Corruption in the Fourth Estate:: How the Guardian Exposed Phone Hacking and Reneged on Reform of Press Regulation

This chapter explores an important period in the Guardian’s history: the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press. For four years (2009–13) the Guardian fought first to expose criminality and corruption in the press that had infected the police and the world of politics, and second to secure meaningful reform of press regulation. For this it received considerable praise. Then, without explanation, it dropped the issue, and when Parliament implemented the Leveson recommendations on the regulation of the press, it refused to participate. The effect of this was to make the newspaper complicit in the very cover-up it had set out to expose. This chapter reviews the events and examines a range of possible factors, including professional/industry dynamics, the state/security context and the commercial/business backdrop, that might explain why the Guardian changed its mind about such a crucial debate.