been suggested as having committed such offences. It does seem to me wildly disproportionate that these police officers are raiding people’s homes with up to 20 officers at a time, ransacking their homes, going through their personal possessions, carting off sacks of paper after a dawn raid. It’s completely out of proportion.”

RB: Why do you think it’s got here, why do you think that the operation is on such a scale, is it partly about the police trying to recover their own reputation do you think?

TK: “I suspect that’s the case, they feel that they’ve lost a police commissioner and a deputy police commissioner and they now want to make it abundantly clear that they aren’t going to leave a single stone, floorboard, drawer, cupboard, Kellog’s cornflake packet or any other part of a household untouched in their hunt for evidence that may or may not exist.”

RB: Do you think the investigation would be smaller if News International had been more co-operative with the initial phone-hacking allegations?

TK: “Well that may or may not be the case but this is not the point, the point is that as we speak 30 journalists have been suspended from their jobs, their careers may have been ruined by this and their families have been shocked and appalled by dawn raids by people acting I think in a disproportionate way when I think a polite knock on the door, perhaps after a phone call, would have unearthed precisely the same so-called evidence. I don’t know whether it’s evidence or simply other pieces of paper that’s in every household.”

RB: But when I say co-operative in the first place I think that’s an important point because initially the company said it was all down to one individual and that turned out not to be true and they misled parliament, they misled the public, then they said the 11 million emails had gone missing whilst being transferred to the Middle East and now 11 million have been recovered. But News International may have played its own part in the police investigation being of this scale.

TK: “Well that’s for you to suggest and it’s…”

RB: I don’t know that Trevor Kavanagh..

TK: “Let me finish my sentence…”

RB: OK

TK: “It may well be the case I don’t know, I’m not involved in any of that side of things and what you have to remember is that if indeed we were misjudging things or getting them wrong completely even, we have already paid a pretty heavy price for that have we not? We have had to close one of the biggest newspapers and the oldest and one of the best newspapers in the country and 300 excellent journalists have paid the price. Now, I think that we were talking earlier about the witch-hunt and I think that the view of those who are out to get us in this witch-hunt is that nothing will satisfy them until News International has gone altogether.”

RB: Who are those people Trevor, who do you think really is out to get the company?

TK: “Well I think one person quite clearly is Tom Watson, I don’t think he would deny it but I don’t want to go into any further detail about who… I mean you and others can easily decide who you think might fit the bill but when you have an operation as disproportionate as this you have to wonder what they’re up to, and why.”

RB: And I guess just finally Trevor with the story about Rupert Murdoch flying back in this week to face his hostile newsroom do you think there is any chance at all that the Sun itself would go the way of the News of the World and get closed down?

TK: “No. I think that the Sun is a paper that it if it hadn’t been invented you would have to re-invent it then. I think that the fact is this is a great newspaper, it’s loved by millions, it’s even loved occasionally by the BBC. I think the idea of losing a paper of this sort would surely be the ultimate disproportionate act would it not?”

RB: Mmm. It’s very successful isn’t it? It’s one of the few newspapers left that makes a lot of money I think as well.

TK: “It is, it’s successful for a very good reason, it’s successful because it breaks great stories, it’s successful because it represents its readers’ interests. It’s successful because it has a vigour and a lifestyle and a life force which resonates through this country. It is the greatest newspaper in this country.”

RB: By the way the journalists that were arrested, are they back at work?

TK: “They’ve been suspended.”

RB: Yeah, OK. Trevor, thank you…

TK: “Indefinitely I have to say without any prospect of knowing when any further action is going to be taken, if any.”

RB: Is that the right call by The Sun to suspend them or do you think that’s a bit harsh?

TK: “Well I think that, I don’t think there’s much choice once this has happened but you know it’s hard for people like me who have worked alongside people we admire and respect for, in my case, nearly 40 years with The Sun, to see them languishing at home, frustrated and unable to do anything to defend themselves and I feel very sorry for them and I know it’s causing them and their families a great deal of anguish.”

RB: I’m sure that’s right. I didn’t realise you’d been with the paper for 40 years, did you ever see the newspaper at a lower ebb than this, have you ever been through a bigger crisis than this at The Sun?

TK: “There’s never been a bigger crisis than this.”

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UK Supreme Court to begin tweeting judgments @UKSupremeCourt

Paul McNally — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:31:54 +0000

The UK Supreme Court is to begin issuing real-time news on its judgments by Twitter, starting this week.

The @UKSupremeCourt account has been set up to make the court’s proceedings as accessible and visible as possible and to engage with people who are not familar with its work, a court spokesman told the Associated Press.

The court’s communications team were keen to have the account set up in time for the ruling in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition appeal, which is expected later this month.

The Twitter launch comes almost a year to the day since the Supreme Court gave the green light for journalists and other members of the public to use Twitter and email in the courtroom.

Photo of Supreme Court by Shark Attacks on Flickr. Some rights reserved.Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – media law academic papers

Rachel McAthy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:09 +0000

There’s some useful reading list on media law on the International Forum for Responsible Media blog (Inforrm), where Judith Townend has collected together a number of academic papers on the subject.

The papers cover topical issues such as defamation, privacy and regulation of the press. She has also indicated those which are free to access, and others which require subscriptions.

See the full post here.Similar Posts:

Max Clifford and Phil Hall to appear before privacy committee

Sarah Marshall — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:10:43 +0000

Publicist Max Clifford and former editor of the News of the World and Hello! Phil Hall will take questions from MPs and Lords this afternoon.

They will appear before the joint committee on privacy and injunctions, which is currently questioning social media groups.

The four currently taking questions are: Lord Allan of Hallam, director of policy in Europe for Facebook; DJ Collins, vice president of global policy and communications at Google; Collins’ colleague at the internet giant Daphne Keller, who is associate general counsel at Google; and Colin Crowell, head of global public policy at Twitter.

The joint committee on privacy and injunctions was set up in May last year by prime minister David Cameron, with the aim, as outlined by attorney general Dominic Grieve, of looking at whether the current system of privacy and injunctions is working “and to consider whether we might make any changes that would make thing work better”.

The establishment of the committee followed the move by MP John Hemming to use parliamentary privilege to name a footballer at the centre of a privacy injunction, which had prevented the press from reporting on the matter but had seen speculation on sites such as Twitter.

Clifford and Hall are due to face questions at 3.15pm and can be viewed on Parliament TVSimilar Posts:

BBC News: The editors’ views from the Leveson inquiry

Rachel McAthy — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:08:10 +0000

BBC News has compiled a table of views as shared by newspaper editors at the Leveson inquiry, giving readers the opportunity to closely compare the standpoints of each editor on key points.

The table sets out “how the editors’ evidence compares” and includes key points on given by the editors “on researching stories”, “media regulation” and a “key quote”.

See the table here.

See Journalism.co.uk’s coverage of the Leveson inquiry here.Similar Posts:

Newspaper Society: Justice select committee calls for evidence on FOI Act

Rachel McAthy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:21:09 +0000

The Newspaper Society issued a reminder this morning that the justice select committee has made a call for evidence on “the operation” of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 – as part of its “post-legislative scrutiny” of the law.

The call for evidence was issued in December, but written evidence can still be submitted until Friday, 3 February.

The committee has asked for feedback on three areas in particular (copied below), but adds that those who submit responses are also “welcome to address additional issues”:

Does the Freedom of Information Act work effectively?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Freedom of Information Act?

Is the Freedom of Information Act operating in the way that it was intended to?

There is more information here on the select committee’s website.Similar Posts:

Judgment in Coulson v NGN to be handed down today

Rachel McAthy — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:07:20 +0000

The judgment of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson’s legal action against News Group Newspapers is due to be handed down at 2pm.

Coulson took action against the publisher of the now-closed News of the World over payment of his legal fees.

Earlier today private investigator Glenn Mulcaire won his legal fees case against NGN.Similar Posts:

Revised guidance on live court reporting due Wednesday

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:21:47 +0000

Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge is due to outline “revised practice guidance” on “electronic text-based communications” tomorrow (Wednesday, 13 December), in a follow-up to interim guidance issued a year ago.

In December 2010 England and Wales’ most senior judge provided guidance which said individuals could be granted permission to use a mobile phone or other small electronic device “in order to make live text-based communications of the proceedings”, as long as they had made a prior application to the court.

At the time the guidance emphasised that permission for live reporting of court proceedings would only be granted based on each individual case.

According to a press notice, since issuing this guidance the Lord Chief Justice has run a consultation which has included contributions from figures such as the Secretary of State for Justice and Attorney General as well as bodies such as the Press Complaints Commission and Society of Editors.

Once the guidance is outlined in court it will be published online, the notice added.Similar Posts:

#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – media law tweeters

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:19:04 +0000

The Inforrm (International Forum for Responsible Media) Blog has produced a great list of “useful media law tweeters” who can be followed to keep up with events in the legal world concerning journalism.

As well as a list of 90 tweeters the blog post also offers some useful hashtags to follow relating to current media law events, such as #Leveson and #libelreform.

See the Inforrm post here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – advice on copyright and how to claim for breach

Rachel McAthy — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:03:36 +0000

There is an informative article on the website for EPUK – Editorial Photographers United Kingdom and Ireland – which looks at what you can do if you think your copyright has been breached. As the article states, author Simon Crofts addresses: “your copyright, what you are entitled to claim from an infringer, and how to assemble and present a claim”.

Read it in full here.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.Similar Posts:

AP test claims 50% of countries with FOI laws ‘do not follow them’

Rachel McAthy — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:06:14 +0000

Of the 105 countries which have laws governing the freedom of information, more than 50 per cent “do not follow them”, according to a test carried out by the Associated Press.

In a report on the findings of its test AP reveals that it sent out requests for information on “terrorism arrests and convictions … to the European Union and the 105 countries with right-to-know laws or constitutional provisions”, to find out how well they follow the rules.

According to its findings a total of just 14 gave complete responses and abided by the set time limit to do so in, while 38 “eventually answered most questions”.

The figures show 51 per cent of countries (a total of 54) approached for information by AP had not given it at the time of writing while 6 per cent “refused to disclose information, citing national security”.

Right-to-know laws seem to work better in some new democracies than older ones, the AP test showed, because their governments can adopt what has worked elsewhere.

Read the full report here.

AP is also asking its audience to send in ideas for more FOI requests they could make elsewhere.Similar Posts:

Full Leveson inquiry statements from NUJ and Guardian

Rachel McAthy — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:23:50 +0000

Guardian's Alan Rusbridger speaking to the Leveson inquiry. Still taken from video

The Leveson inquiry into press standards heard from key industry figures today, including representatives for the National Union of Journalists, the Guardian and the legal representative of alleged “victims” given core participant status.

Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the NUJ spoke first, describing the Press Complaints Commission as “little more than a self-serving gentleman’s club, and not a very good one at that”.

She also accused the system of having “failed, and abysmally so”. Her full statement to the inquiry has been published on the NUJ’s site here.

The inquiry also heard from editor-in-chief of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger, who has posted his statement in full online.

Near the beginning of his statement Rusbridger highlights the shifts which have taken place within the industry and are affecting journalists:

We also live in a world in which every reader becomes a potential fact checker. Social media allows anyone to respond to, expose, highlight, add to, clarify or contradict what we write. We have the choice whether to pretend this world of response doesn’t exist, or to incorporate it into what we do.

The more we incorporate it, the more journalism becomes, as it were, plastic. There will be less pretence that we are telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth about a story, frozen at the moment it is published – what Walter Lippman in 1922 called the confusion between “news” and “truth”. A journalist today lives with the knowledge that there will be an external reaction to much of what she or he writes within minutes of publication. Journalism today is often less a snapshot, more a moving picture.

Video of today’s hearing is available to view on the Leveson inquiry website here.Similar Posts:

Guardian: Court of protection should be open to media, says leading judge

Joel Gunter — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:35:55 +0000

The processes of England’s most private court should be opened up to public and media scrutiny, the head of the court of protection Sir Nicholas Wall has said in an interview with the Guardian.

The media has recently been granted increased access to the proceedings of the court, which makes decisions in the cases of people deemed vulnerable or unable to make decisions for themselves, but on the rare occasions that the media is granted access judges still decide on a case-by-cases what they can have access to and report on, and at what stages of a case.

Wall told the Guardian:

It seems to me a matter of public interest. The public is, after all, entitled to know what’s going on. Locking up a mentally disabled person is a very serious thing to do and we don’t want people quietly locked up in private.

He added:

The decision about opening up the court is very fraught and people have very strong views. My entirely personal view is that provided we can protect the confidentiality of litigants and their families, there’s not a reason we can’t hear the cases in the presence of the media.

Read the full report on Guardian.co.uk at this link.

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Jo Yeates’ landlord: media responsible for ‘extraordinary tissue of fabrications’

Joel Gunter — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:53:52 +0000

Chris Jefferies, who successfully sued eight newspapers for damages after his release
Image: Tim Ireland/PA

Chris Jefferies, the landlord of Joanna Yeates who was arrested on suspicion of her murder but later released, told Radio 4′s Today programme this morning that he was “very disturbed” by the “extraordinary tissue of fabrications” published by the press following his arrest.

Jefferies was appearing on the programme to talk about his work with the Hacked Off campaign to exclude privacy and defamation cases from proposed government reforms to conditional fee agreements (CFAs), otherwise known as “no-win-no-fee” agreements.

After his release Jefferies successfully sued eight newspapers – the Sun, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Star, Daily Express, Daily Record, and the Scotsman – for damages. Two of the titles – the Sun and the Daily Mirror – were also successfully prosecuted by attorney general Dominic Grieve for contempt of court.

Jefferies told the today programme that during his time in custody he had been unaware of his treatment at the hands of the press, which had caused Grieve to issue a warning to all news outlets over possible contempt.

The landlord said that the press had had “a field day” with his reputation and said he had “become a household name for all the wrong reasons”.

Arguing against the proposed CFA reforms, Jefferies claimed that there is “absolutely no question that I would not have been able to take the action I did against the newspapers” if no-win-no-fee agreements were restricted. He went on to say that access to justice would be “undoubtedly denied” to victims of libel or privacy intrusion if reform went ahead.

I think there is absolutely no question that I wouldn’t have been able to take the action that I did because at the moment, one is able to take out a conditional fee agreement and that means that the lawyer’s success fees, which are a percentage of the total legal costs of taking the action, will be paid by the other side and one won’t be responsible for those.

Because these cases can be dragged out over considerable periods of time, particularly if they go to court, then legal fees are astronomic. One couldn’t begin to potentially expose oneself to the risk of having to pay tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds in advance.

Precisely for that reason I felt I had no other course but to take the legitimate action that was recently concluded against the eight newspapers.

Jefferies’ solicitor, Louis Charalambous, said after damages were awarded that the newspapers were paying them “knowing that once the conditional fee agreement rules are changed next year victims of tabloid witch hunts will no longer have the same access to justice.”

Yeates neighbour, Vincent Tabak, was convicted of her murder last week and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison.Similar Posts:

#aopsummit catch-up: Journalism ethics and the BBC’s Olympics coverage

Rachel McAthy — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 11:44:44 +0000

We were not able to make it along to the AOP’s digital publishing summit earlier this month, but the Association has helpfully uploaded some coverage from the event.

This includes a video published today from a session that looked at a range of topical issues at the moment: “hack gate, public interest, privacy vs openness, the PCC and press regulation”. Speakers from Heat, Digital Spy, Lewis Silkin and Mumsnet joined the panel which was chaired by BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

Particularly interesting parts of the discussion include a need to address the issue of press regulation across different platforms by news publishers and the issue of online anonymity, especially topical given the Joint Committee’s recent report on the Draft Defamation Bill.

Last week AOP also posted an article by Cait O’Riordan, Head of Product, BBC Sport and London 2012, in a follow up to her keynote presentation on how the BBC Online is preparing to cover the Olympics next year.Similar Posts: