Leveson Report To Be Published Next Week

Leveson Report To Be Published Next Week

Lord Justice Leveson will publish the findings of his inquiry into press standards and ethics on November 29.12:15pm UK, Thursday 22 November 2012 Lord Justice Leveson speaking during the inquiry
EmailThe report from the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics and standards will be released on Thursday November 29.

David Cameron set up the inquiry in July last year in response to revelations that the News of the World commissioned a private detective to hack murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone after she disappeared in 2002.

The first part, which started in September last year, looked at the culture, practices and ethics of the press in general and its final report will be published next Thursday, the inquiry has announced.

Inquiry chairman Lord Justice Leveson will publish the report, which is expected to include recommendations for the future regulation of the British press, at 1.30pm, followed by an "on-camera statement".

The report will be laid in both Houses of Parliament, the inquiry said, and will be available on its website once it has been laid in Parliament.

Lord Justice Leveson and his panel of advisors heard months of evidence - some explosive - from key figures including celebrities, lawyers, politicians and journalists.


Cameron, Brown, Osborne and Clegg were all witnesses at the inquiry

Formal evidence started on November 14, 2011, and, according to its website, the inquiry sat for a total of 88 days up to and including June 30 this year.

The final report will reveal Lord Justice Leveson's recommendations for the future regulation of the British press.

Leaked details of private letters that Lord Justice Leveson wrote to newspaper groups were said to have revealed stinging criticism, with one source telling The Guardian the chairman had thrown the "kitchen sink" at the press.

As debates over possible outcomes from the inquiry have raged in the run-up to the publication of its report, the Prime Minister has been urged not to impose statutory regulation on the press.

Editors of local papers covering his constituency, as well as those of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Labour leader Ed Miliband and Culture Secretary Maria Miller, all pleaded for the protection of a free press.

Mr Cameron has indicated he will implement any recommendations which are not "bonkers".


Sally Dowler, mother of missing teenager Milly, gave evidence

He, Mr Clegg and Mr Miliband this week told victims of press abuses, including Kate McCann and Chris Jefferies - who was caught up in coverage of the murder investigation of landscape architect Joanna Yeates - that they would "look favourably" on Lord Justice Leveson's proposals.

But there are believed to be differences within the Government over whether that should include putting the press under statutory controls.

Education Secretary Michael Gove recently took a swipe at Lord Justice Leveson this week by suggesting he needs "lessons in freedom of speech".

The second part of the inquiry, examining the extent of unlawful activities by journalists, cannot begin until detectives complete their investigation into alleged phone-hacking and corrupt payments to police, and any prosecutions have been concluded.

Several people face charges relating to the phone-hacking scandal, which involves three investigations: Operation Elveden, examining alleged bribery of public officials; Operation Weeting, which is looking at allegations of phone hacking; and Operation Tuleta, an inquiry into accusations of computer hacking and other privacy breaches.

Oh good, that should set Bennett off again.

bb1 wrote:Oh good, that should set Bennett off again.

AW, I wouldn't have posted it, if I'd known that, Bonny

Still, wont be long now before he gets his dues, will it? I wonder what Santa will bring him this year

looking forward to read here the Lord Justice Leveson's new recommendations for the future regulation of the British press.

My friends, this was taken from Sky News:

http://news.sky.com/story/1015002/leveson-report-to-be-published-next-week

Cameron now has the report:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2012/nov/28/cameron-leveson-report-pmqs-live

Ed Miliband
The Guardian, Sun 25 Nov 2012 22.00 GMT
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At the end of prime minister's questions last Wednesday, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and I went to meet some of the families, including the Dowlers and McCanns, whose lives have been damaged by sections of the press. These meetings were a timely reminder of why party leaders had come together in the public interest to set up the Leveson inquiry last year.
The families who gathered last week had all experienced a double trauma. First, terrible crimes or injustices affecting them or their loved ones. Then, unforgiveable intrusion and harassment by parts of the print media. Last week the question they all asked was whether we will keep the promise to stand up for them which we made at the start of this inquiry.
It is that promise which must be at the front of all our minds on Thursday, when Lord Justice Leveson publishes his report into a scandal not just of the press but also of police and politicians who failed to stand up for these families before. We need a new system to prevent the kind of harm caused by parts of the press from ever happening again. And we must do right by everybody who wants a free press able to scrutinise, argue with and challenge politicians and the powerful. In short, we need a press which can expose abuses of power without abusing its own.
Harriet Harman and I set out our proposals at the Leveson inquiry for independent regulation of the press, made possible by statute. This is emphatically not about government controlling what the press writes or influencing the political viewpoint of newspapers. Instead, it is about creating a new system providing independent protection and redress for citizens. Alongside that, we want to see important safeguards to ensure press freedom, such as a statutory public interest defence guaranteeing the rights of investigative journalism like that which exposed the MPs' expenses scandal.
The newspaper industry has set out alternative proposals which I believe reflect its genuine desire to find a new way forward. But its proposals still amount to self-regulation: a system in which the industry would retain significant control over key appointments, sanctions and funding. It would leave the press, despite all the scandals of the last few years, as the only major source of power in Britain trusted to regulate itself.
The question is, what system can command the confidence of the public? Fifteen months ago parliament decided to place much of the responsibility for answering that question on Leveson. He has taken thousands of hours of evidence in painstaking detail from politicians of all parties, the police, the press, experts, and – most importantly – the victims of this scandal. I do not know what he will recommend, but I do know that the victims have made clear to political leaders what our responsibilities must be in the days that follow publication of his report.
First, parliament set up this inquiry with the power to examine all the evidence and reach conclusions. We need to show confidence in this process, not try to invent a new one.
The prime minister was absolutely right when he said that if Leveson's recommendations were "bonkers", we could not be expected to go along with them. But it is equally right to state that if they are reasonable and proportionate, we should seek to implement them. From our meeting with the victims last week I know that rejection of the report will be seen as a clear breach of the promise we made to them. If parliament chooses a different course from that recommended there must be clearly demonstrated and very good reasons for doing so.
Second, parliament should decide promptly whether it wishes, in principle, to implement these recommendations. Then it should agree a swift timetable for doing so. It would be deeply damaging to allow this report to gather dust on the same shelf where you can already find the findings of three royal commissions, the two Calcutt inquiries and various other select committee investigations into the press since 1947. Killing the Leveson report by a drawn-out process would be an equal, if not greater, abdication of responsibility as an unreasonable rejection of its key recommendations.
Third, parliament must scrutinise any legislative proposals to ensure they are workable, particularly given the important issues of protecting press freedom. But that should not stop swift agreement being reached over the next steps for Leveson's proposals.
Fourth, I hope we can move forward to implement recommendations with the same degree of cross-party consensus that existed when we set up this inquiry in the first place. Indeed, I pay tribute to people from all parties – Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative – who have helped us get to this point and have demonstrated their determination to secure justice for the victims.
There are other issues, including media plurality and ownership, which we will want to discuss in the future. But what matters now is that parliament is not distracted from the responsibilities I have outlined here. There will be pressure from many sides for various reasons in the coming days. Political leaders will need to be strong in demonstrating the same commitment to the public interest that led to the inquiry itself.
As Cameron said at the Leveson inquiry: "If the families like the Dowlers feel this has really changed the way they would have been treated, we would have done our job properly." This is a once in a generation opportunity for change. We owe it to the victims – and to the country – to seize it.

Thank you, Pedro.

Meanwhile, from a journo trying to sound as if he knows Secret Stuff:

Mark Watts ‏@MarkWatts_1
Early word is that #Leveson report will say something tomorrow about News International, David Cameron and #McCann police review.

Surely not? I didn't think there would be a single word about NI, or anything they've been involved in? Knock me down with a feather, whoever would have foreseen something like that even being mentioned!

Oh, I've just seen who he is:

Mark Watts
@MarkWatts_1
Journalist, broadcaster and author. Editor-in-Chief of Exaro, the investigative website. Views are my own – except, perhaps, retweets.

One of the residents of 1, Fetter Lane, who was playing Pitchforkers' Delight yesterday.

Mark Watts ‏@MarkWatts_1
@missypuddleduck @veniviedivici And some behind-the-scenes strong-arm tactics by News International.
View conversation Reply Retweet Favorite
6h Mark Watts ‏@MarkWatts_1
@veniviedivici @exaronews @realhumptyb I cannot go into who was/not at key meeting yet, except to say: Coulson was not. He had quit by then.

Don't think much of the company he keeps.

Humpty Bumpty ‏@RealHumptyB
.@MarkWatts_1 Risky strategy if #Leveson roams into #McCann police review territory, presumably with view to blaming #brooks?

Isn't he the forker who wanted to kidnap one of the twins to force Kate McCann to 'talk'? I am not in the least impressed with Watts' twitterfriends.

you welcome bb1.

My friends, this was taken from The newstatesman:

http://www.newstatesman.com/staggers/2012/11/milibands-plan-looks-crazy-it-might-just-work