Abstract
The early morning of May 8 was the end of the road for two brave causes – the Miliband push for government and the Hacked Off attempt to reform and regulate the British press.
Hacked Off was simply the most spectacular pressure group success of modern times. Formed in 2011 to represent the victims of phone hacking and press intrusion and to call for a public inquiry, it achieved: the Leveson Inquiry; a change in the law supported by all parties; a royal charter and the creation of a recognition panel tasked to consider whether press regulators met the criteria recommended by Leveson.
Yet these glorious successes turned to ashes. The press – or most of it – went off and set up a parallel framework with the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso). That had the newspaper industry on its side, if not public legitimacy As for the recognition panel, it was established but derided by those it was supposed to recognise.
How did this come to pass? Hacked Off rode the zeitgeist of public anger at the tabloid press, especially after The Guardian's Milly Dowler voicemail claims in July 2011. That, and the culmination of a series of scandals about phone hacking, led to parliamentary revulsion and the setting up of the Leveson inquiry into the culture, ethics and practices of the press.
Over the period of a year, Sir Brian Leveson publicly exposed the dirty washing of elements of the tabloid press where phone hacking had become industrial, “blagging” (assuming false identities) was commonplace and paying large sums for stories not uncommon. Hacked Off set the agenda for Leveson. In the words of Raymond Snoddy, the former Times media editor:
“Hacked Off, organised like a fundamentalist guerrilla movement, clearly outflanked the newspaper industry, punched above their weight at Leveson and suckered in gullible politicians.”
It was no surprise that Leveson, in his November 2012 report, took the high ground with regard to the behaviour of journalists who had, in his words, “wreaked havoc in the lives of ordinary people” and suggested some form of regulation, albeit “light touch”, by Ofcom.
Hacked Off had won its case. But not all were certain that the battle having been won, the war was theirs. The former Guardian editor Peter Preston says: “You either impose regulation by law – so much for a free press! – or you do it by persuasion. And Hacked Off has always set out to denounce, attack and threaten, never to persuade.”
The British press is not unlike Houdini – as soon as regulation is suggested, it finds a collective way to escape the shackle. They have done so six times since 1953. Royal Commissions recommend change: the press escapes. Leveson was to prove no exception. Hell hath no fury like the Daily Mail threatened. It joined with the tabloids and some more intellectual friends and simply ran a campaign of attrition against the modest Leveson proposals. Day after day, story after story. Anything negative, however tangential, was down to Leveson; anything positive down to their “fight for freedom”. No stone was left unturned. The might of the British press – “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages” in the memorable words of Stanley Baldwin in 1931 – was brought down on the head of Hacked Off.
The campaign group reacted by lobbying the politicians and consistently using the victims of press intrusion – the Dowlers, the McCanns and others – as a quasi-human shield to persuade Parliament and the public of the Leveson case.
It appeared to have succeeded when the act establishing a Royal Charter was passed, supported by all three main political parties in 2013. The Queen duly signed it into law and the press recognition panel was appointed in November 2014. The only trouble was that it has been ignored by those it is supposed to regulate.
The alternative organisation, Ipso, replaced the derided Press Complaints Commission, promising a remit to investigate as well as to censure offenders The newspaper industry persuaded Sir Alan Moses to head it. By the end of 2014 it was the only regulatory game in town.
Evan Harris, who has driven the Hacked Off campaign, insists he is not despondent: “We are exactly where we expected to be at this point. That is, the worst offenders in the press have rejected Leveson. Their sham regulator, Ipso is entirely dependent on the industry for permission to do anything and has no credibility with the public who see and experience continued press abuses, unreformed by any effective self-regulation.”
Hacked Off says it has not lost the war but waits for the recognition panel's powers to kick in later this year. Then its teeth will be shown. David Wolfe QC, the panel chair, said: “We are making good progress to be able to consider applications for recognition later in the year.”
Harris said: “The Recognition Panel will soon be open for business and under the Charter will report to Parliament a year later whether the Leveson system that Parliament overwhelmingly endorsed is in place. We expect Parliament to act to deliver the promises made by the leaders of all parties.”
Yet it's hard to escape the feeling that press regulation is either dead or on the backburner. Professor Tim Luckhurst of the University of Kent does not mourn: “Hacked Off deployed every trick in the tabloid playbook in its efforts to overturn the liberal tradition that has given Britain the finest newspapers in the world. It pursued its objectives with a nasty blend of casuistry and zealotry. It failed utterly. I am delighted.”
We shall see. Hacked Off was a brave (and probably just) campaign which made plenty of noise and had much legislative effect. But ultimately, has it ended, as Enoch Powell said all political careers must end, “in failure”. Sadly, it appears to …