A former Daily Star reporter unleashed a highly critical assessment of Britain’s newspaper industry at the opening of the Leveson Inquiry today by saying it suffers from “ethical rot”.
Richard Peppiatt stood up in front of hundreds of the country’s biggest Press names to describe his experience of working for one of the national newspapers.
“Newspapers are in decline, and the job pool for journalists ever shrinking.
Those entering the industry can spend years working on a casual basis, lacking the security of an employment contract.
“Tabloid newsrooms are often bullying and aggressive environments, in which dissent is simply not tolerated. It is difficult to stand up and walk out the door with a mortgage to pay, knowing another opportunity is unlikely to be waiting beyond.”
But his account of life on a national newspaper was not echoed by top editors who questioned his experience.
The Mail on Sunday's Peter Wright said: "I take issue with Richard Peppiatt. There's always a tension with editors and reporters.
“If you are an editor you go home every night asking why your reporters don't come up with more stories. Reporters go home thinking 'I didn't make it work today and if I don't make it work tomorrow they are going to fire me'.
"You have to goad reporters, but you also have to rein them in. You never send a reporter out to prove something you send them out to see if something is true. The job of a reporter is to find out what is really going on."
The Leveson Inquiry was established in the wake of the hacking crisis to examine the newspaper industry.
Thursday’s session on the pressure journalists face included presentations from key players in the industry such as former News of the World editor Phil Hall who insisted pressure played no part in creating hacking.
"There was no pressure to achieve the unachievable. The pressure was to deliver a great campaigning newspaper.
"Some of our biggest stories - the Jeffrey Archer case, for example - delivered no increase in circulation. 'Yes, we broke big stories but it was not the be all and end all of the operation.''