The Guardian’s betrayal over Leveson part two

Leading media academics, including CAMRI staff, have written to the Guardian to express their concerns over the papers stance on Leveson part 2. The Guardian’s support for ending Leveson 2 has surprised many, and in the letter, which we reproduce in full below, the signatories stated “Your editorial…constitutes a fourfold betrayal. It betrays your own journalists, who, with Nick Davies leading the way, laboured bravely and brilliantly to expose criminality and wrongdoing at national newspapers.”

The letter in full:

Your editorial (The Guardian’s view on Leveson 2: look ahead, not behind, 2 March) constitutes a fourfold betrayal. It betrays your own journalists, who, with Nick Davies leading the way, laboured bravely and brilliantly to expose criminality and wrongdoing at national newspapers. It betrays the blameless and often vulnerable victims of those crimes, who were promised a full public inquiry, including the all-important Leveson part 2, but whom your editorial does not deem worthy of mention. And it betrays the public at large, including your readers, who, as Brian Leveson has pointed out, are entitled to know the true scale of what went wrong, how newspaper managements allowed it to happen and what lessons can be learned.

In endorsing the cancellation of Leveson 2 you place yourself on the side not only of this Conservative government but also of its close allies, the newspapers that perpetrated the crimes and the wrongdoing. And what is your rationale? That we should look forward rather than back – a logic that negates all accountability and one that is always favoured by the unscrupulous and the unethical.

This was unworthy of your newspaper’s great traditions of independence, of service to the public and of intellectual rigour. That is the fourth betrayal.

Signed:
Professor Steven Barnett University of Westminster
Professor Georgina Born University of Cambridge
Professor Brian Cathcart University of Kingston
Professor John Corner University of Leeds
Professor James Curran Goldsmiths, University of London
Professor David Deacon Loughborough University
Professor Bob Franklin Cardiff University
Professor Chris Frost Liverpool John Moores University
Professor Ivor Gaber University of Sussex
Professor Justin Lewis Cardiff University
Professor Sonia Livingstone London School of Economics
Professor Joni Lovenduski Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Graham Murdock Loughborough University
Professor Julian Petley Brunel University
Professor Angela Phillips Goldsmiths, University of London
Professor Greg Philo Glasgow University
Dr Justin Schlosberg Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Jean Seaton University of Westminster
Professor Jeanette Steemers Kings College, University of London
Dr Damian Tambini London School of Economics
Dr Einar Thorsen Bournemouth University

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