:00:03. > :00:09.reports on a week that saw Mark Thompson, the BBC Director-General,
:00:09. > :00:15.and Lord Patten give evidence to the Inquiry.
:00:15. > :00:18.Favour of talking to editors and journalists... We made the wrong
:00:18. > :00:22.decision. We committed contempt of court. Probably the gravest
:00:22. > :00:32.editorial error that the PA has made in the whole time I have been
:00:32. > :00:35.
:00:36. > :00:40.For months, the failings of the press have been debated in here and
:00:40. > :00:43.reported on the web and on the television. Milly Dowler's parents
:00:43. > :00:50.talk about the moment they discovered their daughter's
:00:50. > :00:55.voicemail had been hacked. This week, a change of focus. As those
:00:56. > :01:01.broadcasters arrived here to face questions of their own. First up on
:01:01. > :01:07.day 29 news of the BBC investigation into its own affairs.
:01:07. > :01:13.You tell us in July of last year, when the hacking scandal broke, you
:01:13. > :01:19.decided to commission a review to see whether the BBC's procedures
:01:19. > :01:25.were robust and also to go further and to investigate whether amongst
:01:25. > :01:30.other things there was any evidence of hacking in the BBC? To get it
:01:30. > :01:35.out of the way - it is right, isn't it, that the review found no
:01:35. > :01:39.evidence that phones had been hacked by BBC staff? That is
:01:39. > :01:47.correct. No hacking didn't mean there would be no awkward questions.
:01:47. > :01:50.The BBC had spent in excess of �300,000 on private detectives over
:01:50. > :01:54.six-and-a-half years. On one occasion, a private investigator
:01:54. > :01:59.was used to discover the details of the owner of a vehicle from a
:01:59. > :02:05.numberplate? Then you go on to assert that was in the public
:02:05. > :02:11.interest. My first question is would you accept that in order to
:02:11. > :02:17.ascertain the details of the owner of a vehicle from a numberplate one
:02:17. > :02:24.has to involve illegal conduct because it requires getting
:02:24. > :02:29.confidential information from the DVLA? At the time this programme
:02:30. > :02:33.was some -- at the time - this programme was some years ago - at
:02:33. > :02:38.the time this investigation took place, there were many
:02:38. > :02:43.organisations which had access to the DVLA, including many private
:02:43. > :02:49.investigation companies had direct access to the DVL A-day that base.
:02:49. > :02:55.There were many different ways in which this information could be
:02:55. > :02:59.obtained. This organisation is used to criticism. It gets 240,000
:02:59. > :03:03.complaints every year. Many of the issues that come up don't have
:03:03. > :03:08.serious consequences. But some do. Like deceiving audiences in public
:03:08. > :03:12.votes, radio shows with fake competitions and a misleading
:03:12. > :03:16.preview tape for a documentary about the Queen. I believe that as
:03:16. > :03:21.quickly as possible, when you are clear that you or someone who has
:03:21. > :03:25.been working with you has made a mistake, as quickly as possible you
:03:25. > :03:28.should tell the public directly that you recognise that the BBC has
:03:28. > :03:33.made a mistake, and that we are sorry for letting them down and
:03:33. > :03:36.that we will do everything in our power to make sure that that kind
:03:36. > :03:40.of mistake doesn't happen again. That was the spirit of the way we
:03:40. > :03:44.responded both to the competitions and the Queen documentary. In the
:03:44. > :03:48.wake of those problems, the BBC has changed its rules, the Director-
:03:48. > :03:53.General said, but it didn't think the way it was regulated would work
:03:53. > :04:01.for newspapers. I think it is quite valuable in terms of plurality of
:04:01. > :04:06.media that the press are not as regulated and constrained as a
:04:06. > :04:09.broadcast media whose power is more, whose reach is broader and more
:04:09. > :04:14.immediate... Mark Thompson has spent his career in the broadcast
:04:14. > :04:18.media. The chairman of the BBC Trust has not. Lord Patten was once
:04:18. > :04:22.a Tory Minister, chairman of the Conservative Party, seen here
:04:22. > :04:31.campaigning in 1992, and the Governor of Hong Kong. So while he
:04:31. > :04:38.had advice for the BBC... I do have an instinct which is not borne out
:04:38. > :04:42.by a wealth of statistical evidence that we should learn to say sorry
:04:43. > :04:46.quicker. He also had stories to tell, like the one about his book
:04:46. > :04:51.on a less than placid relationship with the Chinese authorities in
:04:51. > :04:56.Hong Kong which was to have been printed by one of Rupert Murdoch's
:04:56. > :04:59.companies, HarperCollins. Murdoch took the view that
:04:59. > :05:04.publishing a book which was critical of the Chinese leadership
:05:04. > :05:10.would not improve his chances, so he instructed HarperCollins drop
:05:10. > :05:16.the book on the grounds that it was no good. Which plainly, there was
:05:16. > :05:19.much evidence to suggest that that wasn't the view of the main editor
:05:19. > :05:24.at HarperCollins. Although now a BBC Trust man, he was keen to
:05:24. > :05:30.balance that view. I wouldn't want anybody to think that I have a
:05:30. > :05:33.vendetta about Mr Murdoch. I think it is probably the case that there
:05:33. > :05:38.are some newspapers which still exist in this country because of
:05:38. > :05:45.him. But in general, politicians tended to regard newspaper bosses
:05:45. > :05:49.rather too highly. I think age of political parties and their leaders
:05:49. > :05:54.over the last 25 years have often demeaned themselves by the extent
:05:54. > :06:01.to which they have paid court on proprietors and editors. Of course,
:06:01. > :06:09.I am in favour of talking to editors and journalists but I'm not
:06:09. > :06:12.in favour of grovelling. I think that politicians have very often
:06:12. > :06:18.laboured under - I'm reminded of something I said by the documents
:06:18. > :06:22.you asked me to look at - I think that politicians have allowed
:06:22. > :06:29.themselves to be kidded by editors and proprietors that editors and
:06:29. > :06:33.proprietors determine the fate of politicians. More news about Milly
:06:33. > :06:37.Dowler's voice messages. A letter from Surrey Police to the committee
:06:37. > :06:41.of MPs says the News of the World did have recordings of her voice
:06:41. > :06:46.messages and the paper got hold of her phone number and the PIN number
:06:46. > :06:50.for that phone from school-children. On day 30, an argument that the
:06:50. > :06:55.press might not be too powerful but too weak with this anecdote from a
:06:55. > :07:01.former financial times reporter about a fiery encounter with a
:07:01. > :07:05.spin-doctor. It was 1996 and he was giving me a story about a new
:07:05. > :07:09.business initiative and literally dictating pretty much the story to
:07:09. > :07:13.me down the phone, you know, then Tony Blair will say this, this
:07:13. > :07:18.happened, this happened, and I just asked him a couple of questions
:07:18. > :07:22.like, "But didn't you say that last week? Doesn't this contradict
:07:22. > :07:25.something else?" To which I got the response to which I will always
:07:25. > :07:30.remember which is, "Shut up, take it down if you want more from where
:07:30. > :07:39.this came from in future." Westminster lobby journalists were
:07:39. > :07:44.extraordinarily pliant at the time. Then tales of the sort of
:07:44. > :07:54.journalism that was guaranteed coverage in some papers. This is in
:07:54. > :07:55.
:07:55. > :08:00.The Star. And there are many things you could say about this. So
:08:00. > :08:08.essentially it's Charlotte Church at 15. The commentary is important
:08:08. > :08:14.here. She's a big girl now. "Child singing sensation shows just how
:08:14. > :08:23.quickly she's grown up after she turned up at Hollywood bash looking
:08:23. > :08:27.chest swell." Clearly, an emphasis on a 15-year-old woman's, young
:08:27. > :08:32.woman's breasts. The inquiry heard those who objected to the way
:08:32. > :08:36.papers treated women were taking a risk like Clare Short who
:08:36. > :08:45.campaigned in the '80s against the topless photos on Page 3 of The Sun.
:08:45. > :08:53.What we have here is Clare Short's face was superimposed on to a Page
:08:53. > :09:00.3 model and the headline is "fat, jealous Clare brands Page 3 porn".
:09:00. > :09:06.They likened Clare Short to the back of a bus. And they told jokes
:09:06. > :09:12.about - well jokes in inverted commas - that making her in a Page
:09:12. > :09:16.3 Girl would be a Mission Impossible. Clearly, the sort of -
:09:16. > :09:22.if it wasn't their purpose, the effect has been to essentially
:09:22. > :09:27.close down free speech in relation to groups and individuals, feeling
:09:27. > :09:33.free to speak out and make a critique against these newspapers.
:09:33. > :09:38.The inquiry had already heard about one title running a series of anti-
:09:38. > :09:43.Muslim stories, the next witness gave some examples. Sometimes I
:09:43. > :09:46.come across some disturbing headlines which seem to us to be
:09:46. > :09:56.aimed at fermenting prejudice against Muslims, rather than
:09:56. > :09:56.
:09:56. > :10:02.reporting facts. Thank you. And in relation to that, in the briefing
:10:02. > :10:06.paper, although it is not in front of us now, you give some examples
:10:06. > :10:12.of headlines. Muslim schools ban our culture, Muslims tell us how to
:10:12. > :10:18.run our schools, Britain has 85 underlined Sharia courts and BBC
:10:18. > :10:26.put Muslims before you. Then to the way science was handled. It was a
:10:26. > :10:29.full page in the Sun. Breast cancer risk all over shops' shelves. What
:10:29. > :10:33.the story is saying that commonly- used chemicals that are all around
:10:33. > :10:36.us in products are linked to breast cancer. It is a classic example of
:10:36. > :10:41.an article that should not have been given this prominence or this
:10:41. > :10:44.headline. It was a very small study. It has several flaws in it. It was
:10:44. > :10:47.in a relatively obscure journal. It showed that traces of these
:10:48. > :10:53.chemicals are found in the breast tissue of women with breast cancer
:10:53. > :10:56.but it didn't test the breast tissue of women without breast
:10:56. > :10:59.cancer, healthy women. It didn't do a control. It is interesting the
:10:59. > :11:03.traces of these chemicals were found, many toxicologists would
:11:03. > :11:08.expect them to have been found. It is not terrifying and there is no
:11:08. > :11:12.evidence that the chemicals cause the cancer. Neither has there been
:11:12. > :11:17.any study ever before showing that these chemicals cause breast cancer.
:11:17. > :11:21.I am aware that three major cancer research charities wrote to The Sun
:11:21. > :11:25.about this. Broadsheets like the Financial Times are also at fault,
:11:25. > :11:30.she said, despite some fantastic Science Reporters, the problem
:11:30. > :11:36.was... That the disjuncture between the scientific community and your
:11:36. > :11:40.average newsroom is that within science extraordinary claims demand
:11:40. > :11:44.extraordinary evidence. Within a newsroom, I actually think it is
:11:44. > :11:49.the opposite. The more extraordinary, the more shocking,
:11:49. > :11:55.the more sensational, the more the rush to publish. The extraordinary
:11:55. > :12:00.coverage of Christopher Jefferies, an innocent man arrested during a
:12:01. > :12:04.murder inquiry saw eight papers pay him damages. The Mirror is
:12:04. > :12:08.appealing against the fine. One of its reporters offered a personal
:12:09. > :12:15.defence. As a reporter, I am happy with the way I conducted myself on
:12:15. > :12:20.this particular story. I tried to present as balanced an article as
:12:20. > :12:25.possible. And the decisions that are made at an editorial level are
:12:25. > :12:31.out of my hands. I can only advise my content desk as to which
:12:31. > :12:35.direction I feel the story is going. From the man who edited part of The
:12:35. > :12:39.Sun's coverage... I readily accept what we did publish was too strong
:12:39. > :12:46.but we attempted, I attempted with the lawyer, and the night lawyer
:12:46. > :12:49.when he came in, to try and strike a balance between what we could say
:12:49. > :12:52.and what would keep us the right side of the law. Obviously, those
:12:52. > :13:02.decisions were wrong. We made the wrong decision. We committed
:13:02. > :13:03.
:13:03. > :13:07.Since he was appointed he's brought more contempt of court cases than
:13:07. > :13:11.were brought in the previous ten years I believe. And he has
:13:11. > :13:15.certainly changed our attitude to how we report arrests and we have
:13:15. > :13:21.changed the culture of the paper on the back of the Jeffreys case. I
:13:21. > :13:27.know it's been described as a watershed moment but it genuinely
:13:27. > :13:31.is in our newsroom. On day 31 we heard from but weren't allowed to
:13:31. > :13:37.say Mazher Mahmood, the former News of the World "fake sheikh", who
:13:37. > :13:41.said he resigned after he tried to cover up a mistake he made in the
:13:42. > :13:47.story. He's since been reemployed by the paper. And a rail union boss
:13:47. > :13:51.who got a lift to work on a scooter when the London Underground was
:13:52. > :13:56.suspended. His commute made the news on Sunday. He's picked me up
:13:56. > :14:01.on waving to my young daughter upstairs in the bed room and I off
:14:01. > :14:06.to go to King's Cross station to attend a meeting in Newcastle with
:14:06. > :14:10.the regional council. It wasn't just the picture which mattered but
:14:10. > :14:14.how the newspaper managed to track down the identity of the owner of
:14:14. > :14:20.that scooter from its numberplate. The union first got an idea of what
:14:20. > :14:24.might have happened when there was a knock on the door of Bob Crow's
:14:24. > :14:29.assistant. Two police officers from the corruption unit asked did his
:14:29. > :14:33.scooter break down in the Wandsworth area of London. He
:14:33. > :14:39.categorically remembered he had never been to Wandsworth with his
:14:39. > :14:42.scooter. He said but your scooter broke down in Wandsworth? He said
:14:42. > :14:48.no, it never broke down in Wandsworth, all we can say is
:14:49. > :14:53.someone phoned up at this moment in time, the DVLA in Swansea on a
:14:53. > :14:58.particular date, which he gave to Mr Scott, and said your scooter is
:14:58. > :15:05.broken down and he wanted to know who the owner was. That information
:15:05. > :15:09.that they got from DVLA was then supplied to Mr Whitmore who then
:15:09. > :15:13.supplied it to the Daily Mail or Sunday mail and produced the
:15:13. > :15:21.article. No action was taken by the police against the newspaper as a
:15:21. > :15:26.result of obtaining that information. Steve Whitmore was
:15:26. > :15:33.later found guilty of data protection offences. Bob Crow was
:15:33. > :15:37.stopped on his way to work next to a bus during a tube strike.
:15:37. > :15:41.stories are just to humiliate you, to say you shouldn't be going on
:15:41. > :15:46.holiday and you shouldn't be going shopping and you shouldn't be
:15:46. > :15:50.having a private life in general, how dare you have a holiday?
:15:50. > :15:55.freelanceer for the Sunday Times even went through bins looking for
:15:55. > :16:00.inabout the union. Earlier on in this inquiry I heard an editor or
:16:00. > :16:07.deputy editor say they don't go on fishing trips for that newspaper.
:16:07. > :16:13.They don't go on fishing trips but they certainly go on bin trips
:16:13. > :16:19.because the man had his head in a bin like the character Top Cat. The
:16:19. > :16:23.information was obtained illegally to use against and slur the RMT.
:16:23. > :16:32.Online publishers were rather less reckless. This lawyer, journalist
:16:32. > :16:35.and blogger argued. When there was a great deal of excitement because
:16:35. > :16:43.superinjunctions were being broken on Twitter, and indeed somebody set
:16:43. > :16:47.Apple Twitter account which somehow some way managed to list 7 or 8
:16:47. > :16:52.superinjunctions with relevant details, yes that was taken forward
:16:52. > :16:55.by people on Twitter and it caused excitement. But how did that
:16:55. > :16:59.information get to social media in the first place. That relationship
:16:59. > :17:04.between traditional and new media wasn't always happy. I showed you
:17:04. > :17:09.before you started giving evidence that ert letter that the inquiry
:17:09. > :17:14.has received from the Times, from the editor Mr Harding dated 19th
:17:14. > :17:19.January this year. The letter followed a Times report confirming
:17:20. > :17:25.that one of the paper's journalists had hacked into an e-mail account.
:17:25. > :17:29.It said the journalist told his managers what happened and they
:17:29. > :17:34.insisted he used legitimate means. He said that's what he did to get a
:17:34. > :17:38.story it believed was in the public interest. The reporter was
:17:38. > :17:45.disciplined by David Allen Green said the court should interest been
:17:45. > :17:49.told when applying for an injunction to protect the blogger's
:17:49. > :17:54.privacy. At the time it wasn't key to the managers the role that the
:17:54. > :17:59.hacking had taken place. The Times said they weren't clear of the role,
:17:59. > :18:03.but they were sure that it had been above board. My concern is this
:18:03. > :18:08.should have been put before the court at the injunction application.
:18:09. > :18:13.The boss of a big press agency on which media outlets rely told the
:18:13. > :18:17.inquiry about an error in a court report which confused the
:18:17. > :18:21.identities of two men with the same men and the consequences that
:18:21. > :18:29.polled when it was published. Probably the gravest editorial
:18:29. > :18:36.error the PA has made in the whole time that I've been there. We wrote
:18:36. > :18:42.a story about the wrong person. As soon as it was drawn to our
:18:42. > :18:52.attention, we corrected it. Obviously apologised for it. I
:18:52. > :18:53.
:18:53. > :19:00.think in the subsequent settlement it was described as an honest
:19:00. > :19:06.mistake. The error was made by a journalist who had been covering
:19:06. > :19:14.courts for us for about 30 years. Was such a trusted and reliable
:19:14. > :19:20.member of staff that they trained junior reporters in the art of
:19:20. > :19:24.court reporting. The reporter concerned was so ashamed by what
:19:24. > :19:31.they had done that they resigned. Lord Justice Leveson's
:19:31. > :19:38.consideration of who should get special core participant status saw
:19:38. > :19:41.some unexpected faces. That's why subjectively I don't want to be
:19:41. > :19:48.subjective, I would prefer to be objective about my evidence as a
:19:48. > :19:53.witness. But as a core par tant victim... The music producer
:19:54. > :20:03.Jonathan King was jailed in 2001 for four indecent assaults and
:20:04. > :20:15.
:20:15. > :20:18.other offences. He wasn't granted There's been so much fever
:20:18. > :20:22.Ishaktivity over the past two years in relation to this with the
:20:22. > :20:27.various newspaper groups, with investigative journalists, with the
:20:27. > :20:32.books being written, with the campaigning groups, if the best
:20:32. > :20:39.that critics can do is to turn up further evidence of what was going
:20:39. > :20:43.on between 1999 and 2003 doesn't amount to much. He had a blunt
:20:43. > :20:47.response when News International's lawyer argued against extending
:20:47. > :20:54.data protection penalties for journalists. How much of a good
:20:54. > :21:03.deal do you guys want? You fought the, excuse me, Sir, for being
:21:03. > :21:11.heated about this, but you fought everyone to a standstill in 200 6-
:21:11. > :21:15.07, you can it again in 2009-10. You've got so much privileges and
:21:15. > :21:20.exemptions it is perfectly possible for journalists to do a decent job
:21:20. > :21:25.legally. Google's staff explained they would remove links from their
:21:25. > :21:30.searches if told sites defamed people or breached copyright. He
:21:30. > :21:36.said they had acted on complaints from a previous witness, Max Mosley.
:21:36. > :21:41.I can tell you in his case we've removed hundreds of URLs, another I
:21:41. > :21:46.agree that you referenced him going to the individual sites and trying
:21:46. > :21:51.to get them down. Because Google isn't the internet, taking it down
:21:51. > :21:56.out of our search results doesn't make it disappear. Facebook said
:21:56. > :21:59.its users include over half the 13- year-olds in the entire country,
:21:59. > :22:02.the sort of figures that newspapers can only dream about. But how did
:22:02. > :22:06.you make sure that many different people all behave themselves when
:22:06. > :22:11.they are online? So we have systems precise throw try and pick that up.
:22:11. > :22:15.We don't want those people on our platform. We don't want those
:22:15. > :22:20.identities on our platform. Yes there are some systems in place. We
:22:20. > :22:23.find the strongest protection is the community of users. We have an
:22:23. > :22:28.800 million-strong Neighbourhood Watch community of people who will
:22:28. > :22:33.happily report to us if they think someone has a fake identity or is
:22:33. > :22:42.acting strangely. The site acted on privacy or defamation complaints
:22:42. > :22:48.within two days, it says. This is a different right. Popbitch sends out
:22:48. > :22:54.a gossipy e-mail to 350,000 subscribers a week. Popbitch is an
:22:54. > :22:59.entertainment product. Therefore we are trying to do no more than poke
:22:59. > :23:04.fun at people in the world of celebrity. And how familiar was she
:23:04. > :23:08.with the press complaint commission code of practice? We take advice
:23:08. > :23:13.from media lawyers who have at times given us aspects of the code
:23:13. > :23:19.they think would be relevant to us. So you don't have it on your desk?
:23:19. > :23:24.I don't read it every day. Sorry? don't read it every day. Have you
:23:24. > :23:29.read it at all? From cover to cover no, but I've read the bits where we
:23:29. > :23:33.were told it is relevant to us. Lord Justice Leveson's brief is to
:23:33. > :23:36.examine the press, but what's the point of doing that if websites get