Tag: Tom Watson

Leveson hears from old contact

Martin Salter MP
Martin Salter MP (Photo credit: stopaidscampaign)

I was interested to the read latest from the Leveson Inquiry, which touched on how an old contact Martin Salter was treated by the News of the World when he was my MP in Reading. My old paper the Reading Chronicle reported on his written evidence as part of Labour MP Tom Watson’s appearance at the hearing this week.

Mr Salter has said before that he believes he became an ‘enemy’ of the News of the World for publicly refusing to back its controversial ‘Sarah’s Law’ anti-paedophile campaign in 2000. I worked with Martin on a number of stories at around this time, and remember him explaining his reasons for not backing the campaign to name all convicted paedophiles, stating that it could endanger the children it is intended to protect by driving sex offenders underground.

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Links I like 11.11.18

Tom Watson reveals how the phone hacking scandal affected him – Express and Star
This local newspaper column was being shared across Twitter this morning. MP and ‘scourge of the tabloids’ Tom Watson writes in the Express and Star about the campaign against phone hacking which has played a huge part in exposing the problems at News International. This is Watson playing to his home crowd in the Midlands and setting out his case well. He admits to feeling as if he was ‘cracking up’ under the scrutiny when he stood down as Labour minister, adding that most MPs thought he was ‘mad’ when he began squaring up to Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Many will be thankful that he did. The Express and Star comes in for some credit for not jumping on the bandwagon when the national media (wrongly) reported stories about Watson’s private life. A decent column from someone at the heart of the story of the year, rather than the dry material that sometimes comes from local columnists, is payback for that.