Under the editorship of Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail published a whole series of articles in the 2000’s containing private information without any “public interest” justifcation.  The articles speculated on the paternity of children, disclosed medical information, information about mental health crises, about individuals’ sexual orientation.  It was difficult to see how this information could have been obtained without breaking the law, without spying  on their targets.

Politicians promised that allegations of press misconduct would be fully investigated by Part 2 of the Leveson Inquiry.  They broke that promise and that inquiry was cancelled.

Subsequently, with no other available way of getting answers, a few brave victims of the Mail’s abusive reporting took the difficult and daunting step of initiating civil proceedings against the newspaper’s publisher. Hacked Off did not fund or work on these claims. But we wholeheartedly credit the bravery of those claimants who put themselves in the firing line of the national press, the most powerful unregulated and unaccountable industry in the country.

The Court case was not an investigation into the Mail’s investigative practices. The claimants were required to prove that information in 57 identified articles was obtained illegally.

They proved that the Mail paid over 3 million pounds to private investigators who used unlawful means to obtain information over this period. 

But the judge ruled that this was not sufficient to establish that the specific articles in question had been the result of illegal activity, saying that the fact that a journalist used unlawful means 50 times did not prove that the 51^st article was the result of illegal activity.

Other evidence was needed to rebut the journalists’ claims that the information in the article had been obtained lawfully. The claimants were unable to provide such evidence and the claims were rejected.

The Mail has not been exonerated.  The evidence that unlawful behavior took place at the publisher remains, and the need for the second part of the Leveson Inquiry to investigate this evidence is as strong as ever.

What's more, these claims did not even touch on the most salient point of all: however it was obtained, private medical information, information about sexual orientation or about the paternity of children should never have been be published.  A properly regulated press would respect the privacy of individuals. Yet the Mail, like all other national newspapers, remains outside any independent form of regulation. They are still controlling their own complaints handler.  They are marking their own homework.

That is the real scandal here, which was not even disputed in this litigation.

To people like Paul Dacre, and his colleagues at the Daily Mail and The Telegraph, press freedom means the freedom to publish falsehoods, disinformation and private information about anyone whose lives, they believe, will titillate their readers and sell them more newspapers.

At Hacked Off, we believe that Britain deserves a better press, where newspapers use their vast wealth and resources to investigate the corrupt and the powerful, and hold wrongdoing to account on behalf of us all.

We can only get there with independent and effective regulation.  That is self-regulation, but with a properframework of accountability.

Join us at Hacked Off to join the fight for a free and accountable press.