Why is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party reportedly agreeing not to introduce reforms to British media in exchange for the support of right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch?
Rupert Murdoch at his annual party at Spencer House, St James’s Place in London, on Thursday, June 22, 2023. (Victoria Jones / PA Images via Getty Images)
On Monday, July 22, iNews reported that the Sun and Sunday Times gave last-minute election endorsements to Labour following “private assurances” that Keir Starmer would not implement Part Two of the Leveson Inquiry to investigate criminality and relationships of corruption between the media and the police. While Hacked Off contest the iNews interpretation based on an interview with Lisa Nandy, the new culture secretary, it is certainly the case that Labour did not commit to Leveson Part Two in its manifesto.
Politicians and press are both quick to justify the lack of media regulation and further interrogation of the press based on the familiar argument that press freedom is paramount for a healthy democracy. But what does this really mean in the current context? It is worth a quick recap on the history of the Leveson Inquiry before jumping to the conclusion that dropping media reform supports democratic well-being.
In 2011, the News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch, stood accused of illegal, unethical behavior through the systematic phone hacking of politicians, members of the royal family, celebrities, and murder victims and their families. Murdoch subsequently closed down the News of the World, and several ex-editors and journalists found themselves under criminal investigation. Prime Minister David Cameron, publicly embarrassed by his employment of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his director of communications when Coulson was arrested in July 2011 for allegations of corruption and phone hacking, then called for an inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Brian Leveson to investigate the issue.
The reasons phone hacking took place are complex. Analyses point to the increasing entanglement of political and media elites as news coverage has taken on an ever-more-important role in policy-making and elections and (on the whole) fewer and fewer people vote; the failure of the Press Complaints Commission (the former newspaper industry watchdog) to uphold ethical standards and enable adequate self-regulation of journalists; and the decreasing profitability of newspapers with plummeting circulation and the migration of classified advertising to online sites. But one thing remains clear: the illegal practice of phone hacking did not have the primary motive of the press as fourth estate holding truth to power. Rather, in a thoroughly marketized and deregulated newspaper industry, the mission was to gain competitive advantage and increase newspaper sales through salacious and sensationalist stories.
Of course, newspapers are commercial entities. But news is no ordinary commodity — it offers the possibility of directing the public conversation and so holds a particular role in processes of information provision for electorates, and is of key relevance to politicians keen to convince voters of the benefits of their particular policy formulations.
After an inquiry lasting nearly a year and a half, Lord Justice Leveson delivered his recommendations in November 2012. The report discussed in detail how the newspaper industry had become too powerful and that meaningful reform was needed to restore public confidence in the press. Leveson was clear to emphasize that his recommendations were about enshrining press freedom and ensuring that any subsequent regulatory system was independent from government, albeit underpinned by statute. He also had to satisfy the many victims of press abuse that his recommendations would bring about an independent regulatory system with teeth that could hold the industry to account when necessary while ensuring that the press could not “mark their own homework.”
The press industry objected with a simplistic response to so-called government interference in their workings. Invoking the language of free speech quickly became the default position of the press lobby. It claimed that ethical flaws should be dealt with via criminal investigations and not through regulation of the industry, which, it continues to insist, should remain “free” to effectively do as it pleases.
Nobody would dispute the freedom of the press to hold power to account, but this does not put the press itself beyond accountability. Freedom without accountability is simply the freedom of the powerful over the powerless, which is precisely what the press is still trying to preserve: freedom to print whatever it likes to steer the public conversation in the policy direction that suits its own vested interests and, in the process, and run roughshod over people’s lives, causing harm and distress for the sake of increased sales and revenue. Funnily enough, none of the mainstream press signed up to Impress, the new Leveson-compliant regulator (although over two hundred small independent publications now have).
Hackgate revealed the mechanisms of a system based on the corruption of power, one that displays many of the hallmarks of neoliberal practice. Rupert Murdoch and the news culture he helped to promote was part of this process in the UK that began with the defeat of the print unions at Wapping and continued with the lobby for extensive liberalization of media ownership regulation to enable an unprecedented global media empire to emerge.
And where did we end up? Hackgate enabled the naming and shaming of what many had believed to be the case for years. It exposed systematic invasions of privacy that wrecked lives on a daily basis. It revealed the lies and deceit of senior newspaper figures, and the wily entanglement and extensive associations of media and political elites: during the Leveson Inquiry it was found that a member of the Cabinet had met executives from Rupert Murdoch’s empire on average once every three days since the Coalition government had been formed. And we glimpsed a highly politicized and corrupt police force: Rebekah Brookes, chief executive officer of News International 2009–2011 and former editor of the News of the World and the Sun, admitted to paying police for information in a House of Commons Select Committee in 2003 but denied it in 2011. This was certainly a media freedom of sorts, but not one that was defending democracy. Small wonder that Murdoch doesn’t want Leveson Part Two back on the books.
We hear a lot about the diminishing power of the press through decreasing sales and digital abundance. Yet media moguls continue to exert huge power over our political processes while preventing any possibility of regulation to enable a healthy relationship between news media and democracy. If Starmer wants to rebuild trust in the political system, he needs to start with the relationship between media elites and political elites.
The elite, governing caste of leading political figures, PR gurus, journalists, editors, and media proprietors go to the same parties, attend each other’s weddings, are godfathers to each other’s children, and defend each other’s interests. In 2011, four consecutive prime ministers gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry noting that the relationship between media elites and political elites had become too close. Yet the practice continues: in 2018–19 representatives from the Murdoch empire met with the UK government three times every week while Parliament was sitting. In the twelve-month period from September 2022 to September 2023, 534 meetings were recorded between the press and government; 218 of these were between Murdoch interests and the government. This cozy establishment coterie that prioritizes private interests over the public good erodes any relationship between media and democracy and prevents actual social change from happening.
If Starmer, like so many before him, has fallen prey to the fear of press influence over electoral outcomes, he will have added to the longevity of the power of news corporations to defy the public interest whenever it suits them and sustained their role as part of an elite power complex. If he continues to bow down to the power of the press, he will miss the opportunity for media reform that could actually deliver a media that works for democracy, rather than one that uses its own naked assertions of power and entitlement to distort democratic practice, often bringing misery and pain to the powerless and continuing to ensure that corporate power reigns supreme.