Leveson Inquiry
The freedom to say ‘no’?
September 15th, 2012,
As journalists and other citizens in the UK await the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry, journalism lecturer Tony Harcup argues that a crucial freedom for journalists is the freedom to say ‘No’ to an unethical instruction. In this edited extract of a chapter in the book The Phone Hacking Scandal*, he explains why.
The More Things Change…? The Phone Hacking Scandal and Manufacturing Consent
August 2nd, 2011,
On the BBC website, Paul Mason, the regularly insightful Newsnight reporter, has attempted to understand the recent phone hacking scandal, and the broader political crises surrounding it, through a critique of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s famous Propaganda Model and their ideas concerning the manufacture of consent in the mainstream media. Mason’s summary of manufacturing [...]
Questions that Lord Leveson must address
July 29th, 2011,
THE phrase, “throwing out the baby with the bath water,” has been used several times lately about the proposed reform of press regulation. There seems to be a general belief, certainly among MPs, that the phone-hacking scandal resulted from the failure of current press regulation and that newspapers must therefore have new rules imposed on [...]
Thoughts from ‘an old hack’
July 27th, 2011,
In more recent years, I’ve had the persona of a respectable company director (MD of my own communications company, no less). I’ve given media advice to major institutions and key political figures. I served for quarter of a century in the middle ranks of the BBC and throughout my career I have stoutly defended the [...]
Donald Trelford comments on phone-hacking
July 13th, 2011,
TODAY’S Parliamentary debate about Rupert Murdoch – “hanging the Great Satan out to dry” was the way one writer put it – was the day of come-uppance that MPs have been eagerly awaiting ever since the newspapers shamed them over their expenses. It was pay-back time with a vengeance. The phone-hacking scandal has been a [...]
