Leveson inquiry: Alastair Campbell and Alec Owens give evidence - live
Full coverage as the former No 10 spin chief and ex-policeman appear at the inquiry into phone hacking and press standards
10.47am: Alastair Campbell's written witness statement has now been (officially) published.
10.40am: Most of our newspapers every single day are in breach of the Press Complaints Commission code of practice on accuracy, Campbell claims, mentioning the Sun and the Daily Mirror.
The Daily Mail is utterly the product of one newspaper, he says. Whatever goes in the paper is decided by Paul Dacre, the editor. Campbell claims that how is testimony is covered by the Daily Mail will have been decided by Dacre long before he took to the witness stand.
Campbell claims that papers blur the line between fact and conjecture so much that it is surely in breach of the PCC's code: "When they are taking a fact and using that to promote that agenda, and it turns out the fact is inaccurate ..."
10.37am: Campbell says that editors genuinely may not know that the law is being broken left, right and centre.
"Do they know? Do they ask where they came from? Do they always know?" Campbell says, adding that Paul Dacre cannot really be so sure to state that the Daily Mail has never published a story obtained by illicit methods on his watch. "Can he say that? Can he really know that? I don't think he can."
10.33am: We allow the public to hate or like these celebrities who want to be in magazines, Campbell says, but journalists think it forms a huge public service.
The first mention of Paul McMullan, whose extreme bravado yesterday will surely be referenced for a long time to come. Campbell says McMullan is "brutally honest" about what the public want, but that what newspapers cover is more multi-faceted than he suggested.
"There's no transparency about the jou! rnalisti c practices that they use to fill their papers," he says.
"The public out there are horrified by what they've heard in the last two weeks ... my argument this is not atypical. This is what happens to anybody who they decide is a major news commodity".
10.28am: Campbell says his own witness testimony "completely undestates the inhumanity" of the coverage of Milly Dowler and her parents.
Now talking about public figures on the scale of Princess Diana, Campbell says that some celebrities are so famous that you can newspapers feel they can write what they like about them.
Gerry and Kate McCann became "anything goes people" who were used by the media to fill a news gap, he says: "Someone who through no fault of their own becomes famous can be subject to the same inhumanity as [top celebrities]."
10.26am: Reporting rumours has been accelerated by political bloggers online, Campbell says.
He adds: "There's a danger that the pace of change is so fast that we're even getting left behind now in terms of how we're debating it."
Campbell says regulating journalism and the internet is a very difficult thing to do mentioning that the French government is looking at it but that it's worth thinking about.
10.20am: Back to Campbell. He is talking about the impact on newspapers of the advent of 24-hour-news, reality TV, celebrity magazines and increased commercial pressures.
Campbell says the cumulative effect has been to move "the whole of the media ... substantially downmarket".
There's not many journalists doing journalism "as a craft," he says, and that's had an effect on their "increasing reliance" on private detectives.
10.17am: We've got more on Bethany Usher, the 31-year-old former News of the World reporter believed to have been arrested this morning in Northumbria.
News International has declined to comment. Teesside University, where Usher is a senior lecturer in media a! nd journ alism, said: "It would be inappropriate to comment on any ongoing police investigation".
Her online biography reads:
"Bethany spent seven years working in the newspaper industry after reading English Literature and Language at the University of Leeds. She quickly progressed from a trainee reporter on the Sunderland Echo to Crime Reporter, after gaining top marks in her NCE senior journalist exams. Bethany then moved to Fleet Street and worked for two of Britain's leading Sunday newspapers. She worked her way up to Northern Editor and gained experience in multimedia journalism. Bethany has won four awards and was named Young Journalist of the Year in 2003."
Usher appears to be on Twitter at @bethanyusher.
10.15am: The freedom of the press that is being defended most loudly, Campbell says, has become a press "barely worth defending".
He says at the moment the press is "frankly putrid in many of its elements".
"A very very small number of people have changed the newspaper industry so they've now frankly besmirched the name of every journalist in the country."
10.12am: Lord Justice Leveson describes Campbell's evidence as "a formidable piece of work" and thanks him for putting it together.
Campbell says he was on the same journalism training scheme as our own Nick Davies. A contrast from Paul McMullan, who yesterday took much delight in pointing out he was on the same training scheme as Michael Gove.
10.10am: Alastair Campbell is on the witness stand. He is being questioned by Robert Jay QC.
Campbell on his leaked statement: "My concern was that my final statement had been leaked. It's clear that Mr Staines got hold of a draft."
He admits sending the draft to people in advance, including people in the media, but is confident that none of the people he sent it to would have leaked it to the Guido Fawkes blog! .
10.07am: Reports are filtering in that the 31-year-old woman arrested this morning is Bethany Usher, who worked at the News of the World in 2006 to 2007 in Manchester, according to Sky News reporter Martin Brunt.
10.03am: We're underway. The counsel for News International, Rhodri Davies QC, is asking Lord Justice Leveson to be able to ask Richard Thomas, the former information commissioner, questions in person tomorrow.
It would be the first time this has happened and highly significant. Davies is asking for 20-30 minutes of questioning time. Jonathan Caplan QC, counsel for Associated Newspapers, has just asked for the same.
Lord Justice Leveson is non-committal, saying in principle he's minded to allow it, but will return to it later today.
10.00am: Before we get underway, here's a short profile of Alastair Campbell, who is expected to be first on the stand:
Tony Blair's former director of communications has criticised newspapers for spinning stories more effectively than any publicist could. A former journalist at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Today, Campbell was on first name terms with nearly every Fleet Street editor during his time at No 10. He wrote on his blog last week that he was "giving his evidence considerable thought". Much of that thinking is likely to be about Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, of whom Campbell has been critical of late. He wrote on his blog in July, after David Cameron had announced the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, that Dacre "will be a central figure in any public inquiry into the standards and practices of the modern press, because the Mail's influence has been so strong upon the rest of the media". Of the press generally, Campbell wrote: "One of the reasons they are in the mess they are in is that they believe the standards by ! which th ey judge others should not apply to themselves."
9.55am: Today Lisa O'Carroll and Stephen Bates are at the Royal Courts of Justice. You can follow Lisa on Twitter at @lisaocarroll, where she has just tweeted (almost symbolically): "Fleet street closed because of strike. Nice start". Stephen Bates is on Twitter at @StephenBatesESQ.
Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) will be tweeting from the office, and Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) is on the live blog.
9.53am: Guido Fawkes has tweeted:
First question Alastair Campbell should be asked by Leveson: "Did you leak your witness statement to journalists?"
And:
Second question Alastair Campbell should be asked by Leveson "To how many journalists did you email your statement?"
9.44am: There appears to have been another significant development in Operation Tuleta, the police investigation into computer hacking by private investigators working for newspapers.
The Irish Independent reports that Hugh Orde was targeted by computer hackers while he was chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The allegation comes just 24 hours after the former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain was also warned that his computer may have been hacked.
9.39am: A! late ad dition to today's line up is Mark Lewis, solicitor for several alleged victims of phone hacking, who will give the second part of his evidence after first appearing last Wednesday.
Lewis is thought to have a second witness statement that is highly controversial. He was not able to complete his testimony last week after it was challenged by Jonathan Caplan QC, counsel for Associated Newspapers, and other barristers.
9.27am: Police investigating phone hacking at News International have arrested a 31-year-old woman in connection with conspiring to intercept internet communications.
The woman, who was arrested in Northumbria at 6.35am, becomes the 17th arrest by Operation Weeting.
Our full story is here.
9.25am: Welcome to day 10 of the Leveson inquiry. Today we'll hear from Tony Blair's former chief spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, and Alec Owens, the lead investigator at the information commissioner's office when it conducted Operation Motorman in 2003.
Campbell's testimony was at the heart of a minor constitutional crisis earlier this week after a draft version found its way onto Guido Fawkes' blog and Lord Justice Leveson ordered an immediate takedown. Paul Staines, the blogger behind the site, will explain himself tomorrow afternoon.
A former journalist at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Today, Campbell has criticised newspapers for spinning newspapers more effectively than any publicist could. He is expected to discuss relations with Fleet Street's most powerful editors, including Paul Dacre and Rebekah Brooks, during his evidence this morning.
Also up today is Alec ! Owens, a retired policeman with 30 years experience, who led the information commissioner's 2003 investigation into the use of illegally-obtained information by newspapers.
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