Leveson Report

Hi folks. Sorry for the wait. I know it's been ages since I last posted something. I've just been super duper busy with uni related things.

Today I want to talk about the Leveson Report as it's a pretty recent newstory and as I am a journalist I find it very important. The Leveson Inquiry has been on-going for the most part of the year. The case was originally opened when reports claimed that News of the World had been hacking phones including murdered school-girl Millie Dowler and many more. Prime Minister David Cameron ordered Lord Leveson to open an investigation into these allegations. Not only was the case opened to look at the allegations of phone hacking, the investigation was also to look at the the relationships between the press and police and the extent to which that has operated in the public interest and also the relationship between the press and politicians.

After many hearings and court cases with the likes of the Prime Minister, Rebecca Brooks, Rupert Murdoch (owner of News International) and James Murdoch. It was clear that News of the World had not only broken fundamental rules of good and fair journalism but they had also broken the law by hacking into celebrities and other high society persons which is illegal in the eyes of the law. This has raised a lot of questions since the Leveson Report was published on the 29th November 2012.

The brief points of the report are:
1. Self regulation body recommended.
2.) Independent of serving editors, government and business.
3.) Politicians and press have been too close.
4.) Press behaviour has been absolutely atrocious.

The main point Lord Leveson made was to make sure that there was an self-regulatory body established. This also suggests that the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) was not working to a high standard. I personally feel that the PCC is useless and should never have been established in the first place. How can a complaints comission about the press be regulated and funded by editors of newspapers? Surely there going to have a biased opinion and even possibly excuse things if these complaints could damage the reputation of their newspaper. This is a pointless and unfair regulatory body and hopefully will be done away with it after the Leveson Report.

The problem with this self-regulatory body is that it will be legalised by the Government. This means newspapers and journalists can be fined for not upholding the rules and regulations. Does this mean the Government will be in charge of the press? What happened to living in Democracy, freedom of speech and all that? Oh and can you imagine if the Government were in charge of the press..we would never have found out about the Governments expenses which to me is in the public interest to know these things. David Cameron put it very nicely:

"The issue of principle is that for the first time we would have crossed the rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land.

We should I believe be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press.

In this House - which has been a bulwark of democracy for centuries - we should think very, very carefully before crossing this line."

Who knows what the future holds for journalists like myself. I just feel that its all pretty pointless in regards to the self-regulatory body. I can see why Lord Leveson would suggest it but at the same time, the law does not cover bloggers and twitter users therefore journalists may end up just turning to these forms of social media in order to obtain free speech, especially for investigative journalism. I know families such as Millie Dowlers have been badly mistreated and I couldnt imagine what they must have been going through so in a sense I do recognize that there has to be some sort of regulation on the press. It will be interested to see what David Cameron comes up with.

In my opinion I dont see why the rest of the newspapers should be punished for what one un-professional newspaper did. If what News of the World did was against the law, surely they should be punished by the law and nothing else? After all, these allegations and reports were brought to light by a newspaper..doesnt this make you think that not ALL newspapers are bad.

I want to know your thoughts on this story. If yous have any comments please leave them below or you can tweet me @GemmaTaggart. Till next time..


 Gem