This has been published as a response to this month’s Progress editorial – Time to stop blaming the media

Margaret Beckett, in Labour’s election post-mortem, Learning the lessons from defeat, suggests – unsurprisingly – that the party’s principled support for the Leveson Inquiry may have been a factor in the negative coverage Ed Miliband received before last May. Although she notes, ‘Even before he courageously took on the public concerns that led to the Leveson enquiry, elements in the news media seemed determined to try to destroy him’.

In response, in a Progress editorial this month – Time to stop blaming the media – Richard Angell wrote: ‘If you do not like what the press is writing, do not reach for Leveson – make better stories’.

Whether Labour could be doing a better job of achieving better press coverage is, of course, a crucial question. But let us be clear about two things. Firstly, if anyone in the party is indeed ‘reaching for Leveson’ as a remedy, they are profoundly mistaken about his conclusions and recommendations.

Second, May’s election defeat was not because of Labour’s support for Leveson: it was in spite of it, and down to far more fundamental things, with the financial crash, its 2010 defeat and the fall-out from the Scottish referendum still echoing.

On the first point, the implication that a post-Leveson media landscape might somehow be more sympathetic to the left is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Neither his terms of reference nor recommendations were aimed at political partisanship and so would not prevent editorial bias.

Certainly, it is true that under its sham, new regulator the Independent Press Standards Organisation much of the press frequently gets away with untruths and distortion. Leveson’s recommendations would remedy this by requiring front-page corrections for front-page code-breaches and proper investigations into standards when there is profound wrongdoing. There would also be access to meaningful forms of redress for individuals and groups affected by inaccuracy, hit with discrimination and subject to unjustifiable intrusion.

These are vital, democratic reforms in the interests of personal and social justice. But none would make the Daily Mail read more like the Morning Star, and no-one who has worked on this issue believes that Leveson’s reforms will rescue it from hostile coverage.

On the second point, that support for Leveson weakened Miliband’s appeal to voters, the truth is the opposite. Indeed, evidence shows that voters saw straight through it: in a YouGov poll, 70 per cent of the public said it was unreasonable for Miliband to be attacked on account of his support for Leveson. Furthermore, a net +16 per cent said that his stance on proper, independent self-regulation gave him more respect. So while support for Leveson might have added to negative coverage, the public were not fooled: they knew the press had an agenda and rejected it.

Miliband’s position was wholly in tune with the electorate. Polls have consistently found that 70-80 per cent of the public support Leveson’s recommendations for an independent, accountable body – the Press Recognition Panel – to make sure newspaper self-regulators are doing their job properly. Have there been many other issues on which we have had such a convincing lead over the Tories? The poll tax, perhaps?

At Westminster, it was savvy, too. By no means all of the Conservative party oppose Leveson. Splits were opened up in the post-2010 coalition, with the Liberal Democrats distinctly in favour.

Meanwhile, Miliband’s stance on the corrosive relationship between newspaper executives and politicians marked him out as the only leader with the courage to confront powerful media groups and their ruling barons.

No-one should be under any illusions that “reaching for Leveson” will rescue Labour from biased coverage in much of the popular press. But rarely does a policy issue command such overwhelming public support. When we are united and David Cameron appears prepared to betray promises to the victims of press malpractice, Labour remains right to take a strong stance for the future.

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Paul Farrelly MP is member of parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme and member of the culture, media and sport select committee. Nathan Sparkes is policy and parliamentary manager for Hacked Off

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