This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Media
Bryan Adams makes submission to phase two of Leveson Inquiry
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 1 March 2012
Phase two of the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics may lack the long list of celebrity guests that the first instalment boasted, but arguably the revelations coming out are much more significant, as the government initiated investigation explores the relationship between newspapers and the police.
This module, which began on Monday, may well uncover why the Metropolitan Police chose to turn a blind eye to all the phone hacking going on at the News Of The World, even once they were sitting on evidence about who at the now defunct Sunday tabloid had been involved. But it is also already throwing up all sorts of other allegations about the ways in which editors and journalists at the NOTW and its sister title The Sun worked with the police, allegedly accessing confidential information from officers for cash. The ramifications of these allegations are arguably much more significant than tabloid hacks listening into the voicemail messages of the rich and famous.
And while not as celeb-filled as phase one, Leveson Stage Two has already enjoyed a little bit of rock and pop courtesy of a written submission from one Bryan Adams. He tells the Inquiry how three years ago he contacted London police after being stalked by a woman near his Chelsea home. A few days later The Sun ran a news story about the alleged stalker. The rocker says that while he has no tangible proof, only his PA and the police had been told about the stalking problem, so he is convinced The Sun got the story from a dodgy copper.
In his written submission, Adams writes: “I was shocked to discover that news of the stalking was reported in The Sun. I had not consented to this information being made public and I was very annoyed that what I saw as a private issue was being reported without my knowledge or consent. Although I have no proof, and therefore it is of course speculation, I do not believe that there could be any other explanation [for that story appearing] than the fact that the source must have been someone related to my call to the police”.
He added: “I can see no public interest in this being reported. It was not even accurate – [it claimed] a panic alarm had been installed at my house [when one hadn’t been]. I do not see why the fact that I am a well-known musician should justify anyone leaking this story. I would much prefer it not to be known that I was stalked at my home in Chelsea. In my view it is no one else’s business and could create the risk of copycat crime. If information of this sort is to be released, it should be done so for proper public interest reasons, not to satisfy a desire for gossip”.
As the second and possibly more damning stage of Leveson swung into action, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp announced that Murdoch Junior, former record industry exec Jimmy Murdoch (yes people, the Jim-ster started out in the music industry), was relinquishing his role as Executive Chairman of the firm’s UK newspaper business, but that he would retain all his other News Corp posts, now operating from a New York base.
Although he took over at News International after the era of prolific phone hacking at the News Of The World, the subsequent cover up happened on Junior’s watch, which is arguably the bigger scandal. Though yesterday News Corp was doing what it could to spin the shift in James Murdoch’s responsibilities as being a logical career development, and not a desperate bit of damage limitation.
