Much of the focus of the Leveson inquiry today has been on Richard Desmond, his Express and Star newspapers, and his decision to pull them out of the PCC.

Daily Express editor Hugh Whittow backed the decision partly because the watchdog failed to “intervene” during wild tabloid coverage of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.

It may have smacked of passing the buck – Desmond’s papers paid the McCanns £500,000 in damages for libel – but Whittow said: “Everyone had too much leeway. There was nobody intervening at all. As a result, the story carried on and on and on.”

The main reason for  leaving, however, was because the PCC’s method of resolving disputes originally worked on the understanding that complainant’s would not take legal action, a practice that was “abandoned” according to former editor Peter Hill.

Hill denied being “obsessed” with the McCanns – an accusation levelled at him by a former Express journalist – saying it was a “story that you couldn’t ignore”.

But he admitted that the paper struggled to verify stories coming out of Portugal. “We did the best that we would, which was not very much. I’m not saying it was nothing but it was not very much.”

Daily Star editor Dawn Neesom expressed regret over her paper’s coverage of the same topic, and rejected suggestions that the paper operated with an anti-Muslim bias.

Desmond was himself questioned towards the end of the day, and confessed that he never talked to any of his editors about ethics. “Ethical, I don’t know what the word means,” he said.

He said the inquiry was the worst thing to happen to newspapers during his lifetime and that he would not be buying anymore because it was such a “tough, tough, tough business”.

He relaunched his attack on the Daily Mail, sneakily calling it the “Daily Malicious” and declaring it “Britain’s worst enemy”.

Desmond appeared not to be playing for sympathy when he spoke about the McCanns when apologising for the coverage, before adding “etc etc etc”. He felt his papers were made scapegoats while “everyone was doing it”, and said the McCanns were “quite happy as I understand it in articles being run about their poor daughter. It was only when new lawyers came along who were working on contingency…”

Finishing up by branding the PCC a “useless body run by people who want tea and biscuits”, there was a clear hint that the Leveson inquiry wasn’t something he was willing to take seriously. What would Desmond replace the PCC with? Why, the “RCD” – Richard Clive Desmond.

(Sources: Press Gazette, New Statesman)

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