Murdoch’s News UK received “private assurances” on policy before endorsing Keir Starmer

Rupert Murdoch family-owned News UK received “private assurances” that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party government would not carry out an inquiry into press standards, according to iNews. News UK-owned titles the Sun and the Sunday Times then endorsed Starmer, once they’d gotten assurances that Leveson 2 would not go ahead.

Leveson 2 is the would-be second part of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards. The first part was launched in 2011. That’s after Murdoch-owned and now defunct News of the World had been found to be hacking phones.

The second part would look further into the relationship between the press and the police to see if there’s complicity in transgressions.

Murdoch: “outrageous” lack of standards

The Leveson Inquiry found that the press, at times, does not uphold its responsibilities. It’s responsibilities were defined as “to respect the truth, to obey the law and to uphold the rights and liberties of individuals”. The now retired judge Brian Leveson wrote:

The evidence placed before the Inquiry has demonstrated, beyond any doubt, that there have been far too many occasions over the last decade and more (itself said to have been better than previous decades) when these responsibilities, on which the public so heavily rely, have simply been ignored.

There have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist. This has caused real hardship and, on occasion, wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people whose rights and liberties have been disdained.

This is not just the famous but ordinary members of the public, caught up in events (many of them, truly tragic) far larger than they could cope with but made much, much worse by press behaviour that, at times, can only be described as outrageous.

Leveson continued, stating that “there has been significant and reckless disregard for accuracy”. He sought to remedy this without “jeopardising” press freedom through an overreaching state.

Leveson was highly critical of the now defunct Press Complaints Commission (PCC). Ed Miliband called it a “toothless poodle”. Leveson said the PCC was made up of industry figures that aren’t really independent. He further said the complaints process lacked any enforceable means to address inaccurate reporting.

The press’s solution? “Another toothless poodle”

In response to the end of the PCC, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) was set up. This is the body that is still meant to be regulating the press today. Titles it regulates include the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, as well as Murdoch-owned titles the Sun and the Times.

But in 2019, the Media Standards Trust found that IPSO failed to uphold 25 out of the 38 recommendations from the Leveson Inquiry for a “genuinely independent and effective system” of regulation. IPSO’s board also contains many industry figures, an issue Leveson criticised in relation to the PCC.

On top of this, IPSO is funded by the very publishers it’s supposed to regulate, through the Regulatory Funding Company.

Brian Cathcart, former professor of journalism at Kingston University London, wrote:

IPSO is another toothless poodle, a deliberate and calculated fraud upon the public perpetrated by a tiny group of men responsible for wholesale wrongdoing and abuse of vulnerable people.

By contrast, IMPRESS, which regulates the Canary, follows the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry.

It’s worrying that Murdoch-owned News UK reportedly received Labour assurances that the press will not face further inquiry into its standards, before endorsing Starmer. Especially when the press did not put Leveson’s findings into practice through submitting to proper regulation.

Featured image via The Independent – YouTube and Sky News Australia – YouTube