.

Recently, we’ve seen freedom of speech online in the spotlight, with Hugh Grant even saying on Newsnight he thought Twitter should be regulated. He later backtracked, realising no doubt this would align him with the Chinese approach to a basic human right.

However, there is an important point here. There is a continual stream of criminal cases arising from Twitter, with perhaps the most well known being the infamous Robin Hood airport incident.

The most recent have focused around the racial abuse aimed at footballers such as Fabrice Muamba and Anton Ferdinand.

In an ideal society, people should be able to speak freely about any topic on any medium, with society itself policing the output and people being judged accordingly.

However, over the course of time, clearly society hasn’t been able to go about this effectively, explaining why laws have developed around protected features such as race, disability, religion and sexual orientation.

John Stuart Mill believed freedom of speech should extend to the point where significant harm was done to others - which is where libel and defamation laws came in. The intention of these was perhaps noble, but not only did they fail to effectively provide legal discourse to those unable to fund a civil law suit, they also didn’t protect vulnerable people in the first place.

Instead, UK libel law resulted in a slew of super injunctions, protecting the very rich from being held to account in public. The most recent, involving environment secretary Caroline Spelman, was overturned this week when her son was banned from rugby for taking steroids.

Essentially, while members of the public find themselves instantly up in front of the courts for libellous or ‘menacing’ comments, the rich have been able to hide behind the UK’s archaic libel laws.

• Ashdown turns up heat on Clegg to abandon State snooping plans 12 Apr 2012

• Extension of State snooping cannot be allowed to happen on the Lib Dems’ watch 4 Apr 2012

• Truly sick: Student bailed after sending racist tweets about ill Muamba 19 Mar 2012

• You gotta fight, for the right, to tweeeeeeet 18 Nov 2011

• Labour must become the party of freedom 22 Oct 2011

Further questions must now also arise from the government’s intention to legislate to introduce a new ‘Snoopers Bill’ - their proposals will give them access to view the emails, texts, phone calls and internet usage of any member of the public, which has unsurprisingly resulted in significant opposition. This again could lead to further prosecutions of those issuing ‘menacing communications’, which if applied too rigidly could be a worrying development.

This is clearly a most unsatisfactory situation. Wholesale changes are required around libel rules - to bring the rich in line with others and to give greater protection to freedom of speech. The government must also look to abandon its Orwellian plans to snoop on people’s online and phone activity.

However, as I’ve previously advised politicians, every Tweet made is essentially a mini press release. This doesn’t mean they need to be mundane, but does mean thought and sensibility should be used each time. This is the position all users should look to, and doing so will help enhance a system of self-regulation, much reducing the need for criminal justice interventions.

Freedom of speech is one of the foundations of a democracy and must be protected as far as is reasonably possible. While the government must introduce some important reforms, internet users must stand up and be counted too.

.

Today, the Daily Mail has an excellent breakdown of what a young person will see when she receives her first tax breakdown next year. If the young person does as the Daily Mail hopes she will, she’ll sit down and work through what she’s happy to pay for and what she’s not.

But her reaction might surprise the Daily Mail and will have negative consequences for the Daily Mail’s readership.

Young people tend to support many of the benefits the Daily Mail unceasingly attacks, and she may well be happy to cover them herself. But she’s very likely to ask why am I paying for the following benefits: health, old age and sickness?

Between them, they cover £2,139 of her total tax bill of £5,418, and all of them are going to old people, a demographic matching that of Daily Mail readers!

Daily Mail readers will reply, but these are benefits we’ve earned.

“No you haven’t,” replies the young person, adding:

“When you were my age you had state subsidised house ownership with mortgage tax relief for most of your life, you had state subsidised free university education, you had enormous state benefits for paying into your pension over your lifetime, and your savings were protected because you had proper national insurance with unemployment benefit and disability living allowance if you got sick.

“I will have none of these benefits because of your newspaper’s campaigns. I’m afraid it’s too expensive for me to continue to support Daily Mail readers. After I’ve cut their state benefits, I’ll cut my tax bill by 40 percent and that will go a long way to paying off my student loans and buying a house.

“Sorry Grandma, sell your house, spend your pension, and if you then need income support we’ll have a think about it. And stop wasting your money on an expensive paper and go get job experience at Tesco’s.”

This complete collapse in solidarity between generations may seem unlikely but it’s something even David Willets has been warning us about. While in this parliament the biggest winners have been the old, they should not be certain this is permanent.

• Express owner: ‘Mail is Britain’s worst enemy’ 12 Jan 2012

• Coogan: “If the Daily Mail went to the wall tomorrow I’d be delighted” 13 Oct 2011

• Exposed: The Mail-inspired Dispatches hatchet job on Blair 26 Sep 2011

• Hurrah for the climate deniers: How the Daily Mail swallowed enviroscepticism whole 9 Jun 2011

• How to fake up a Daily Mail benefits story in five easy steps 25 Feb 2011

After the coalition’s tearing up of our compact with young people how long will the young tolerate the largest portion of government spending being given to the old? And when young people’s patience disappears, Daily Mail readers won’t escape the logic of their newspaper’s values.

On Left Foot Forward, we have long highlighted the appalling lack of coverage of women’s sport in the UK media, culminating in the all-male shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards in December.

Barely five per cent of all sports coverage is of women’s sport, a poor figure, made worse by the fact we’re just months away from a home Olympics, with many women tipped for gold – not household names, barely covered by the media, role models hidden from view by lack of exposure in the press, online, on radio and on TV.

The dearth of coverage was even raised in Parliament recently during Culture, Media, Sport and Olympics Questions, with Tory MP Tracey Crouch asking sports minister Hugh Robertson:

“Does he agree with me that while women’s sport accounts for only five per cent of all sports coverage the profile of sportswomen will remain so low that not only does it mean that talented athletes don’t make it onto award lists like BBC Sports Personality of the Year, but it makes many of our best role models totally anonymous, thus making it harder to inspire and encourage women and girls to participate in sport and physical activity?”

Today, however, to coincide with International Women’s Day, Women 2012, a new women’s sports channel, is being launched.

Women 2012 say:

Women’s sport gets about 2% of all sports media coverage in the UK – leaving women’s sport short-changed and presents a clear lack of healthy and active role models for women and girls to look to. Women’s sport is underfunded, under promoted and lacks availability at all levels…

This year, in the lead up to London 2012, we hope to give some focus, direction and exposure to the potential offered by women’s sport as a powerful motivator for women, a community driver, a rich vein for healthy exercise/wellbeing and confidence building and an exciting alternative to TV, computer games and reality shows.

We plan to raise the profile of many of our world-class sportswomen and get young girls more interested in sport by raising them up as role models.

A group of sports nuts have come together to make this happen. They range from young sports students to middle-aged mums and from current internationals to retired sportsman. Many already have considerable experience in specific women’s sports promotion, publishing and broadcasting. They bring together a wide range of skills, sports and experiences to cover women’s sports events.

The new website will be edited by Amy Carter, a former professional windsurfer and co-editor of Boards Magazine, and will have correspondents in cricket, fencing, football, gymnastics, hockey, sailing, snowsports, swimming and tennis.

At school, the gap between male and female participation has closed fast and is now minimal – the PE and Sport Survey 2009/10 (pdf) shows 77% of girls and 79% of boys played intra-school competitive sport, with 46% of girls and 52% of boys playing inter-school competitive sport – yet at professional level, the difference in participation is big, the difference in coverage enormous.

Today’s developments are of course welcome, and it is to be hoped that word gets out – but only when the mainstream press and broadcast media increase coverage of women’s sport from its pitiful levels will the imbalance have even begun to have been addressed.

See also:

• International Women’s Day: We can’t be complacent, there’s a lot still to do – Tasmia Akkas, March 8th 2012

• And the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2011 could have been… – Shamik Das, December 22nd 2011

• Sports minister: School sport “nothing to do with me… but the School Games are” – Shamik Das, December 15th 2011

• Why is there such little coverage of women’s sport? – Shamik Das, January 24th 2011

• Coalition’s aim for a “school sport revolution” in tatters after CSR – Shamik Das, October 24th 2010

As James Murdoch steps down as Executive Chairman of News International it should be remembered what happened on his watch. Not only is the full extent of phone hacking and corrupt practices involving the police coming to light, but the massive cover up that went with it.

It is worth revisiting Alex Hern’s fisking yesterday of News International’s ‘Only two bad apples’ defence back in 2009. James Murdoch was Executive Chairman at the time. The only question concerning James remains: Was he staggeringly incompetent in being unaware of the original crimes and the cover up, or was he complicit?

Following the flurry of revelations at the Leveson enquiry as to the extent of criminal behaviour at Rupert Murdoch’s News International, and his odd non-deninal denial, Left Foot Forward looked back to the corporation’s first denial of criminality, back when they may have hoped the whole thing would blow over.

With the benefit of hindsight, we wonder how they kept a straight face drafting it.

News International Statement on Guardian Article – 7/10/2009

From our own investigation, but more importantly that of the police, we can state with confidence that, apart from the matters referred to above, there is not and never has been evidence to support allegations that:

• News of the World journalists have accessed the voicemails of any individual.

• News of the World or its journalists have instructed private investigators or other third parties to access the voicemails of any individuals.

We know now that News of the World either hacked, or instructed investigators to hack, the voicemails of Charlotte Church, Sienna Miller, and Andy Gray; all three have since settled with News International.

Also hacked were 7/7 hero Paul Dadge; Shaun Russell, whose wife and daughter were killed in 1996; Sara Payne, mother of murdered child Sarah Payne; and police officer Dan Lichters.

And, of course, there was Rupert Murdoch’s “full and humble” apology for his paper hacking the voicemail of Milly Dowler.

• There was systemic corporate illegality by News International to suppress evidence.

As Nick Robinson reported when James Murdoch gave testimony to the DCMS select committee:

What Tom Watson and others have so doggedly revealed – [is] that News International suppressed significant evidence of widespread illegality for more than two years.

It goes without saying that had the police uncovered such evidence, charges would have been brought against other News of the World personnel.

In fact, “Investigators for London’s Metropolitan Police Service had evidence in 2006 that “hundreds” of victims had been targeted for possible phone hacking by the News of the World… Butofficers had other priorities and insufficient resources to pursue the matter as thoroughly as they could have.”

Not only have there been no such charges, but the police have not considered it necessary to arrest or question any other member of News of the World staff.

This, at least, was true at the time. Now, though, at least twelve ex-NotW staffers have been arrested.

Based on the above, we can state categorically in relation to the following allegations which have been made primarily by the Guardian and widely reported as fact by Sky News, BBC, ITN and others this week:

• It is untrue that officers found evidence of News Group staff, either themselves or using private investigators, hacking into “thousands” of mobile phones.

Maybe not, but by July 2011, the police had indeed found enough evidence to contact thousands of potential victims:

The Metropolitan Police’s deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who is leading the probe, said that only 170 of the almost 4,000 potential victims have been contacted. Officers are examining 3,870 names, along with 5,000 landline numbers and 4,000 mobiles, she told the Home Affairs Select Committee.

• It is untrue that apart from Goodman, officers found evidence that other members of News Group staff hacked into mobile phones or accessed individuals’ voicemails.

Officers may not have found evidence, but that may have been due to incompetence or over closeness  to News International, rather than lack of evidence.

As the Daily Telegraph reported on Friday:

The publisher of the News of the World has admitted for the first time that four of its journalists personally hacked phones using information supplied by the private detective Glenn Mulcaire.

Until now, the only reporter to have admitted hacking was Clive Goodman, the former royal editor who was jailed in 2007. But court papers released to The Daily Telegraph show that News Group Newspapers accepts that three other unnamed reporters at the now-defunct tabloid “intercepted voicemail messages using information provided by” Mulcaire.

• It is untrue that there is evidence that News Group reporters, or indeed anyone, hacked into the telephone voicemails of John Prescott.

Except he settled for £40,000.

• It is untrue that “Murdoch journalists” used private investigators to illegally hack into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including: tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills.

Leveson revealed that “The information seized by police from [a] private investigator [used by several newspapers] included documents with ex-directory telephone numbers and itemised phone bills,” and that “Glenn Mulcaire’s notes contained details of [Steve] Coogan’s girlfriends, his account number, his bank transactions and his pin number.”

• It is untrue that News Group reporters have hacked into telephone voicemail services of various footballers, politicians and celebrities named in reports this week.

News Group reporters knowingly used information that could only have come from hacked voicemails, which is why the paper had to settle with so many of them, rather than relying on their ‘one rotten apple’ defence.

• It is untrue that News of the World executives knowingly sanctioned payment for illegal phone intercepts.

The “For Neville” email shows that NotW executives either knowingly sanctioned payment for illegal intercepts of Gordon Taylor’s phone, or were unbelievably negligent for a group of people who are, in all other respects, extremely competent business people.

The Telegraph, reporting on evidence given to Leveson yesterday, revealed that:

News International’s “one rogue reporter” defence… was known to likely be false by at least three of the company’s most senior executives four years previously.

See also:

• What is the Murdoch test for shutting down a newspaper? - Alex Hern, February 27th 2012

• Dacre recalled to Leveson over Grant ‘mendacious’ claim - Alex Hern, February 7th 2012

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

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

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

The Sun has today launched its campaign against tax evasion, vilifying those, usually the very richest in society, whose scams cost the taxpayer a total of over £15 billion a year (pdf).

Hang on, sorry.

The Sun has today launched its campaign against benefit fraud, vilifying those, usually the very poorest in society, whose scams cost the taxpayer a total of over £1 billion a year (pdf).

Tom Newton Dunn, the paper’s political editor, writes:

THE SUN today calls on readers to help end the benefits frauds that cost the country a record £1.2 BILLION last year.

We urge Brits to shop the cheats stealing from honest taxpayers when the nation can least afford it.

Campaigning Iain Duncan Smith last night backed The Sun’s crusade to end the scandalous benefits fraud crippling the country…

The Sun’s first move is to hand over the evidence on Denise Knight, 44, who enjoyed a day on theme park white-knuckle rides despite claiming Disability Living Allowance for a bad back.

The Department for Work and Pensions will investigate whether the mum from Llangadog, Carmarthenshire — featured on our front page yesterday — is still entitled to her £50-a-week benefit.

The decision of the Sun to hone in on benefit fraud is an odd one. If, as they suggest, the £1.2 billion a year lost to deliberate fraud is ‘crippling the country’, then tax evasion, which costs the treasury over ten times that, must be outright killing it.

The annual fraud indicator (pdf) estimates a £15 billion loss through tax fraud – deliberate underpayment of taxes. And rather than their targets being people who are ill-placed to defend themselves against accusations, the archetypal tax evader is Conrad Black – rich, above the law, and with full knowledge of what they are doing.

But that’s the low end of the estimate. The Tax Justice Network reported that almost £70 billion were lost to what they call the ‘shadow economy’.

And when you count tax evasion – which includes everything from companies having PO box offices in the Cayman Islands to individuals, from leading businessmen to top-tier politicians, paying themselves as companies – the difference becomes staggering. The TJN estimate over £120 billion of taxes are undercollected through evasion and avoidance annually.

Of course, there may be a reason for their blind eye. As Left Foot Forward reported last year:

As far back as 1995, the Independent reported that in the previous ten years, Murdoch’s News International had paid “virtually no tax”.

While corporation tax was set at 33 per cent, NI paid £11.74m of its £979.4m profit - just 1.2 per cent.

As recently as 2009, News Corporation’s proprietor was being pursued by his homeland’s government after failing to pay the correct rate of corporation tax, both in Australia and the United States.

Earlier this year, Australian Capital Territory (ACT) treasury officials won a legal battle,which awarded them A$77m for avoided taxes and duties. The Guardian reported in 2005 that Murdoch’s family company was moved to Bermuda; the tax bill of A$1.2 billion had the potential to be avoided.

Of course, it may be Murdoch is unaware of his corporation’s tax-shy practice given how little he knows about other key operational issues at News International.

Update: We’d underestimated tax avoidance by £50 billion. Our graph is now even longer.

See also:

• The government’s got big plans for workfare – don’t expect them to back down easily – Izzy Koksal, February 27th 2012

• The DWP’s ‘scrounger’ rhetoric is causing real harm – Alex Hern, February 6th 2012

• Labour’s untenable position on social security and disability – Declan Gaffney, January 3rd 2012

• Tax isn’t taxing when you’re Goldman Sachs – Alex Hern, December 20th 2011

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

Following the flurry of revelations at the Leveson enquiry as to the extent of criminal behaviour at Rupert Murdoch’s News International, and his odd non-deninal denial, Left Foot Forward looked back to the corporation’s first denial of criminality, back when they may have hoped the whole thing would blow over.

With the benefit of hindsight, we wonder how they kept a straight face drafting it.

News International Statement on Guardian Article – 7/10/2009

From our own investigation, but more importantly that of the police, we can state with confidence that, apart from the matters referred to above, there is not and never has been evidence to support allegations that:

• News of the World journalists have accessed the voicemails of any individual.

• News of the World or its journalists have instructed private investigators or other third parties to access the voicemails of any individuals.

We know now that News of the World either hacked, or instructed investigators to hack, the voicemails of Charlotte Church, Sienna Miller, and Andy Gray; all three have since settled with News International.

Also hacked were 7/7 hero Paul Dadge; Shaun Russell, whose wife and daughter were killed in 1996; Sara Payne, mother of murdered child Sarah Payne; and police officer Dan Lichters.

And, of course, there was Rupert Murdoch’s “full and humble” apology for his paper hacking the voicemail of Milly Dowler.

• There was systemic corporate illegality by News International to suppress evidence.

As Nick Robinson reported when James Murdoch gave testimony to the DCMS select committee:

What Tom Watson and others have so doggedly revealed – [is] that News International suppressed significant evidence of widespread illegality for more than two years.

It goes without saying that had the police uncovered such evidence, charges would have been brought against other News of the World personnel.

In fact, “Investigators for London’s Metropolitan Police Service had evidence in 2006 that “hundreds” of victims had been targeted for possible phone hacking by the News of the World… But officers had other priorities and insufficient resources to pursue the matter as thoroughly as they could have.”

Not only have there been no such charges, but the police have not considered it necessary to arrest or question any other member of News of the World staff.

This, at least, was true at the time. Now, though, at least twelve ex-NotW staffers have been arrested.

Based on the above, we can state categorically in relation to the following allegations which have been made primarily by the Guardian and widely reported as fact by Sky News, BBC, ITN and others this week:

• It is untrue that officers found evidence of News Group staff, either themselves or using private investigators, hacking into “thousands” of mobile phones.

Maybe not, but by July 2011, the police had indeed found enough evidence to contact thousands of potential victims:

The Metropolitan Police’s deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, who is leading the probe, said that only 170 of the almost 4,000 potential victims have been contacted. Officers are examining 3,870 names, along with 5,000 landline numbers and 4,000 mobiles, she told the Home Affairs Select Committee.

• It is untrue that apart from Goodman, officers found evidence that other members of News Group staff hacked into mobile phones or accessed individuals’ voicemails.

Officers may not have found evidence, but that may have been due to incompetence or over closeness  to News International, rather than lack of evidence.

As the Daily Telegraph reported on Friday:

The publisher of the News of the World has admitted for the first time that four of its journalists personally hacked phones using information supplied by the private detective Glenn Mulcaire.

Until now, the only reporter to have admitted hacking was Clive Goodman, the former royal editor who was jailed in 2007. But court papers released to The Daily Telegraph show that News Group Newspapers accepts that three other unnamed reporters at the now-defunct tabloid “intercepted voicemail messages using information provided by” Mulcaire.

• It is untrue that there is evidence that News Group reporters, or indeed anyone, hacked into the telephone voicemails of John Prescott.

Except he settled for £40,000.

• It is untrue that “Murdoch journalists” used private investigators to illegally hack into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data, including: tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills.

Leveson revealed that “The information seized by police from [a] private investigator [used by several newspapers] included documents with ex-directory telephone numbers and itemised phone bills,” and that “Glenn Mulcaire’s notes contained details of [Steve] Coogan’s girlfriends, his account number, his bank transactions and his pin number.”

• It is untrue that News Group reporters have hacked into telephone voicemail services of various footballers, politicians and celebrities named in reports this week.

News Group reporters knowingly used information that could only have come from hacked voicemails, which is why the paper had to settle with so many of them, rather than relying on their ‘one rotten apple’ defence.

• It is untrue that News of the World executives knowingly sanctioned payment for illegal phone intercepts.

The “For Neville” email shows that NotW executives either knowingly sanctioned payment for illegal intercepts of Gordon Taylor’s phone, or were unbelievably negligent for a group of people who are, in all other respects, extremely competent business people.

The Telegraph, reporting on evidence given to Leveson yesterday, revealed that:

News International’s “one rogue reporter” defence… was known to likely be false by at least three of the company’s most senior executives four years previously.

See also:

• What is the Murdoch test for shutting down a newspaper? - Alex Hern, February 27th 2012

• Dacre recalled to Leveson over Grant ‘mendacious’ claim - Alex Hern, February 7th 2012

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

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

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

Sue Akers, a deputy assistant commissioner at the Met and the head of the investigation into illegal behaviour by journalists, revealed some astonishing evidence about the behaviour of reporters at the Sun today.

The Guardian reports on the evidence Akers gave to the Leveson inquiry:

One public official received more than £80,000 in total from the paper, currently edited by Dominic Mohan. Regular “retainers” were apparently being paid to police and others, with one Sun journalist drawing more than £150,000 over the years to pay off his sources.

“The cases we are investigating are not ones involving the odd drink, or meal, to police officers or other public officials,” [Akers] said. “Instead, these are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists.”

“A network of corrupted officials” was providing the Sun with stories that were mostly “salacious gossip”, she said.

“There appears to have been a culture at the Sun of illegal payments, and systems have been created to facilitate such payments whilst hiding the identity of the officials receiving the money.”

In response to the evidence, Rupert Murdoch has released a statement which, although couched in the language of denial, effectively amounts to a confirmation of the accusations:

As I’ve made very clear, we have vowed to do everything we can to get to the bottom of prior wrongdoings in order to set us on the right path for the future. That process is well underway. The practices Sue Akers described at the Leveson inquiry are ones of the past, and no longer exist at the Sun. We have already emerged a stronger company.

If Murdoch thinks this defence is all that is needed, it raises the question of why he hasn’t used it before. After all, the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voicemail happened at News of the World almost a decade before it came to light; and yet that was the incident which sparked the chain of events that led to the closure of the paper.

The Murdoch statement is little more than “sorry that happened; we won’t do it again”. Although this apology came quicker than it did when he said sorry to the Dowlers, the family’s solicitor’s words on that day are just as relevant now:

At the end of the day actions speak louder than words.

See also:

• Dacre recalled to Leveson over Grant ‘mendacious’ claim – Alex Hern, February 7th 2012

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

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

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

• Look Left – “Sorry” Murdoch brought down to Earth – Shamik Das, July 15th 2011

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: 1956-2012

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