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Sally Broughton Micova

November 27th, 2012

How will the press cover Leveson?

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Sally Broughton Micova

November 27th, 2012

How will the press cover Leveson?

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

By Sally Broughton Micova and Damian Tambini

The Leveson Inquiry is scheduled to report on Thursday 29 November. Lord Justice Leveson will  read out an executive summary at 13:30. Journalists will not be allowed to ask him any questions, but they will get a chance to read the report in a locked room two hours before. The question is: how will they react? Will newspapers attempt to crush the report? Will they report fairly on any criticism of the press in the report?

The LSE Media Policy Project will be looking at these questions in the immediate aftermath of the report’s release:

  • LSE MPP has teamed up with Channel 4 News for a Google+ Hangout broadcast live online at 12:15 on Friday 30 November. Speakers such as Lara Fielden of the Reuters Institute, Des Freedman of Goldsmiths, Heather Blake of Reporters without Frontiers, LSE’s own Damian Tambini, Charlie Beckett and many more will be joining Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy to discuss their own and the press’s reactions to the Report.
  • The LSE MPP team will be analysing the press coverage of the Leveson Report, editorial reactions and social media responses in the first 48 hours following the release of the report. The finding from this analysis will be available on Monday 3 December.
  • LSE Polis Leveson Live Blog. For objective coverage that will assemble a variety of views from across mainstream press and other platforms on the day of the Lord Justice’s press conference and the Report’s release follow LSE’s Polis and their Leveson Live Blog. This is already active with background resources and regular updates.

Research into how newspaper covered the scandal that lead to the launch of the Inquiry in summer 2011, showed clear divisions among the papers in assigning blame. So at the start of the Inquiry there was already disagreement as to whether the problems of hacking and unethical behaviour were industry-wide or isolated to NotW. Nevertheless analysis of the editorial stances at the start of the Inquiry showed papers to be somewhat optimistic about the Inquiry and even reflective about the state of journalism and the need for reform.

LSE MPP has already published two Policy Briefs outlining some of the KEY POLICY ISSUES  raised by the Inquiry: media pluralism and press self-regulation.

Watch this space or follow us on Twitter @lsemediapolicy for links to the live Google+ Hangout broadcast and the results of our research on media coverage of the Leveson Report.

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Sally Broughton Micova

Posted In: Press Regulation

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