In her analysis of national newspaper editorials covering the Leveson Inquiry, LSE Media Policy Project intern Noelle De Guzman finds the press appear to be speaking with a more unified voice.
High-profile witnesses took up the most space in newspapers’ editorials on the Leveson Inquiry in May. Testimonies from Andrew Coulson, Rebekah Brooks and, more recently, Jeremy Hunt and Tony Blair, elicited the lengthiest remarks from the UK mainstream press, most notably The Guardian, The Independent, and the Daily Telegraph.
Newspapers kicked the month off with polarised views on the Culture Committee’s verdict that Murdoch is unfit to run his global empire. The Guardian, in a piece entitled, “Rupert Murdoch: failing the fitness test,” observed that the decision could only make things worse for the media mogul—a sentiment echoed by The Independent’s Martin Hickman, who also noted that the MPs’ decision has set a high benchmark for Lord Justice Leveson’s upcoming report. However, in a simultaneously published leading article, “A verdict undermined by a split in the ranks,” The Independent argued that it was beyond the MPs’ remit to make such a pronouncement. The Times opposed the finding altogether by stressing Murdoch’s contributions to the UK media landscape in its leading piece, “Error of Judgment,” which it released on the same day.
Mid-May saw the press shift their attention to the line-up of witnesses, as media personalities made more prominent by their alleged collusion with the political elite filed in to give evidence before Lord Justice Leveson. While The Guardian devoted two opinion pieces to former News of the World editor Andrew Coulson, questioning his ability to access sensitive state documents without having gone through proper clearance procedure, The Independent instead focussed its analyses on Rebekah Brooks as well as NewsCorp lobbyist Fred Michel. Having recapped in detail the volume of contact between Cameron’s coterie and News International, both papers came to the same conclusion: Jeremy Hunt must resign amidst fresh proof of his partiality to Murdoch’s BskyB bid. The Telegraph, which in an earlier piece called for all ministerial exchanges with News International to be made public, instead took a bird’s eye view of the whole episode, commenting, in the article, “A shabby saga that has real consequences,” that the Conservative leadership’s close ties with the Murdoch empire could sully the UK’s reputation as a law-abiding host to global businesses.
By the last week of May, however, editors appeared to be singing the same tune: Following Tony Blair’s appearance at the Inquiry, the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent agreed that he had gotten off the witness stand largely unscathed, with Robert Jay failing to scrutinise him on his administration’s ties with Rupert Murdoch. That UK tabloids, which had been withholding their views on Leveson since the start of the month, released two leading articles—one by the Daily Mail and the other by The Mirror–echoing this sentiment shows that this was a largely common view among UK newspapers. Indeed, it was on this issue alone that the Inquiry itself received its few disapproving remarks from mainstream newspaper editors.
The 31 staff-written opinion pieces on Leveson in May, which had doubled in number from March this year, show heightened interest by the press on the Inquiry just as it draws to a close. More importantly, however, UK newspapers appear to be speaking with a more unified voice about the issues at hand, making the Leveson Inquiry the main subject of editorial scrutiny rather than a peripheral reference to other current events, as it had largely been earlier this year.
*Based on a key word defined sample of staff authored editorials in the following newspapers for the months shown: the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, and the Mirror.
