By Brian CathcartThe Society of Editors press awards were given out a few days ago and somehow the Daily Mail failed to pick up a prize for Hypocrite of the Year. Falsely accusing the late Ralph Miliband of a lack of patriotism (twice) while failing to mention the late Lord Rothermere’s Nazi leanings was surely something the Society should have recognised.Undeterred, the Mail has today boldly staked its claim for next year’s Hypocrite of the Year prize. Its leading article draws the morals of the Maria Miller affair and the double standards are breathtaking. Here are a few (Mail comment in italics):

‘Right up to the end, Maria Miller couldn’t bring herself to utter the word ‘sorry’. Indeed, she seemed unable to grasp that she had done anything seriously wrong.’

No newspaper in the country, of any size, has more difficulty saying sorry when it gets things wrong, and coincidentally no newspaper in the country gets things wrong more often, than the Mail. This is the paper that libelled the McCanns dozens of times but refused to say sorry. It employed the services of a convicted criminal specialising in acquiring personal data, but it didn’t say sorry. It is the most persistent breaker of the industry’s own code of practice, but it can’t say sorry. You might well conclude that the Daily Mail is ‘unable to grasp that it has done anything wrong’.

‘Instead, she [Miller] sought to portray herself as victim of a media witch-hunt, mounted in vengeance for her role in implementing Leveson and legalising gay marriage. How childish – and how deeply offensive.’

Again, there is no paper in the country, and probably no politician, more practised in the wiles of victimhood than the Daily Mail. One example: the Mail has been bleating for weeks about how hard it is for its honest reporters to cover crime because – supposedly thanks to Leveson – police whistleblowers are scared to come forward. Hypocritical rubbish.First, Leveson said police whistleblowing was ‘both legitimate and justified’. Second, the Mail is the paper which was so alarmed about the prospect of whistleblowing by its own journalists at the Leveson Inquiry that it went to court – citing the Human Rights Act which it claims to abhor – in a vain effort to prevent the judge hearing evidence submitted anonymously.

‘From the beginning of this sorry affair, our only concerns have been to report the facts and give voice to voters’ feelings of utter betrayal by the political class.’

Yet the Mail refuses to report the facts about the Royal Charter on press self-regulation – for example how it safeguards papers from political interference, or how it encourages and liberates investigative journalism. Similarly it refuses to report that IPSO, the PCC successor it favours, does not begin to do what the Leveson Report recommended. And of course the Mail does not report that its own readers – and the polls prove this – overwhelmingly favour an end to the press ‘marking their own homework’.

‘For all his many strengths, Mr Cameron is acquiring a reputation for poor judgment of people and ignoring advice, particularly from older heads.’

The Mail would presumably like him to accept advice from a 65-year old by the name of Paul Dacre.

‘Clearly, two other important steps must be taken to repair the breakdown of communication between rulers and ruled that we have seen these past seven days. Step one must be to impose independent regulation on MPs . . .’

The Daily Mail demands ‘independent regulation’ for others when it is fighting tooth and nail to block the most cautious and modest form of ‘independent regulation’ in its own industry – which has done far, far more harm than Maria Miller ever contrived to do. (As Leveson put it, newspapers were guilty of ‘wreaking havoc in the lives of innocent people’.) And then comes this:

‘. . . whose cosy standards committee (peppered with expenses cheats) closed ranks round one of its own’.

Does Paul Dacre have no shame? Does he think his readers are utter fools? He knows more about closing ranks to protect his own than anyone in the country. He chairs the Editors’ Code Committee in the discredited PCC system, sitting alongside other, lesser code-breaking ‘cheats’. He also sits on the Press Standards Board of Finance (PressBoF), which runs the PCC. This apparatus, just liked its planned IPSO replacement, is a permanent and formal exercise in closing ranks around wrongdoers, as the Leveson Report made clear.Hypocrisy of this kind is easy for the editors of big national newspapers, as Paul Dacre knows, because nobody with comparable access to mass communications will point out to the public that the editor is saying one thing and doing another.The other members of the cartel – the Sun, the Telegraph, the Times, the Telegraph, the Express, the Mirror – will ‘close ranks‘ to shield the editor from criticism. That is what they have their ‘cosy committees‘ for.And, if a reader writes in, and if the editor deigns to publish the letter (which is extremely unlikely), that letter will be buried at the back of the paper where no one will notice it.This is a double abuse of power: brazen hypocrisy followed by suppression of truth. And Mr Dacre and his friends like things that way. You might well conclude, ‘how childish – and how deeply offensive’.