ABSTRACT
Instigated following the notorious phone hacking scandal of the mid 2000s, the Leveson Inquiry was the largest and most significant public investigation ever to have examined journalism in the UK. Its remit ranged over the ‘culture, ethics and practices’ of the British media, particularly the press and news gathering organizations, with a particular focus on whether the existing regulatory regime had failed. It was set up in 2011, chaired by Lord Justice Leveson, who listened to evidence from 337 witnesses and also took statements from 300 other organizations or individuals. The scope and scale of the Inquiry was unprecedented, and it was also unique in having been live streamed over the Internet – such was the assumed public interest. The Report was published in November 2012.
The Inquiry’s hearings looked in turn at media relations with the public, the police, and politicians. As well as hearing testimony from myriad public figures from the worlds of entertainment, media, and politics, it also took evidence from Sally Dowler (mother of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler whose phone was hacked) and Kate and Gerry McCann, parents of the missing child Madeleine McCann. Significantly, a number of feminist organizations also gave evidence to the Inquiry including Anna van Heeswijk (Object), Jacqui Hunt (Equality Now), Heather Harvey (Eaves), and Marai Larasi (End Violence Against Women). The Inquiry came at a moment in which there was an upsurge of activism among feminists, much of it centered on media representations (e.g., Page 3 and lads’ mags). Considering the unusual prominence of feminist organizations in the Inquiry, our aim in this chapter is to look critically at how feminist evidence was ‘heard,’ and at the variety of different examples of sexism within the Inquiry itself – practiced through humor, ‘heritage,’ ‘chivalry,’ and other means. We aim to explore how difficult it was for a feminist political critique to be formulated and taken up within the terms of the Inquiry in which (for example) political objections would routinely be recast in moral terms. The chapter will offer one of the first feminist analyses of the Leveson Inquiry, with implications for thinking about gender, news, and journalism today. Second, by focusing on the ‘micropolitics’ of interaction, using a discourse analytic approach, it will illuminate how feminist politics is both done and undone in formal public settings.
