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

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.

Journalism.co.uk court of protection coverage.

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Phone hacking: Follow Les Hinton’s evidence to MPs

Former News International and Dow Jones chief executive Les Hinton is giving evidence to MPs on the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee this afternoon.

You can follow his appearance, which he is making via video link from New York, here on Parliament TV.

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Daily Mail takes after Werrity with dubious use of Fox business card

It seems Adam Werrity isn’t the only one to have been caught using a business card he shouldn’t have. The Daily Mail, unable to obtain their own picture of Werrity’s now-infamous “Advisor to Rt. Hon. Liam Fox MP” card, simply scanned the Guardian’s. But this wasn’t a right-click-save-image-as off the Guardian website, some enterprising staffer at the Mail actually scanned it right off the newspaper. Brilliant.

The copy was spotted by blogger Tim Ireland, who made his discovery after about 10 seconds’ sleuthing. See his damning evidence from Mail Online below.

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Martin Moore: seven models for reform of self-regulation

Revelations about the extent of the phone-hacking scandal have fuelled discussion about the state of self-regulation and possible reform. Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, has created a thought-provoking list of seven possible ways in which the system might be reformed, from scrapping regulation altogether to full statutory regulation. Moore has weighed up some of the pros and cons of each idea and intends for them to serve as a framework for discussion of the issue.

The list:

1. Abolish the PCC, without setting up a replacement
2. Reform the existing PCC
3. Create an independent regulator
4. Extend a watered down Ofcom to cover all major media organisations
5. Create a professional body for journalists
6. Withdraw all media regulation, but reform, extend, reduce and clarify existing media law
7. Create a new statutory regulator for all media

See Moore’s post on the MST website for his introduction and the full reasoning behind each idea.

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Leveson inquiry: full list of core particpants

Lord Leveson has today announced the list of those that have been granted ‘core participant’ status in the upcoming Leveson inquiry. Core participants can be legally represented, allowing them to have questions asked on their behalf.

Read the full news article on Journalism.co.uk.

Part 1 of the inquiry has been broken down into four modules:

The relationship between the press and the public
The relationship between the press and police
The relationship between the press and politicians
Recommendations for the future

The following organisations have been granted core participant status for Part 1, Modules 1, 2, 3, and 4:

The Metropolitan Police
News International (publisher of the Sun, the Times, the Sunday Times, and the now-defunct News of the World)
Northern & Shell (publisher of the the Daily Express, the Sunday Express, the Daily Star and the Daily Star Sunday)
Guardian News & Media (publisher of the Guardian and the Observer)
Associated Newspapers (publisher of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday)

The following individuals who believe they may have been victims of phone hacking have been granted core participant status for Part 1, Module 1 of the inquiry. All 46 will have to be represented by a single legal representative:

1    Chris Bryant MP
2    Tessa Jowell MP
3    Denis MacShane MP
4    The Rt Hon Lord Prescott of Kingston upon Hull
5    Joan Smith
6    Christopher Shipman
7    Tom Rowland
8    Mark Lewis
9    Mark Thomson
10    Gerry McCann
11    Kate McCann
12    Christopher Jefferies
13    Max Moseley
14    Brian Paddick
15    Paul Gascoigne
16    David Mills
17    Sienna Miller
18    Hugh Grant
19    Ben Jackson
20    Ciara Parkes
21    Simon Hughes MP
22    Max Clifford
23    Sky Andrew
24    Ulrika Jonsson
25    Mark Oaten
26    Michele Milburn
27    Abi Titmuss
28    Calum Best
29    Claire Ward
30    Mary-Ellen Field
31    Gary Flitcroft
32    Ian Hurst
33    Shobna Gulati
34    Mike Hollingsworth
35    Kieron Fallon
36    Ashvini Sharma
37    Tim Blackstone
38    Valatina Semenenko
39    Sally Dowler
40    Bob Dowler
41    Gemma Dowler
42    Sheryl Gascoigne
43    Graham Shear
44    JK Rowling
45    James Watson
46    Margaret Watson

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Labour calls for amendments to media takeover rules

Labour is calling for an “emergency” amendment to the law in relation to media takeovers to give ministers greater power to intervene, following News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB.

According to an announcement by the party on Sunday (28 August) it hopes to “close legal loopholes” identified during News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB, before the conclusion of the Leveson inquiry. News Corporation eventually withdrew its bid as phone hacking allegations continued to be mounted against its now-closed News of the World title.

Under the proposed amendments to Section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002, outlined by shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis in a letter to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster, ministers would be given powers to ask regulators to apply “a wide ranging public interest test as well as a fit and proper person test”, from the start.

The changes also call for ministers to be able to intervene at any stage “if new information came to light”. Lewis will put these proposed measures before both the House of Commons and House of Lords when the summer recess ends in less than a week.

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Petition for Hillsborough papers release exceeds 120,000 signatures

The BBC reported yesterday that an online petition calling for cabinet papers relating to the Hillsborough disaster to be released had collected 100,000 signatures, which is the amount required for the issue to be considered for a debate in parliament.

This number has continued to rise and is currently over the 120,000 mark.

The papers in question are said to contain details of conversations involving former prime minister Margaret Thatcher about the Hillsborough disaster. The BBC originally requested that the papers be released through a freedom of information request two years ago.

Last month the information commissioner Sir Christopher Graham ruled that there was a public interest in the information being released. It also accused the authority of an “excessive delay” in responding to the original request, which was then to deny the release of the information under a series of exemptions.

The Cabinet Office has since appealed the decision, the BBC reports in this article.

Trinity Mirror Regional’s head of multimedia David Higgerson blogs here about the potential impact of the ultimate decision on the government’s claims of transparency and openness.

… it’s only by seeing the documents in full that we’ll know the current government believes in true openness – an openness where the agenda is set by the public, not by the civil servants.

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Audio: Norwegian journalist describes explosion

In the audio below we speak to Norwegian journalist Kristine Lowe about the explosion in Oslo this afternoon (22 July). Lowe was working in the VG newspaper offices located opposite a government building seriously damaged when the attack took place.

The newspaper offices were also damaged in the attack, she told us.

Read our report on the explosion here.

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Phone hacking update: Ex-employees ‘clarify’ Murdoch evidence

Chairman of News International, James Murdoch, was yesterday (21 July) seemingly forced to defend evidence he gave to the culture, media and sport select committee on Tuesday, after it was called into question by two former employees – ex-News of the World editor Colin Myler and lawyer Tom Crone.

According to reports, last night Crone and Myler released a statement seeking to “clarify” a significant piece of Murdoch’s evidence.

In the committee session, MP Tom Watson had asked James Murdoch if, when he signed off a settlement payment to Gordon Taylor, he had seen or was made aware of an email “suggesting hacking was more widespread than had been admitted”. And James Murdoch replied no, “I was not aware of that at the time”.

But in their statement, Myler and Crone claim his recollection of what he was told “was mistaken”.

In fact, we did inform him of the ‘for Neville’ email which had been produced to us by Gordon Taylor’s lawyers.

Following Myler and Crone’s statement, Murdoch issues a single line statement: “I stand behind my testimony to the select committee.”

According to a BBC report, Watson has said he will now ask police to investigate this evidence, while committee chair John Whittingdale, was quoted as saying that it will be asking Murdoch to respond and clarify this.

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Select committees: Reaction to appearances by police, the Murdochs and Brooks

The focus on Twitter seemed to be entirely on the appearance of Murdoch and son, Rebekah Brooks and two senior Metropolitan police officers at two parliament select committees yesterday (19 July).

Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates appeared before the home affairs select committee, before Rupert and James Murdoch – and then Rebekah Brooks – came before the culture, media and sport committee.

Below is a Storify to show some of the reaction on Twitter to MPs’ questions and the responses MPs received.

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