Today's penultimate extract from The phone hacking scandal: journalism on trial* is taken from a chapter by former ITN chief executive Stewart Purvis .
He begins by looking back to the public seminars hosted by Lord Justice Leveson prior to the inquiry proper...
I have never seen so many newspaper editors gathered together in one place... It was very interesting how Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, and Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of The Sun, chose to respond... They both decided to attack the inquiry itself. Dacre criticised Lord Justice Leveson's team as a "panel of experts who – while honourable distinguished people – don't have the faintest clue how mass-selling newspapers operate".
He then moved on to their remit: "Am I alone in detecting the rank smells of hypocrisy and revenge in the political class's current moral indignation over a British press that dared to expose their greed and corruption?"
MacKenzie called it a "ludicrous inquiry"... and then went for the jugular, attacking Leveson's own professional reputation as a lawyer...
A few days later there was an unprecedented apology from MacKenzie in his column in the Mail for being 'disobliging' to Leveson. Maybe he and... Dacre realised their tactics had been over the top.
It is worth asking ourselves: what is the main problem for which Lord Justice Leveson and his panel of six assessors are trying to find the solution?
Is it the failure of the police to investigate properly a series of crimes? Or a failure of the system of self-regulation which the press jealously guards to itself?
I suspect that the view of the average citizen is that it sounds like a bit of both. But the view of these two editors... is that it is primarily the former not the latter...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/apr/04/leveson-inquiry-pauldacre?newsfeed=true
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