Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin was killed today in the Syrian city of Homs, alongside French photographer Rémi Ochlik. She was just 56 years old.

They died, like so many thousands of Syrians over the past year, at the hands of President Bashar al-Assad, whose siege of Homs plumbs ever deeper levels of brutality. Soldiers, civilians, women, children, babies, no one is safe from Assad’s army, with Syrian forces reportedly given orders to kill “any journalist who set foot on Syrian soil” and dared reveal the scale of atrocities to the world, as Colvin so bravely did.

In her final dispatch, she wrote:

They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.

Among the 300 huddling in this wood factory cellar in the besieged district of Baba Amr is 20-year-old Noor, who lost her husband and her home to the shells and rockets.

“Our house was hit by a rocket so 17 of us were staying in one room,” she recalls as Mimi, her three-year-old daughter, and Mohamed, her five-year-old son, cling to her abaya.

“We had had nothing but sugar and water for two days and my husband went to try to find food.” It was the last time she saw Maziad, 30, who had worked in a mobile phone repair shop. “He was torn to pieces by a mortar shell.”

For Noor, it was a double tragedy. Adnan, her 27-year-old brother, was killed at Maziad’s side.

Everyone in the cellar has a similar story of hardship or death. The refuge was chosen because it is one of the few basements in Baba Amr. Foam mattresses are piled against the walls and the children have not seen the light of day since the siege began on February 4. Most families fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs…

Concluding:

The only real hope of success for Assad’s opponents is if the international community comes to their aid, as Nato did against Muammar Gadaffi in Libya. So far this seems unlikely to happen in Syria.

Observers see a negotiated solution as perhaps a long shot, but the best way out of this impasse. Though neither side appears ready to negotiate, there are serious efforts behind the scenes to persuade Russia to pull Assad into talks.

As international diplomats dither, the desperation in Baba Amr grows. The despair was expressed by Hamida, 30, hiding in a downstairs flat with her sister and their 13 children after two missiles hit their home. Three little girls, aged 16 months to six years, sleep on one thin, torn mattress on the floor; three others share a second. Ahmed, 16, her sister’s eldest child, was killed by a missile when he went to try to find bread.

“The kids are screaming all the time,” Hamida said. “I feel so helpless.” She began weeping. “We feel so abandoned. They’ve given Bashar al-Assad the green light to kill us.”

Tributes have poured in today from Parliament and from across Fleet Street, which stands united in mourning the loss of one of their most fearless reporters.

Her editor John Witherow said (£):

“Marie was an extraordinary figure in the life of The Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered. She believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice. Above all, as we saw in her powerful report last weekend, her thoughts were with the victims of violence.

“Throughout her long career she took risks to fulfil this goal, including being badly injured in Sri Lanka. Nothing seemed to deter her. But she was much more than a war reporter. She was a woman with a tremendous joie de vivre, full of humour and mischief and surrounded by a large circle of friends, all of whom feared the consequences of her bravery.

“Marie was recruited to The Sunday Times more than a quarter of a century ago by David Blundy, her predecessor as Middle East correspondent, who was himself killed in El Salvador in 1989. It shows the risks that foreign correspondents are prepared to take in the pursuit of the truth.”

ITN’s Bill Neely blogged:

And so another witness, one more of the band of people who take a deep breath and plunge in to places where most would not, is dead. Marie Colvin watched a baby take its last breaths in Homs yesterday and re-told the story with evident emotion on ITN last night. This morning at around nine o’ clock, she became the latest victim of the relentless shelling of Homs.

And her voice is silenced…

When I read her report on Sunday, I felt humbled. I have just come back from ten days in Syria. I was on an official visa; frustrated not to get to Homs and able to escape the eyes of Assad’s men only to cover protests in the capital and chase the secret police around Dera’a. I knew her work had touched the very heart of the story.

The great journalist Martha Gellhorn wrote:

“All my reporting life, I have thrown small pebbles into a very large pond, and have no way of knowing whether any pebble caused the slightest ripple. I don’t need to worry about that. My responsibility was the effort.”

Marie threw pebbles and caused ripples.

On Monday I sent her a message; “Bravo Marie. Keep your head down.” This morning I looked at the video of her body in a house in Homs. Her head down. Her voice silenced.

And we are all the poorer for that. Bless you Marie.

In The Guardian, Peter Beaumont wrote:

Marie Colvin, who has been killed in the Syrian city of Homs during an artillery attack, had a knack of getting to places where other journalists had not been, getting there first and staying when others had long gone.

Colleagues would arrive in conflict zones to find Colvin already in situ, usually hunched over her laptop or talking urgently into her mobile phone to one of her sources from her vast contacts book.

When Muammar Gaddafi’s regime issued visas to journalist to visit Tripoli last year, she was in the first party; secured the first print interview with the Libyan leader, whom she had interviewed perhaps more times than any other journalist working for a British newspaper…

When colleagues were discussing last week whether it was possible to reach the centre of the Syrian city, it was in the knowledge that Colvin was already there and trying to go further.

Perhaps the finest correspondent of her generation working in the British media, she married a fierce passion for her work with remarkable courage and persistence. Above all, she wanted to tell the stories of the victims of war.

And if Colvin was not already there, then she had just left…

From the Balkans to the second intifada, Iraq and Afghanistan and more recently the Arab spring, Colvin was an almost permanent presence. In recent years she sported a black eyepatch which became necessary after she lost an eye in a mortar attack in Sri Lanka.

And in the Telegraph, in a tribute titled “farewell to a great journalist and a dear friend”, Con Coughlin wrote:

Marie Colvin, who has been killed in the Syrian city of Homs, was without doubt one of the finest foreign correspondents of her generation, and also one of the most fearless. In the 25 years or so years that I have known Marie she was invariably to be found on the front line of the world’s most dangerous conflicts, laughing off the very real risks she faced as though it was just another day in the office. Beirut, Gaza, Iraq, the Balkans, Sri Lanka - wherever there was trouble, you could guarantee that Marie would be in the thick of it.

An American journalist who made her name writing for British newspapers, Marie was in many respects the Martha Gellhorn of her day. During a highly distinguished career at the Sunday Times she duly scooped up a clutch of awards for her tenacious reporting, which brought home to the outside world what was really happening in the world’s most dangerous war zones.

But despite her formidable bravery - which cost her an eye in Sri Lanka ten years ago - Marie never lost either her feminine charm or her wonderful sense of humour. Even in the darkest corners of places like Gaza and Beirut, I can still hear her making fun of our circumstances, livening our spirits while all around chaos and confusion ruled.

Perhaps the best tribute to Marie was penned by the woman herself in the recent address she gave at St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street – the hacks’ church – in memory of the 49 journalists who have been killed on assignment so far this century.

“Our mission,” said Marie, “is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice.” And that sense of mission has just cost a very brave and talented woman her life.

At a time when the culture, practice and ethics of the press are under scrutiny like never before, Marie’s death is a timely reminder of what journalism should be about, of how a journalist should conduct themselves, the very best of Fleet Street, the best that News International, so often maligned (including by us), has to offer; risking life and limb, she embodied the best of British journalism, bravely exposing the barbarity of tyranny, a bravery that cost her her life.

In Remembrance Week 2010, addressing the congregation on the critical importance of war reporting at St Bride’s church – the journalists’ church at which she will surely be remembered – she spoke graphically of the risks undertaken, the horrors witnessed, the carnage of conflict.

We leave you with her own words:

“I have been a war correspondent for most of my professional life. It has always been a hard calling. But the need for frontline, objective reporting has never been more compelling.

“Covering a war means going to places torn by chaos, destruction and death, and trying to bear witness. It means trying to find the truth in a sandstorm of propaganda when armies, tribes or terrorists clash. And yes, it means taking risks, not just for yourself but often for the people who work closely with you.

“Despite all the videos you see from the Ministry of Defence or the Pentagon, and all the sanitised language describing smart bombs and pinpoint strikes, the scene on the ground has remained remarkably the same for hundreds of years. Craters. Burned houses. Mutilated bodies. Women weeping for children and husbands. Men for their wives, mothers children.

“Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice. We always have to ask ourselves whether the level of risk is worth the story. What is bravery, and what is bravado?

“Journalists covering combat shoulder great responsibilities and face difficult choices. Sometimes they pay the ultimate price…

“War reporting has changed greatly in just the last few years. Now we go to war with a satellite phone, laptop, video camera and a flak jacket. I point my satellite phone to south southwest in Afghanistan, press a button and I have filed.

“In an age of 24/7 rolling news, blogs and Twitters, we are on constant call wherever we are. But war reporting is still essentially the same – someone has to go there and see what is happening. You can’t get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen.

“We do have that faith because we believe we do make a difference.

“And we could not make that difference - or begin to do our job - without the fixers, drivers and translators, who face the same risks and die in appalling numbers. Today we honour them as much as the front line journalists who have died in pursuit of the truth. They have kept the faith as we who remain must continue to do.”

Marie Colvin: 1957-2012

See also:

• Syria: There is no simple solution – George Irvin, February 15th 2012

• The World Outside Westminster: “If you do not help us, we will be killed” – Chris Tarquini, February 12th 2012

• Amidst the burning flesh of Homs, Syrians plead: “We are getting slaughtered, save us” – Shamik Das, February 7th 2012

• Anti-Assad activist: “We need help… We need a no-fly zone… ASAP” – Shamik Das, February 1st 2012

• Syria: When will the West act? – Shamik Das, January 2nd 2012

Rupert Murdoch has arrived at Wapping today, as he attempts to take control of the growing crisis that has engulfed the Sun and News International in Britain.

As Brian Cathcart writes in the Guardian, it’s been a bad month for the organisation, and a strange one for the press as a whole:

If you had told me just a few weeks ago that these five things would come to pass, I would have laughed in your face.

• The Sun would complain that the police are trying too hard and are being mean to crime suspects.

• Sun journalists would seek trade union help with legal action under the Human Rights Act.

• The Daily Mail would go to court to prevent the Leveson inquiry (and thus the public) from hearing information on the grounds that the source is anonymous.

• Rupert Murdoch’s News International would be accused – by journalists – of co-operating too vigorously with the police.

• Some national newspapers would argue, at least by implication, that corruption in public office, that staple of journalistic investigation and outrage, doesn’t really matter.

The hypocrisy of some members of the press – not just News International, since the Daily Mail came out to bat for ‘press freedom’ – is astounding.

As Matthew Norman shows in the Independent, even the line on something like dawn raids betrays a desire for special treatment above and beyond what can be defended in the name of press freedom:

Until recently as slavish a fuzz fan as Dominic [Mohan, Sun Editor], Trevor [Kavanagh] had an epiphany on Saturday when officers woke five colleagues, searched their homes, and invited them down the nick to help with their enquiries into the bribing of public officials such as their exceptional selves.

Or, as Trevor put it in his columnar cri de coeur, “needlessly dragged [them] from their beds in dawn raids“.

If it did sound absurdly melodramatic, so did the 2007 dawn raid on Harry Redknapp, when a Sun team was on hand to record his arrest in words and photos. If Trevor kept his disgust to himself then, doesn’t that make his courage in speaking out now all the more impressive?

The fact is, however, that despite their sudden conversion to the cause of human rights and newfound antipathy towards the police, the majority of Sun employees have far more to fear from inside the company than out.

On the one hand, Murdoch has told staff that he will launch the Sun on Sunday, a replacement for the disgraced News of the World, “very soon”; on the other, the chairman of the News International Staff Association is warning that:

Everyone is looking over their shoulder … The joke is if you get past 7am this Saturday we have jobs for another week.

One thing is clear. There will be more arrests, and Murdoch will have to deal with that fallout; how he does that is anyone’s guess.

See also:

• The Sun “tax avoiding” front page you won’t have seen this morning – Shamik Das, October 26th 2011

• What does Coulson have on Cameron and Murdoch? – Tom Rouse, August 23rd 2011

• Another Murdoch crony falls as The Sun gets dragged into scandal – Shamik Das, July 16th 2011

• Hypocrite Murdoch tells us how to vote yet avoids billions in tax – Claire French, July 11th 2011

• Murdoch’s boast he has “editorial control on major issues” could come back to haunt him – Kevin Meagher, July 6th 2011

Following the news that the credit ratings agency (CRA) Moody’s has put the UK on negative outlook, those of us who are concerned about the level of power these agencies wield suddenly have a number of new allies.

Some of them are really quite surprising indeed, including the City editor (since 2010) of the Daily Mail, Alex Brummer:

In 2009:

Clearly, the verdict of the credit rating agencies is critical. For many investors it is the only guide they have when making investments in sovereign debt or fixed rate instruments.

So they are vital to government funding and yield levels. The worse the rating the more the government has to pay for its borrowing.

And in 2012:

Instead of being in thrall to these faceless, self-appointed doom-mongers who present themselves as guardians of countries’ creditworthiness, the Government should look elsewhere for a more accurate barometer of our economic health.

No matter how questionably timed their new love of democratic accountability may be, the support of commentators like Brummer – and the Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner, who is railing against the “self-appointed lords of finance” – is appreciated. But what comes next?

Will they support the calls of the Party of European Socialists for regulation of the ratings agencies? Will they advise the chancellor to ignore the agencies’ advice to cut further and faster, and instead take up the cause of economic stimulus?

Or will they conveniently forget their big words next time they can make an appeal to authority to support their utterly discredited ideological economic program? Time will tell.

See also:

• Osborne’s austerity is failing at the one thing it’s supposed to do – Alex Hern, February 14th 2012

• Credit rating agencies weigh in on independent Scotland – Alex Hern, February 6th 2012

• European socialists call for regulation of the ratings agencies – Alex Hern, January 18th 2012

• No, Gideon, low gilt yields aren’t good news, and here’s why – Cormac Hollingsworth, November 16th 2011

• The current crisis: brought to you politician by inaction and unaccountable credit rating agencies – George Irvin, August 8th 2011

Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre made a rare public appearance yesterday, giving evidence at the Leveson inquiry into press ethics.

As well as defending the Mail to an inquiry which, he believes, presents “a very bleak and one-sided view” of the press in general and the Mail in particular, Dacre also moved to suggest a new system of press accreditation which only certifies the best journalists.

As the Mail itself reported on Dacre’s testimony:

Paul Dacre proposed a fresh system of accrediting journalists which could be the ‘essential kite mark’ to safeguard press standards.

He told the Leveson Inquiry that the present system of press cards was ‘haphazard’.

Those guilty of the most serious misconduct could have their press cards removed, in the same way as doctors are struck off. But all newspapers and accredited freelance agencies would have to sign up for the scheme.

This suggestion is similar to the proposal by then-shadow culture, media and sport secretary Ivan Lewis at last year’s Labour party conference that journalists “guilty of gross malpractice should be struck off”. At the time, the NUJ responded by saying:

It’s depressing to hear a Labour Party shadow minister call for the blacklisting of journalists.

As Dan Sabbagh of the Guardian wrote on the ideas:

If anybody else had proposed them, they would have been … well, dismissed almost immediately. But this is Paul Dacre, and if the Mail editor-in-chief has an idea, we all ought, at least, to take him seriously. Who knows, we might agree after all.

On other topics, Dacre found himself on the back foot.

He admitted that:

“The problem of paparazzi, that worries me – I think we need to try to look at that.”

However, Paul Dacre’s worries about the paparazzi culture seem to be at odds with Martin Clarke, the publisher of Mail Online, notorious for it’s ‘sidebar of shame’, reproduced to the right.

He also defended his use of the private investigator Steve Whittamore, convicted in 2005 of illegally accessing confidential records, saying that he only became aware of his use “some time about 2004, 2005-ish”, and that he “didn’t realise what they were doing was illegal.”

Lisa O’Carroll of the Guardian adds:

Asked whether he thought it was acceptable to get hold of a person’s “friends and family” telephone numbers, he said the information could have been obtained legally but Whittamore “was a quick and easy way to get that information”.

He said he would now accept there was a “prima facie case that Mr Whittamore could have been acting illegally” but he did not accept this as “evidence our journalists were actively behaving illegally”.

Dacre was also forceful in his defence of the Mail against Hugh Grant – too forceful, it turns out.

As O’Carroll reported:

He launched a robust defence of his decision to describe Grant’s evidence as “mendacious smears”, declaring that the actor’s claim that a story about him may have been sourced from phone hacking was damaging to his newspaper.

“If I had allowed it to stand it would have been devastating for our reputation and it needed rebutting instantly.”

Dacre repeatedly claimed that Grant had brought much of the attention he complained about upon himself. He said Grant “invaded his privacy with great proficiency” by frequently talking in public about private matters, including his desire to have a child.

In the last couple of hours, the news has broken that Dacre is to be recalled to the inquiry to discuss in greater detail the editor’s accusation, on oath, that Grant’s evidence was “mendacious”, and the Mail’s coverage of the birth of Grant’s child.

As the counsel for the victims, David Sherborne, pointed out, Dacre essentially accused Grant of perjury, and cannot be expected to leave without clarifying his comments.

We shall find out more when the extra session takes place this Thursday.

See also:

• Express owner: ‘Mail is Britain’s worst enemy’ – Alex Hern, January 12th 2012

• Ignore the Mail’s distortions, here’s what Goldsmith actually said – Shamik Das, December 6th 2011

• A three step guide to writing a Simon Heffer column – Alex Hern, November 8th 2011

• The Mail’s rent-a-rev called for gays to be tattooed with health warnings – Alex Hern, October 27th 2011

• Coogan: “If the Daily Mail went to the wall tomorrow I’d be delighted” – Shamik Das, October 13th 2011

• The Daily Mail’s poisonous lies must be fought by all trade unionists – Rick Coyle, September 23rd 2011

• How to write a Richard Littlejohn column – Dominic Browne, March 22nd 2011

• How to fake up a Daily Mail benefits story in five easy steps – Declan Gaffney, February 25th 2011

• The hateful Jan Moir: wrong on every level – Will Straw, October 16th 2009

The BBC Trust has announced that it is satisfied with the decision to censor the word Palestine from a freestyle performance by the rapper Mic Righteous.

In the show, which aired 11 February last year, Righteous rapped:

“I still have the same beliefs

“I can scream Free Palestine,

“Die for my pride still pray for peace,

“Still burn a fed for the brutality

“They spread over the world.”

The production team made the decision to put a sound effect, of glass smashing, over the word Palestine. You can listen to the whole performance here, or the offending section here.

In response to the original complaints, the BBC executive argued (pdf)

that BBC Radio 1Xtra and the BBC as a whole had a duty to be impartial. In this instance, the production team felt that Mic Righteous was expressing a political viewpoint which, if it had been aired in isolation, would have compromised impartiality.

The BBC’s guidelines on impartiality state:

The audience expects artists, writers and entertainers to have scope for individual expression in drama, entertainment and culture. The BBC is committed to offering it.

Where this covers matters of public policy, political or industrial controversy, or other “controversial subjects”, services should normally aim to reflect a broad range of the available perspectives over time.

Interestingly, the BBC apparently considers “scream Free Palestine” to be more of a controversial statement than “burn a fed”. The Trust has now released its adjudication of the matter, but in so doing has dodged the question.

They write:

The Committee agreed that it is for the Executive to decide what to include and what not to include in a broadcast, provided the result does not lead to a breach of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.

The Committee agreed that its duty was to assess whether the material as broadcast was likely to have been in breach of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines, in this case those relating to impartiality.

In other words, in response to complaints that the BBC was unfairly censoring an artist, the Trust has instead examined whether the finished program breached impartiality guidelines. Given the potential breach was never aired, the result of assessment was a foregone conclusion.

Amena Saleem, of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, argued:

“The BBC Trust has moved the goalposts and decided to look at the censored content that was broadcast in February and April 2011.

“And the Trustees have decided that the content from which the word ‘Palestine’ had been edited was not biased against Palestine. This level of manipulation and duplicity would not be out of place in Catch 22.“

The BBC needs to answer the real question; not whether the finished show was impartial, but whether it is acceptable policy to censor the word Palestine.

See also:

• Israel-Palestine in 2012 - Seph Brown, January 5th 2012

• Mitchell tells Israelis and Palestinians: “Get in the room, sit down and negotiate” - Shamik Das, October 18th 2011

• Palestine UN bid: Without courage, the cause of moderates will be lost - Sara Ibrahim, September 21st 2011

• Inside the “We believe in Israel” conference - Seph Brown, May 16th 2011

• Palestine Papers revelations shed new light on peace process - Seph Brown, January 24th 2011

An Irish newspaper has been caught out blatantly smearing a pair of Polish migrants to the country.

The Irish Independent published an article purporting to quote an interview the couple, Magda and Robert, gave to the Polish Gazeta paper, but a comparison with the original reveals that the quotes were, at best incompetently and at worst maliciously, butchered in translation.

The Independent reports that:

‘Magda’ (36), not her real name, described her life on the dole in Donegal as a ‘Hawaiian massage’…

Magda doesn’t identify the town in Co Donegal where she lives but she does call it a “s***hole”…

“Sometimes I sleep till noon and the nearest beach is five minutes away”…

[Robert] in turn bragged about the county’s wonderful golf courses.

In fact, as a commenter on the social news site Reddit picked up, the original report suggests a different story. Rather than describing her life as a Hawaiian massage, Magda is actually doing a course in massage therapy, developing a skill which she is exchanging for services [all quotes via Google translate]:

Now I have an appointment with a carpenter, that I will make a bookshelf, and I will massage his back, because the boy has problems with the spine.

Rather than simply calling the town she lives in a “s***hole”, she says:

Donegal, a county on the northern tip of Ireland, for some the most beautiful place in the world, but for others – the biggest shithole. Wherever you look carefully, green hills and beaches to the horizon, like a postcard.

On the other hand you can go to the beach for an hour and meet one old woman in [a macintosh].

On sleeping:

Day start is always the same: go to the beach to see the sunrise. It charges me for the rest of the day. Once, I slept until noon, now pity that life.

And as for golf, it is mentioned twice in the piece. Once by the author, and once by Magda herself:

On weekends, the middle class come here to play golf, and it attracts tourists in summer.

Hardly bragging.

Little wonder that the Polish ambassador to Ireland has written to the paper, saying:

The danger of an anti-immigrant atmosphere developing during harsh economic times is well-documented throughout history. I would hope that a major newspaper such as the Irish Independent would be conscious of this and take great care when fact-checking such a potentially inflammatory article.

See also:

• Net A8 migration down 88 per cent – Shamik Das, November 26th 2009

• Polish politician attempts to suppress film exposing country’s anti-Semitic issues – Lidia Wieczorek, November 4th 2009

• Conservative party paranoia on Poland – Will Straw, November 11th 2009

• Five questions for Poland’s Chief Rabbi – Will Straw, October 29th 2009

• Griffin’s historical ignorance of Poland’s war role – Will Straw, October 20th 2009

The media hate campaign against Ed Miliband took a new low today as the Sunday Times commissioned a respected polling company to ask the public whether he was “too ugly” to be prime minister.

On Tuesday, John Humphrys was widely criticised for implying that Ed Miliband’s was “too ugly” to win an election during a Today programme interview with the Labour leader.

The Telegraph and Mail both described it as a “gaffe” while The Guardian’s media reporter Dan Sabbagh said Humphrys had “comprehensively lost his way” and that the “outrage would have lasted all day” if Miliband had been a woman.

Despite the backlash, the Sunday Times have stoked the fire by getting YouGov to ask the same question.

Disappointingly for Mr Miliband’s detractors, the paper reports (£):

Only one in 10 believes he is “too ugly”.

Tory MP, Louise Mensch, is among those to question the judgment of both newspaper and polling agency, and tweeted:

“Pity that a reputable polling firm agreed to ask the question, honestly.”

There’s a legitimate discussion to be had about leadership but we’re in trouble if the British media think personal appearance is fair game.

See also:

• “Nothing wrong” with the PCC code, thinks the head of the PCC – Alex Hern, November 14th 2011

• Sunday Times Editor: Newspapers take the PCC “very seriously” – Really??? – Shamik Das, November 1st 2011

• Rupert “page three” Murdoch’s ‘papal knighthood’ shames Catholic church – Daniel Elton, July 14th 2011

• The revolving door between News International and No. 10 – Liam R Thompson, October 28th 2010

• Murdoch press’s inaccuracies and half truths about Ed Miliband – Will Straw, September 26th 2010

Richard Desmond, the owner of the Daily Star and Daily Express, came out fighting at the Leveson inquiry today, and as ever, it was popcorn viewing.

When asked whether he considered his papers to be ethical, Desmond responded:

Ethical. I don’t know know what the word means. Perhaps you could explain what the word means, ethical?

When pressed, he explained that:

We don’t talk about ethics or morals because it’s a very fine line, and everyone’s ethics are different.

For the first half of his testimony, Desmond was mostly talking about his papers from a business point of view. When the discussion turned to his purchase of the papers, however, things got personal.

He says that when he bought Express Newspapers:

We were vilified, we were pilloried, we were attacked – the only thing I wasn’t accused of is murder…

The Mail were the worst, because they were upset that they hadn’t bought the Daily Express…

Without a trace of self-awareness, he concluded his train of thought by saying:

I think it’s Britain’s worst enemy, the Daily Mail. Their tone on everything is so negative.

Asked about Express Newspapers withdrawal from the PCC, Desmond explained his antipathy to the organisation:

To see the chairman of the PCC on BBC TV and vilify Peter Hill and Express Newspapers, that was the final straw. I felt it was a useless organisation run by people who wanted tea and buscuits, and phone hackers; it was run by people who wanted to destroy us.

Strangely, Desmond did not corroborate his editors claim that they left the PCC because it had failed to stop them lying.

Desmond’s witness statement (pdf) elaborates on some of his claims. On ethics:

22. I think that we are in a business to give readers/viewers what they want to read and watch and as long as it is legal that is what we aim to do. We do not talk about ethics or morals because it is a very fine line and everybody’s ethics are different. However, we do of course care about the title’s reputation and so we would not run a story if we thought it would damage that or seriously affect someone’s life.

On the editors’ code of practice:

I am aware that there is an Editors’ Code of Practice but I cannot say that I have read it or know the ins and outs of it. I do not consider that this is something which I need to know.

On checking sources:

20. The responsibility for checking the sources of information lies with the Editors in consultation, if necessary, with the legal team. The Editors no doubt ensure that their reporters satisfy them of the sources. This is not something that I am involved in. I will only get involved where I can add value.

Finally, back in the room, Desmond when he does believe he can add value to the editorial process:

Sometimes I tell them to change the colour of the top. I say, ‘it could be brighter.’

See also:

• Express editor: We left PCC because it failed to stop us lying -  Shamik Das, January 12th 2012

• Express and Mail fail the migration stats test - Sunder Katwala, August 26th 2011

• Express’s £1billion claim on immigrant housing is absurd - John Perry, August 18th 2011

• Daily Express indulges its EU madness. Again - Ben Fox, April 14th 2011

• Today’s Express, Mail, Sun and Telegraph all wrong on Incapacity Benefit - Declan Gaffney, February 11th 2011

The editor of the Daily Express today told the Leveson Inquiry the paper withdrew from the Press Complaints Commission because it failed to stop them publishing defamatory material about the McCanns.

Hugh Whittow said:

“Because of the McCanns I think that was a huge problem for us and I think they should have intervened… No one was intervening at all. Everybody had too much leeway, it just went on and on.”

When asked by Robert Jay QC whether he was seriously saying the Express left the PCC because it didn’t stop them printing defamatory articles, he repeated his extraordinary answer, adding:

“I don’t blame the PCC. I just think in hindsight they might have been able to intervene and perhaps this will reflect in the body that you set up.”

He was then quizzed on a number of seriously misleading front page headlines in the Express, including:

• “THREE QUARTERS OF BRITONS SAY QUIT EU NOW”; and

• “SALT BANNED IN CHIP SHOPS”

On the EU story, Full Fact concluded:

While it would be fair to assume that 75 per cent had expressed some scepticism of the EU by indicating in this poll that they would either vote to leave the EU or to renegotiate the terms of our membership, it isn’t true that three quarters support withdrawal.

In fact, when the terms of the referendum are reduced to a simple ‘in/out’ choice, just over half would vote to leave.

While on the ‘chippy salt ban shocker’, Roy Greenslade wrote:

“Salt shakers are being removed from fish and chip shops in a nanny state ruling on what we can eat” – that’s the intro to this splash in today’s Daily Express.

It continues:

“The petty diktat is supposed to be part of a healthy living drive to lower salt consumption which has been linked to high blood pressure.”

Hang on. Does that mean every fish and chip shop across the nation? No, two paragraphs on we discover it is an initiative by Stockport council.

Does it mean that shops are banned from placing salt shakers on their counters and tables?

No, but you have to read between the lines because it transpires that it is a voluntary scheme called “out of sight, out of mind”. And five Stockport shops have signed up for it.

Yet an Express editorial, headlined ‘A chip on their shoulders’, says: “For Stockport council to force food outlets to withdraw salt from view is daft”, adding:

“Any council official turning up at a fish and chip shop to check the ban is being enforced rigorously may run the risk of getting battered.”

But no official will be turning up – because it isn’t a ban, there is no “diktat”, there has been no “force”. In fact, it is not even a Stockport council decision.

Whittow returns to give evidence after lunch, at 2:00, while last up today is Richard Desmond, owner of the Express. You can watch all the action here.

See also:

• “Nothing wrong” with the PCC code, thinks the head of the PCC – Alex Hern, November 14th 2011

• Sunday Times Editor: Newspapers take the PCC “very seriously” – Really??? – Shamik Das, November 1st 2011

• What the Express is hiding about dirty Des’s not-so-generous charity lottery – Alex Hern, October 12th 2011

• Express and Mail fail the migration stats test – Sunder Katwala, August 26th 2011

• Daily Express indulges its EU madness. Again – Ben Fox, April 14th 2011

Jules Stenson, the former head of features at the News of the World, and Nick Davies, the Guardian journalist who is largely responsible for blowing open the phone hacking story, clashed in spectacular fashion last night on Newsnight.

The conversation was sparked by the recent revelation by the Guardian that they had inaccurately accused the News of the World of deleting the messages from Milly Dowler’s phone that led to her parents being given false hope.

Stenson attempted to use this fact as a basis to attack Nick Davies personally for “shoddy journalism”. The phrase ‘pot calling kettle black’ seems to understate the irony of the matter.

Speaking on the stage of the debate today, Stenson said:

“I’m not here to – I don’t believe that the News of the World was exonerated, has been exonerated. What we did was indefensible, not just to Milly but to all the victims of hacking. I’m not here to justify that in any way.

“What I am here to do is attack the shoddy journalism of the Guardian and the shoddy journalism of Nick. He said it was accepted by everyone that this happened – read his original copy, there’s no acceptance of it.

“There’s a statement from News International at the end saying “we’re looking into this”, News International at that time was a rabbit caught in headlights. They’d clearly been caught out misleading people with the one rogue reporter theory and they weren’t going to make that mistake again. They weren’t confirming anything to anyone!”

When asked by Paxman whether this changed anything about the News of the World, Stenson repeated:

“There’s a perfectly good argument that the News of the World should be closed down. I’m not here to defend the News of the World, I’m here to attack Nick’s journalism.”

Throughout much of the rest of the piece, Davies and Stenson repeatedly clashed over Stenson’s accusations of impropriety on the part of Davies and the Guardian Media Group, with Stenson again repeating:

“Look, I’m not here to justify [hacking]. I don’t think the News of the World has been exonerated, I think there’s every… Um, you can justify the closure of the paper even. I’m not here to do that. I’m here to talk about the Guardian getting facts wrong, and the Guardian misrepresenting popular newspapers.”

Stenson is a reporter who has, as Davies revealed, been intimately tied up with a private detective who has broken the law chasing stories, and he worked for a paper which was shut down in disgrace after revelations of endemic criminality. Most people in such a situation would not think that it was the best time attack others.

Davies’ closing statements summed it up:

“You’re still playing the same tabloid distortion game.

“We publish more than a hundred stories, which are confirmed in evidence gathered by the police and at parliamentary inquiries and the Leveson inquiry and civil actions, and you pick on two errors – one of them very significant in the Milly Dowler story, one of them really minor in the Gordon Brown story – and you distort the truth and try to pretend that that means that we’re guilty of shoddy journalism.

“The distortion and the hypocrisy are unbelievable. You should take a leaf out of Rupert Murdoch’s book, just stop, or else just go quiet. People don’t believe you anymore, we’re not going to be bullied by you anymore, we’ve had enough of you.”

You can watch a video of entire exchange below:

Underscoring Davies’ statements, today Lucy Panton, the former crime editor of News of the World, has been arrested in the ongoing investigation into payments to the police for stories.

The Guardian reports:

Officers from Operation Elveden said that a 37 year old woman was arrested at 6.15am on Thursday at an address in Surrey and is the seventh person held under Scotland Yard’s probe into allegations of payments to the police.

It is understood from sources that the person arrested was Lucy Panton, who was taken to a south London police station where she remains in custody.

Finally, today the Leveson inquiry has been hearing today from Daniel Sanderson, the News of the World reporter who wrote the Kate McCann diary story.

Speaking to the inquiry, Sanderson admitted:

“With hindsight, it was clearly the wrong decision to publish.”

At least some can show contrition.

See also:

• Leveson witnesses tell of the suicides caused by tabloid intrusion and lies – Shamik Das, November 25th 2011

• Tabloid hypocrisy shocker: “Aren’t those other papers nasty, with all that hacking?” – Alex Hern, November 22nd 2011

• Dowler solicitor: News Int acting “like Soviet Union… you think the KGB are following you” – Shamik Das, November 8th 2011

• Leveson Inquiry hears of the ethical rot of Fleet Street – Alex Hern, October 7th 2011

• The NUJ is the solution to the sickness at News International – Ruwan Subasinghe, October 6th 2011