Journalist and academic, Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent at time of Inquiry. Put forward the view that the main question facing policy makers was not how to prevent phone-hacking but how to finance an ethical future. Hackgate, as he called it, had prevented people from acknowledging that there could be circumstances in which a reporter gaining access to private telephone messages could be morally and ethically justified. If this exposed crime, or protected public health and safety, or prevented the public being misled by a powerful individual or organisation, it should be sanctioned, he said.