Brief personal thread on the role of #Leveson2 and some rather offbeat observations on why it's so important.
1. I got involved in this saga about 7 years ago having written about monopoly problems on my home turf - TV drama. I had little antipathy or feelings about the British press at that point. I just accepted privacy intrusion and obvious bias as a 'state of nature'
2. At that point I thought phone hacking was something that affected a few celebs. As for 'press regulation' - the words struck me as an ideal cure for insomnia or prophylactic on a date. Then came Leveson, the phone hacking trial, Daniel Morgan and my eyes were opened.
3. The rampant criminality, corruption and political influence of the major newspapers (and that really does go well beyond Murdoch) has completely astonished me. But even more so their inability to come to terms with their criminal past.
4. While Britain is suffering a serious deficit in investigative journalism, with lone wolves like @carolecadwalla or @ameliagentleman leading the pack, most the press has used the last 7 years to cut journos, keep op ed columnists like Gove and Johnson, and double down
5. Vast amounts of their remaining energy, depleted by the crash of ad revenues, has been devoted to trolling those who revealed their crimes. A team of six journos spent a year trying to dig up dirt on Max Mosely. At @Byline_Media we get threats or investigations every week
6. Meanwhile, the whole newspaper industry (and that includes the Guardian in this regard) has expended millions of pounds and their last shreds of credibility in a Westminster lobbying operation to prevent more exposures and Leveson 2.
7. There's one good reason for this. Most the malefactors are still in power. Rebekah Brooks is back at News UK, and most the senior editors in the press today have their own sorry stories of overseeing/wilfully not seeing massive law breaking and personal intrusion
8. So today's press, rather than holding power to account, is run by a tiny handful of people trying to protect their own reputations. This isn't public interest. This isn't journalism. It's censorship and will to power, sacrificing all principles on the way.
9. By avoiding the truth, and doing everything to stop others exposing past corruption, this narrow coterie of bad faith actors are dragging down the whole industry, and - because they care about ONE thing - the country with them.
10. It's such a crazy, reactive, short term strategy. I almost feel sorry for them. The readership is leaving in droves. MPs are less scared of them. And eventually truth will out. Just like @JohnFordBlagger, too many were involved in the crimes to shut them up forever.
11. So my last thought is to appeal to all those who, swayed by the culture and norms of a feral industry, still have some regard for truth. Let's just get it out there and done with. Truth and transparency and then we can reconcile and move on.
12. Paul Dacre, Rebekah Brooks, Piers Morgan - they're fading. They were never journalists anyway, but ideologues and moral blackmailers. Look to the future. Fess up. Be a whistleblower. People will forgive. But fight the light and you will be forever condemned to darkness
