Module One of the judge led Leveson inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the British press following the phone-hacking scandal at News of the World, took evidence in Module One of the relationship between the press and the public. The list of core participants, many of whom gave oral evidence at the inquiry for this module read like a roll-call from British public life, including celebrities such as the singer Charlotte Church and the actor Hugh Grant, as well as more private individuals affected deeply by press intrusion, including the McCann family and Christopher Jefferies, who was arrested in connection with the murder of Joanna Yates, and later released without charge. A number of politicians and police officers also gave evidence.
The organisation Inclusion London, along with 10 disabled peoples' organisations and individuals (including me and my friend and former colleague, the journalist John Pring), also submitted evidence to be considered in Module One - about the way in which the press writes about disabled people, particularly recently during the war on words regarding the reform of disability benefits. (The NUJ is also submitting evidence on this.)
We sat back and waited - hoping that at least one organisation would be called to give oral evidence about the effect that some inaccurate and unbalanced reporting of disability benefits was having on individual disabled people on the streets and in their homes. We were given to understand that it would either be dealt with in Module One or on Module Four on Regulation - or both. One organisation eventually contacted Leveson this week to see if there was any progress and was told that all our evidence had been considered - but was not considered important enough to deserve oral session. This is despite the evidence about the effect of such drip-feeding of lies, damn lies and statistics (a recent study has demonstrated that due to such reporting, the public now believes that between 50-75% of disability benefit claims are fraudulent, when the government's own figures estimate it as less than 1%)
Why? Why is it not important when disabled individuals are attacked in the street, partly because of pernicious stories put about by newspapers? Why is wheelchair user Peter Greener's experience of three months of harassment because his neighbour had once seen him walking and branded him a scrounger not important? I believe that journalists, including myself, have a responsibility to report accurately and, crucially, to contextualise. I believe that some journalists are over-hyping the extent of disability benefit fraud and are getting away with it while disabled people are paying the price.
I believe that Lord Justice Leveson, and his tax-payer funded inquiry, should do something about it. This inquiry should not merely hear the famous victims of newspaper harassment, or those who have become famous, unwillingly and in great pain, because of individual tragedy. This inquiry should also hear those silenced and fearful voices from a whole community which is trying to speak out - of the disabled victims who just make it into the local newspapers because they have been tipped out of their wheelchairs or shouted at in the street because of irresponsible newspaper reporting using the dangerous rhetoric of "scroungers" and other pernicious untruths. Leveson owes it to those individuals, who are not famous, who won't necessarily make the headlines, but who deserve justice, to hear their stories - to honour their pain, and to question those reporters who are, at least, partly responsible.
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There is also a case to answer for the failure of any of the press apart from Private Eye to undertake any investigative journalism, in the public interest, into the links between large insurance companies, government departments, university researchers and some professional organisations. Now, it could be that there's no story to uncover, but until it's investigated we won't know.
Some disabled people are dying and more are destitute as a result of abuse by neighbourhood bullies, egged on by unjustified stories of faking and scrounging, and by a welfare state that has effectively abandoned the moral principles of a civilised western society. Leveson may not be able to do everything, but current propaganda, which helps Government and causes huge suffering for disabled people, is a stain on this country's tradition of a free and responsible
You may be right, but if so, it's such a huge issue, it would need its own Inquiry. The remit Leveson has is broad, but the Inquiry is under considerable pressure to conclude relatively swiftly. Thus, the idea is to take a broad, generalised view of interaction between press and politicians, and only bring in specific details or instances where the evidence has already come out and the investigation been done.
The point here is: what can the Leveson Inquiry do about it? If it *had* listened to a your side of the story, what would Leveson be doing different to what he is doing now? He's not going to go near Parliamentary regulation of the press. Whatever happens, journalists will still be ostensibly free to write what they want. The only thing he is going to change is the power and ability the public have to demand recompense when journalists abuse that freedom (which, one would hope, will act as a deterrent to the abuse).
What I'm really saying is: this vital issue fits very neatly into the range of vital issues that the Inquiry as a whole is attempting to address. I find myself asking: what would a representative have said that would have changed the course the Inquiry is taking? Leveson is already determined to find a way to properly arm the public for future encounters with unfair, intrusive and biased articles. It will then be up to the public to use that power to let the press know they can't get away with hatemongering.
Leveson is supposed to be looking at press behaviour, to identify the places where it is out of control, and to recommend mechanisms for restoring that control. Unless he listens to the experience of disabled people, and the failings they identify in the way that the PCC operates, then he is failing the remit of the inquiry.
I've been working at the Leveson Inquiry, and was surprised to see the issues surrounding press treatment of women, Muslims and trans people shoehorned into a single day, while the celebrities were given weeks. I'd have preferred to see it the other way round.
Having said that, I think the general picture that is being formed at the Leveson Inquiry is far more helpful to the disabled community than you give it credit for. The major issues Leveson is grappling with - how to balance the freedom of the press against the freedom of the public not to be abused by the press, and how to give the public a means to take journalists to task when their reporting is unfair or intrusive - are ones that are to the benefit of minority groups and individuals alike. One has to critically ask, therefore, what the evidence of another group who have suffered general prejudice would add to this general picture.
(continued in my other post)
I would argue, therefore, that the Leveson Inquiry is NOT failing disabled people.
Don't get me wrong - I *would* definitely, myself, have preferred to hear evidence from disabled groups and other afflicted groups. But I can sympathise with the reasons why the focus has been on phone hacking, and I also think it's important to focus on how the Leveson Inquiry really is aiming to engage with the problem of abuse of journalistic freedom. As I say above, the real battle is going to be for the public, using whatever new system is in place post the Inquiry, to take newspapers to task for prejudiced attitudes.
I have every sympathy with those whose privacy was violated, but what about those who have are physically assaulted in the street for walking while disabled, who are repeated abused by total strangers as supposed benefit frauds, or are falsely reported to the National Benefit Fraud Hotline by people who are convinced that they are in the right, because their favourite tabloid tells them week in, week out that we're all at it. I've had all of these, and my disability is significantly worse as a result, so have many of my disabled friends, with similar results for their health and their ability to live and interact in the community as an equal. Isn't the destruction of the equality of a significant part of the population something Leveson should be looking at?
"Journalists would defend to the death their right to write stories about 'benefit scroungers', arguing that it is their basic human right to comment in the way they see fit, and that if people are harassed as a result it's a matter for the police."
Doesn't that raise significant issues about the dominant ethics of journalism, and isn't that precisely what Leveson is supposed to be looking at? Or is 'I didn't put the brick in his hand, I just told him to throw it?' an adequate defence in the eyes of journalists?
No, but the former is a less contentious matter. Surely you can see that? You and others here may believe the press collude in demonisation of the disabled and I, for one, am fairly sure you have a case to make.
But the phone hacking is cut and dried. No one is saying it didn't happen anymore. No one is denying it. That makes it evidence that hits harder, that an Inquiry can deliberate better in a minimum timeframe. If you were to have a proper hearing to address the treatment of disabled people in the press, there would be a serious, concentrated defence mounted, and it may well be that after hours of lawyers battling on public money, they conclude that your case is greatly exaggerated.
"Doesn't that raise significant issues about the dominant ethics of journalism, and isn't that precisely what Leveson is supposed to be looking at?"
Yes, and he already is. The question, again, is: what does the testimony of an additional group add to the overall picture?