Journalists from the Crime Reporters Association sought preferential treatment on police briefings over the Cumbria shootings, the Leveson Inquiry has heard.Anne Pickles, associate editor of the Carlisle News and Star, said her paper was consulted by the chief constable when CRA reporters asked for off-the-record briefings, following a murder spree by local man Derrick Bird.Bird shot and killed 12 people and injured 11 others before killing himself in June 2010.Pickles said her editor had reinforced the police’s decision that information should be made available to all media outlets at the same time. The police later briefed the local press on the 13 inquests into the incident to ensure coverage was sensitive to grieving families in the area.Gillian Shearer, head of marketing and communications for Cumbria Police, told the inquiry the national press had been “aggressive and very difficult to please” when approaching the press office for information after the tragedy.She added: “We took an informed view in regard to it and I also spoke to [then Chief Constable Craig Mackey] about what our decision was going to be.”Shearer said the press office had issued two statements to the media urging reporters not to harass family members who had been affected, but she had personally rung several journalists after they continued to use unauthorised photographs of the victims. The Cumbria force contacted the Press Complaints Commission, who said individuals would have to approach them before they could step in.She added: “It was very difficult and the families were forced into the public eye through no choice of their own.”Mackey, now deputy commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, told the inquiry families had been able to identify bodies shown on rolling news channels before they had been informed by police.He said: “The overwhelming feelings of much of the local community and the families is one of anger and dismay at the way they were perceived, they were treated, and the long-term presence of the media during this incident.”Pickles, who gave evidence with the Carlisle News and Star’s crime reporter Nick Griffiths, said the national media often “sweep in and out” of local communities when reporting on major incidents.She added: “We have to live with the people on whose lives we are reporting.”Griffiths told the inquiry he had a face-to-face meeting at the police station every morning to gather news for the day, and submitted all expenses to the editor to be authorised. He said he would accept pints of beer from officers at social events “out of politeness” but would not discuss work.He said: “I’m not there saying “give me a list of all the drug busts yore going to do in the next three weeks.”Pickles added: “I don’t see what purpose can be served by a police officer filling in a form every time he or she speaks to a journalist... I don’t know why the rogue miscreants weren’t just dealt with existing law and without having to hall the rest of the industry over the coals for it.“The stain from what has happened to trigger this inquiry and a number of reports tends to spread across all sections of the media... We’ve had ‘I’ve been watching the Leveson Inquiry, I know how you people work’.”Lord Justice Leveson replied: “I can only say to those who telephone your office and say ‘well we know what you’re like’, it’s far more nuanced than that.”Mackey told the inquiry new interim media guidelines under consultation at the Met would be signed off in April this year. He advocated a system where meetings and the general purpose of contact is logged, and said all management board meetings with press should be published online.He added: “It’s easier to bring the bar back down than it is to raise the bar at a later stage, so I do think it’s almost inevitable, given the coverage of what’s been going on."