Culture secretary told David Cameron the 'media sector would suffer for years' if News Corp's bid for BSkyB was blocked

The culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, wrote privately to the prime minister urging him in strong terms to back Rupert Murdoch's takeover bid for BSkyB just a month before David Cameron appointed him to take charge of the bid himself in a "quasi-judicial" capacity.

The intervention by Hunt, who is facing calls for his resignation, was revealed for the first time in a document shown to the Leveson inquiry on Thursday. Hunt urged Cameron not to allow the business secretary, Vince Cable, to block the BSkyB bid despite strong advice to the culture secretary from his own officials that he should not involve himself in the process.

The culture secretary claimed to the prime minister that if the Murdoch bid was blocked "our media sector will suffer for years". He asked for a meeting with Cable and Cameron to discuss the handling of the deal.

The document appears to corroborate the picture that emerges from earlier email exchanges between Hunt's aide Adam Smith and the News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel. Those emails document an apparently collusive relationship with the Murdoch empire and have already put Hunt's cabinet position in peril.

Hunt drafted his memo to Cameron on 19 November 2010, initially using his and his aide's private Gmail accounts instead of the government email system, according to counsel to the inquiry. Hunt protested in strong terms about Cable's decision to move against the bid earlier that month by calling in the regulator, Ofcom, to investigate.

Warning that "James Murdoch is pretty furious", Hunt went on to say "I think it would be totally wrong to cave in to the Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line".

The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, and other media firms were opposing the bid, saying it would make the Murdoch empire too powerful.

Hunt, who by then had already been extensively lobbied by News Corp and received angry phone calls from Rupert Murdoch's son James, said: "I am concerned because essentially what James Murdoch wants to do is to repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping … The UK has the chance to lead the way on this as we did in 80s with the Wapping move."

In evoking the spirit of Wapping, Hunt was reminding David Cameron of the way Rupert Murdoch was allowed to buy the Times and the Sunday Times after vociferously supporting the Conservatives in his tabloids and holding a secret meeting with Margaret Thatcher at Chequers. Murdoch then famously broke the power of the print unions by moving his operations to Wapping, where police helped staff brave picket-lines.

The phrasing of Hunt's 19 November draft memo appears to have been sanitised before being sent to No 10, with the help of Smith. The inquiry was told there was also in existence an earlier version of Hunt's thinking. The final version said: "It would [be] totally wrong for the government to get involved in a competition issue which has to be decided at arms length."

Hunt's activities on Murdoch's behalf had been the subject of stern legal warnings from his own department, according to the inquiry's counsel, Robert Jay. He said the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's legal director had advised that although it was not directly illegal for him to attempt to intervene, to do so would be "unwise". One arrangement to meet James Murdoch had to be cancelled, but Hunt instead spoke to him privately on the phone. Michel, James Murdoch's lobbyist, told his boss in one of the previously disclosed emails: "Jeremy … has received very strong legal advice not to meet us today as the current process is treated as a judicial one (not a policy one) and any meeting could be referred to and jeopardise the entire process. Jeremy is very frustrated about it but the permanent secretary has now also been involved … You could have a chat with him on his mobile … and I will liaise with his team privately as well."

Four days after receiving this warning, it now appears that Hunt drafted his plea to the prime minister to step in. It is not known what Cameron did as an immediate result. Shortly afterwards, the Conservative-supporting Telegraph newspaper embarked on an elaborate "sting" operation against Vince Cable. On 3 December, two reporters pretended to be his constituents and by what seems to have been an extraordinary coincidence, he confided in them that he had "declared war" against Murdoch.

This was greeted with outrage both by the Murdoch camp and by the prime minister, who declared it was "unacceptable" for Cable to have such bias. Cameron promptly turned the decision over to Hunt. The disclosed documents appear to reveal that Cameron knew perfectly well at the time that Hunt, too, was biased – but biased the other way.

The cabinet secretary, Gus O'Donnell, stated publicly, however, that he himself had taken legal advice and had decided that, although Hunt had made previous public statements sympathetic to the bid: "I am satisfied that those statements do not amount to a pre-judgment of the case."

Hunt's former aide, Adam Smith, was initially reluctant to concede that the culture secretary had backed the Murdoch bid from the outset. Under persistent questioning from Jay, he eventually admitted, however, that Hunt's "personal view" was in fact favourable to the bid.

Frédéric Michel tells Leveson inquiry that Hunt was considered supportive by late 2010, before he took responsibility for bid

Jeremy Hunt had indicated to News Corporation by the end of 2010 that he was "probably in favour" of arguments for allowing its £8bn BSkyB takeover, the company's lobbyist responsible for contact with the culture secretary's department has told the Leveson inquiry.

Frédéric Michel told the inquiry on Thursday that by December 2010, just before Hunt was given quasi-judicial responsibility for the bid, the Conservative cabinet minister and his Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) were supportive of News Corp's argument that the BSkyB deal would not be detrimental to UK media plurality.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Michel whether News Corp considered the DCMS to be "onside" in terms of being in favour of the Sky bid by December 2010.

"I think they were probably in favour of, or in agreement with, the arguments we had put forward in terms of plurality, definitely," replied Michel, who at the time was News Corp's European head of public affairs.

Hunt was given responsibility for overseeing the News Corp bid for Sky on 21 December 2010, after the business secretary, Vince Cable, told undercover reporters he was at war with Rupert Murdoch.

More details also emerged at the inquiry on Thursday about the extent of Michel's contact with Hunt's department during the bid process, between June 2010 and July 2011, when News Corp dropped its Sky takeover at the height of the phone-hacking scandal.

Jay said the inquiry had seen evidence of 191 telephone calls, 158 emails and 799 text messages between Michel and the DCMS, of which 90% were with Adam Smith, Hunt's former special adviser. Between 28 November 2010 and 11 July 2011 Smith sent 257 text messages to Michel, Jay added.

Michel admitted he was a "compulsive texter" but denied a series of personal messages to Hunt amounted to "schmoozing".

The News Corp lobbyist exchanged a number of messages with Hunt during the course of News Corp's bid for BSkyB, variously praising his performance in the Commons and at a meeting with the company, and expressing support for Rafael Nadal after Michel spotted the cabinet minister at a tennis match on television. "I am a compulsive texter, I will accept," said Michel.

On 20 January 2011, the evening after Michel met the secretary of state, Michel texted Hunt: "Great to see you today," and suggested the pair should get their children together, who were "nearly born on the same day at the same place! Warm regards, Fred."

Michel told the inquiry that he "didn't expect this to become public as it has now. I was just making a personal private reference to our kids, nothing here that helps or is anything to do with my work."

Hunt replied: "Good to see u too. Hope u understand why we have to have the long process. Let's meet up when things are resolved."

The following day Michel texted back: "We do and will do our very best to be constructive and helpful throughout. You were very impressive yesterday and yes let's meet up when it's all done. Warmest regards, Fred."

On 3 March 2011, the day Sky's undertakings in lieu regarding Sky News and the BSkyB takeover were published, Michel texted Hunt again: "You were great at the Commons today. Hope all well, warm regards, Fred."

Hunt replied: "Merci. Large drink tonight!"

Michel, who said he did not drink, said the purpose of the exchanges was "friendly, no more than that. I thought it was a very tense day for him."

Michel texted Hunt again after he appeared on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show on 13 March. "Very good on Marr as always!" wrote Michel. Hunt replied: "Merci hopefully when consultation over we can have coffee like old days!"

In another exchange in July, Michel texted Hunt in support of Nadal who was playing Andy Murray.

Jay asked Michel: "Is this an example, to use the vernacular, of a form of schmoozing Mr Michel?"

Michel replied: "No, it's a friendly text. I think â€¦ it's one text every three months. It refers to specific items. I think I spotted him on the TV watching the game when I was watching Nadal, that's all."

Jay joked that Michel's support for Nadal was "rather treacherous". Michel explained: "My wife is English and Spanish so … "

Jay suggested to Michel he understood "the value of human interaction, whether it's by jokey text message, warm text message, mobile conversation or face-to-face meeting. You understand that because you're very good at it, aren't you?"

Michel said: "I don't know if I'm good at it â€¦ People would rather have interaction and talk things through rather than just respond through letters."

He added: "I apologise if my texts are too jokey sometimes."

Jay said: "It's not a question of apology. These are private texts and it's for you to decide the appropriate tone. These texts were never designed to enter the public domain were they?"

"They were not," said Michel.

The inquiry also heard that Michel was in close contact with Adam Smith at key points during the bid approval process.

On 10 January 2011, the day the culture secretary met Ed Richards, the chief executive of Ofcom, to discuss the regulator's objections to the Sky bid, Michel spoke with Smith on the phone three times.

Jay said the records showed there "were three calls which lasted in all 27 and a half minutes that day".

Michel denied that Smith gave him a running commentary of the bid process. The News Corp adviser added that Smith instead provided "updates on timing, process, on the atmospherics of the day".

The lobbyist said that he would not describe his phone calls, texts and emails "as clandestine. I would qualify that as advocacy".

By contrast, the inquiry heard repeated evidence that Vince Cable refused to meet James Murdoch or News Corp representatives in the period in which the business secretary had responsibility for the Sky bid.

Michel said he thought the approach adopted by Hunt subsequently was "more normal" – and that the company should have the opportunity to make its case in person.

Michel admitted that on two or three occasions he may have been in indirect contact with Hunt about the deal, through Smith, who was forced to resign last month after the inquiry published evidence suggesting he had an inappropriate level of contact with the News Corp lobbyist.

Hunt is due to appear before the inquiry to defend his role in the BSkyB bid after Labour accused him of breaching the quasi-judicial rules which required him to assess the bid impartially.

Michel said references to "Hunt", "JH" or "Jeremy" in 163 pages of emails and texts between him and his News Corp boss, James Murdoch, released to the inquiry last month, were "in fact summaries of what was told by Adam Smith".

But Michel also admitted to the inquiry that on some occasions he had the impression that Smith had spoken to his boss first.

"I think there's two or three events when I probably had the sort of impression that some of the feedback I was being given had been discussed with the secretary of state before it was given to me," Michel said.

Michel said he knew it was "inappropriate" to have had any informal contact with Hunt and told the inquiry he did not have "any direct conversation" with the minister relating to the BSkyB proposal.

One text the inquiry was shown was sent by Hunt to Michel on 31 July 2011, after the BSkyB bid was abandoned because of the backlash against Murdoch's media empire following revelations that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked by the News of the World.

Hunt's text read: "Dear Fred it has been the most challenging time for all of us. Thank goodness we have children to remind us what really matters. Would be great to catch up when the dust has settled, Jeremy."

In August 2010, three months after Murdoch launched his BSkyB bid, Michel sent Hunt a message criticising a speech by the BBC director general, Mark Thompson. "Because he trained his guns on you he failed to make his case to me," Hunt replied.

Chris Huhne's partner loses privacy and harassment case as judge says her 'expectation of privacy was limited'

Carina Trimingham, the partner of former energy secretary Chris Huhne, has been ordered to pay more than £400,000 after she lost her high court claim for damages for alleged breach of privacy and harassment against the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

Trimingham was seeking compensation and an injunction over 65 "highly unpleasant and hurtful" articles. These included references to the "life and very different loves of the PR girl in Doc Martens" and a piece by Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn which described her as a "comedy lesbian from central casting" in a 24 June 2010 article.

But Mr Justice Tugendhat said in a written judgment: "Ms Trimingham was not the purely private figure she claims to be. Her reasonable expectation of privacy has become limited.

"This is mainly by reason of her involvement with Mr Huhne, both professionally as his press agent and personally as his secret mistress, in circumstances where he campaigned with a leaflet to the electorate of Eastleigh about how much he valued his family."

He dismissed her claim, refused her permission to appeal and ordered her to pay Associated Newspapers' legal costs.

Tugendhat said £250,000, which is covered by her insurance, must be paid within 14 days, but she can find the balance of the £410,000 total later.

Trimingham was Huhne's press officer during the 2010 general election, when he was seeking re-election as Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh in Hampshire. She was at the time in a civil partnership with partner Julie Bennett.

In January last year Huhne was divorced by his wife, Vicky Price, because of his admitted adultery with Trimingham.

Huhne's trial with his ex-wife for allegedly perverting the course of justice over a driving offence is due to be heard in October.

Daily Mail journalist Andrew Pierce gave a robust statement outside the high court, saying that the judgment was a "vindication of our journalists and our journalism".

He said that Trimingham had been working in public relations for a number of years and "when she left her wife to move in with a cabinet minister she knew this would be part of the story and the judgment accepted that". He described it as "an important day for our journalism".

Asked if he regretted any of the Mail's coverage or felt sympathy for Trimingham, Pierce replied that the paper had been "utterly vindicated by that judgment", adding: "She says in court she's in love with Chris Huhne and I wish her all the happiness with that."

Trimingham, also speaking outside court, said: "I'm extremely disappointed by this judgment. There is a ray of light however. Thankfully the court has accepted today that repeated mocking of a person by a national newspaper by reference to their sexual orientation would be so oppressive as to amount to harassment.

"However, the court did not appreciate that when national newspapers make repeated irrelevant references to my sexuality – particularly in the context of pejorative and stereotypical reference to appearance – it amounts to the same kind of mocking which the court has confirmed is unacceptable. This is confused, and I think wrong. I am very concerned that this judgment may become a blueprint for bullies and bigots. I intend to appeal."

In his written judgment, Tugendhat said that although the Mail referred to Trimingham's sexuality in 65 articles over a period of 15 months it "only did so (a) when writing about matters of public interest, mainly in developments in Mr Huhne's personal life which were relevant to his public life and (b) when Ms Trimingham and her conduct (and other information about her) were within the range of what an editor could in good faith regard as relevant to the story".

The judge added: "The distress that she has undoubtedly suffered since 19 June 2010 is the result of the publication by the defendant [Associated Newspapers] of the defamatory and true information concerning her, about which she has not made a claim in defamation, and the actions of journalists and publishers for whom the defendant is not responsible.

"To the extent that the words complained of include insults and other offensive matter, insulting and offensive speech is protected by the right of freedom of expression."

Despite finding in Associated Newspapers' favour, Tugendhat also warned that his judgment was not a licence "to repeat the words complained of indefinitely or in any circumstances", as it was not a libel action in which a defence of truth had been proved.

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Latest ABC figures reveal increase in daily unique browsers to sites such as 3am.co.uk and MirrorFootball.co.uk

Trinity Mirror's national newspaper website network bounced back from two tough months of viewing declines to record a double digit percentage increase in browsers in April, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Thursday.

While rival national newspaper publishers managed just low single digit percentage increases in browsers in April – and several even shed web users – Mirror Group Digital managed a 13% increase in daily unique browsers to 660,000.

MGD, which includes websites such as 3am.co.uk and MirrorFootball.co.uk, also reported a 10.9% rise in average monthly unique browsers to 13,682,364 in April, compared with the previous month.

The bounce back follows a tough two months for MGN – which saw a 30% drop in monthly browsers following a relaunch in February and another significant decline last month – but it was not enough to restore it to the position of fifth largest national newspaper website, which it relinquished to the Independent in April.

The Independent grew average daily unique browser numbers by 8% to 695,992 while monthly browser numbers climbed 3.54% to 15,043,267.

It was mixed bag for Mail Online with daily unique browsers rising 4.42% compared to March to 5,653,577. However the UK's biggest national newspaper site moved further away from the landmark 100m mark as monthly unique browser numbers dipped by 0.53% to 90,309,252.

Stablemate Metro grew daily unique browsers by 2.32% to 335,390, monthly browser numbers dropped 2.15% to 8,049,098.

Of the biggest national newspaper websites, Telegraph.co.uk experienced the toughest April with a 6.11% drop in monthly unique browsers to 44,892,746, while daily unique browser numbers fell just over 3% versus March to 2,343,120.

Guardian.co.uk, the Guardian News & Media website network that includes MediaGuardian, grew average daily browsers by 4.17% to 3,876,212.

No officially audited number for monthly unique browsers was registered by Guardian.co.uk for April – the March figure was 67,753,770 – however given growth rates it is likely to have hit the 70m mark for the first time.

News International's Sun Online grew daily unique browsers by 2.82% to 1,530,704. Monthly unique browsers grew 1.52% compared to March to 25,070,209.

The Evening Standard also had a tough month with daily unique browser numbers falling 8.23% to 110,611 and monthly browsers fell by 11.27% to 2,518,207.

Mail Online

Daily average browsers: 5,653,577

Month-on-month change: +4.42%

Year-on-year change: +57.22%

Monthly browsers: 90,309,252

Month-on-month: -0.53%

guardian.co.uk

Daily average browsers: 3,876,212

Month-on-month change: +4.17%

Year-on-year change: +61.02%

Monthly browsers: N/A

Telegraph.co.uk

Daily average browsers: 2,343,120

Month-on-month change: -3.04%

Year-on-year change: +21.24%

Monthly browsers: 44,892,746

Month-on-month change: -6.11%

Sun Online

Daily average browsers: 1,530,704

Month-on-month change: +2.82%

Year-on-year change: N/A

Monthly browsers: 25,070,209

Month-on-month change: +1.52%

Independent.co.uk

Daily average browsers: 695,992

Month-on-month change: +8.02%

Year-on-year change: +18.76%

Monthly browsers: 15,043,267

Month-on-month change: +3.54%

Mirror Group Digital

Daily average browsers: 660,672

Month-on-month change: +13.17%

Year-on-year change: +4.69%

Monthly browsers: 13,682,364

Month-on-month change: +10.85%

Metro

Daily average browsers: 335,390

Month-on-month change: +2.32%

Year-on-year change: N/A

Monthly browsers: 8,049,098

Month-on-month change: -2.15%

Evening Standard

Daily average browsers: 110,611

Month-on-month change: -8.23%

Year-on-year change: N/A

Monthly browsers: 2,518,207

Month-on-month change: -11.27%

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Daily Mail & General Trust sees revenues fall at print divisions while digital revenues rise significantly

Daily Mail & General Trust has reported a 26% fall in operating profits at its national newspaper division in the half year to 1 April, as ailing regional division Northcliffe revealed its first growth in profits since the recession.

Overall, A&N Media – the parent of the national and regional newspaper operations – reported a 3% fall in revenue to £542m and a 24% fall in operating profits to £33m.

The company, which cut staff numbers by 593 to 6,280 in the six-month period, said that operating profits fell due to lower print advertising revenue and additional promotional activity within the digital businesses.

DMGT as a group reported a 2% revenue fall to £973m as pre-tax profits plunged 37% to £46m. On an adjusted basis pre-tax profits fell 14% to £105m.

Operating profits were £133m with 75% from DMGT's business-to-business arm and 25% from its consumer media offering which includes the newspaper operations.

"We have delivered a solid underlying performance in the first half reflecting the strength of our business-to-business companies and the resilience of our national consumer titles," said Martin Morgan, chief executive of DMGT.

"As expected, disposals and certain one-off factors have led to lower reported half year results. The continued growth of our business-to-business companies and more positive momentum expected within our consumer operations in the second half of the year means that we expect to achieve growth in earnings for the full financial year, compared to the equivalent figure last year."

Associated, the national newspaper division that is home to the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, reported a 26% fall in operating profit to £34m and a 1% decline in revenues to £435m.

The company said resilience in the revenues was due to cover price rises at the Daily Mail and strong growth at Metro, Mail Online and DMGT's recruitment and digital property businesses.

Total revenues at Mail Online were up 75% year-on-year.

The company said that the Mail Online iPhone and Android apps were attracting about 220,000 users a day, who browsed for an average of 24 minutes. Mobile users now accounted for about a quarter of daily users of the Mail Online site – roughly 8 million in the UK alone.

Overall, Associated increased digital revenues by 21% and Morgan said the company was on track to make more than £100m this year. Within this, digital ad revenues grew 55% to £12m in the six months to 1 April.

Profits at the national division fell because of factors including a tough ad market – UK newspaper advertising revenues fell 7% to £171m with print ads down 10% – and £8m investment in digital businesses including daily deal service Wowcher and the Digital Property Group.

Regional newspaper division Northcliffe has reported a 10% decline in revenues to £107m but a 34% increase in operating profit to £11m. It is thought to be the first growth at the division since the recession.

Ad revenues at Northcliffe fell 11% year-on-year to £75m – print ads fell 9% and digital rose 2% – with circulation revenue down 5% to £29m. Staff numbers were cut from 2,530 to 2,366, a 6% fall, between October and April.

Northcliffe has seen revenues fall 6% in April and the first three weeks of May, with ad revenues down 9% and circulation revenues up 3%.

DMGT said that a 20% decline in national advertising revenues at Northcliffe was the key factor in the worsening of the regional newspaper division's revenue performance. Overall Northcliffe's evenue fell 10% year-on-year in the three months to the end of 2011 and 12% in the quarter to 1 April.

DMGT said that a new national advertising partnership with Trinity Mirror, through a sales operation called AMRA, would improve performance for its regional newspapers.

Morgan said the partnership with its rival did not in any way indicate that a merger of the two company's regional newspaper operations might be on the cards.

Stephen Daintith, finance director at DMGT, said the company expected Northcliffe to make more this year than the £17m in the company's last annual results. However, he warned that with revenue still in decline it was unrealistic to expect significant profit growth out of the business.

Overall, DMGT said that its newspaper operations were hit by a restructuring which has led to an exceptional charge of £32m, of which about £4m is in cash, in reorganisation costs and accelerated depreciation of property, plant and equipment mostly relating to the move of printing facilities to Thurrock and the closure of the Derby print facility in January.

Net debt rose £90m to £809m, but is expected to reduce in the second half of DMGT's financial year.

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Now they call it Fadebook – shareholders call in lawyers as stock price tumbles and regulators are not far behind

Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has gone from hero to zero as the stockmarket flotation of the decade flounders amid lawsuits and accusations of greed, hype and deception.

The law firm that won a $7bn settlement for Enron's shareholders is pursuing Zuckerberg, his board and the long list of banks advising the company for making "untrue statements" about its financial performance.

Robbins Geller is bringing the second class action law suit in as many days against Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays and a host of Silicon Valley luminaries including PayPal guru Peter Thiel. A separate suit filed in California on Tuesday by investor Darryl Lazar claims that the social network's share prospectus contained "materially false and misleading statements".

The regulators are also closing in. Mary Schapiro, chair of America's main financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, said: "I think there is a lot of reason to have confidence in our markets and in the integrity of how they operate, but there are issues that we need to look at specifically with respect to Facebook."

After months of hype about the float of the social networking site, which has nearly a billion users across the globe, the appetite for its shares has collapsed since its launch at $38 per share on Friday. The shares are now trading at $31.78, leaving the company that boasts a user base including half the American population is worth £4bn less than it was six days ago, and earning it a new moniker: Fadebook.

So while the social network's bankers and its wealthy early investors have profited handsomely from the float, the legal profession is set to cash in.

Both lawsuits claim that certain investors had access to information that would have dented confidence in the shares, while others were left in the dark.

The problems began on 9 May, when Facebook amended its initial public offering (IPO) prospectus with a short and, for some, hard-to-interpret reference to the fact that while its usage on mobile phones was growing exponentially, the company was finding it harder to sell advertising on its mobile website than on "desktop" pages.

Analysts promptly began revising their forecasts. Those included Scott Devitt, who covers consumer internet firms for Morgan Stanley. The bank, as lead underwriter for the IPO, was employed as Facebook's cheerleader-in-chief.

According to Reuters – Morgan Stanley has not yet made the date or the content of the forecasts available to the public – Devitt decided that revenues in the second quarter of this year, which runs until the end of June, would be $1.111bn (£705m), down from an earlier estimate of $1.175bn. He shaved full-year forecasts too, from $5bn to $4.85bn. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, the second and third lead underwriters, also downgraded their estimates.

Participating banks cannot publicly issue research or make recommendations until 40 days after an IPO is priced, but their analysts are allowed to communicate estimates orally to customers. The concern is that this information may have filtered through only to a privileged few rather than the wider public.

In a statement, Morgan Stanley said a "significant number" of analysts in the IPO syndicate reduced their estimates after Facebook's disclosure on 9 May, adding: "Morgan Stanley followed the same procedures for the Facebook offering that it follows for all IPOs. These procedures are in compliance with all applicable regulations."

The actions of Facebook's underwriters in the days that followed gave no hint of the information they were receiving from their own number-crunchers.

On Tuesday, 15 May, the range at which they estimated the float would be priced was raised from $28–$35 to $34–$38. A day later, the insiders and early investors who had invested in Facebook during private funding rounds increased the number of shares they planned to sell during the IPO by a massive 25%.

Those most likely to have heard the analysts' downgrades may have decided that the shares would not enjoy the widely expected day-one surge, seen when Google and the professional networking site LinkedIn went public. Basically, for those in the know, at $38 a share, Facebook was a "sell".

Smaller retail investors appear to have paid the price. Only 10% to 15% of shares were thought likely to go to small shareholders. Estimates suggest that the bulk of the 84m extra shares released last Wednesday went to investors at the bottom of the tree.

Chad Brand, founder of the investment adviser Peridot Capital, had put in orders at E*Trade, one of the underwriters. Brand wrote on his blog: "I did not really think they would allocate us any shares ... What happened? We got every share we asked for."

Some of the retail clients who called him that day were getting up to 20,000 shares. Jacob Salzmann, named as a plaintiff in the case being brought by Robbins Geller, spent $124,000 buying shares at $41.766 a piece. By close of play on Tuesday, they were worth just $31.

David Joy, an analyst at wealth adviser Ameriprise Financial, wrote in a note to clients: "These developments reinforce the notion that the underwriters did a wonderful job of pricing the offering in order to maximise the profitability to the company's insiders and its private investors but [they] left very little on the table for public investors in the secondary market."

More than three quarters of the public want stricter regulation of the press plus tighter limits on media ownership.

According to a YouGov poll, 62% want to see the current system of regulation replaced by a legally established body, and 94% of those who want some form of regulation (81%) want it to be either "very" or "fairly" strict.

Almost three quarters of respondents (73%) support limits on the overall proportion of the UK media that a single person, or single, company can own.

Roughly the same number (76%) want to see fixed limits on newspaper ownership. And 62% of these people want that number to be no more than two titles.

The poll, commissioned by the think tank IPPR, also indicates a strong public preference for media owners to be full-time UK residents and taxpayers.

More than eight out of ten (84%) of respondents supported the idea that newspapers should be required to print a correction and/or apology for incorrect stories on the same page as the offending story appeared on - even if it is the front page.

And nearly half (48%) think newspapers have too much power over politicians.

There is strong support for keeping (45%) or strengthening (29%) the impartiality rules governing broadcasters, and also support for extending these rules to video content that resembles TV news (55%).

The BBC as a publicly funded broadcasting service is strongly supported (by 57% of respondents).

Nick Pearce, IPPR's director, said: "Once the Leveson inquiry has completed its work and made its recommendations, politicians will have to make some difficult decisions on the shape and reach of media policy.

"Perhaps not surprisingly, given the hacking scandal and other revelations, this polling shows that the public mood has hardened significantly towards tighter regulation of media standards and more controls on media ownership.

"Understanding this public appetite for change, while ensuring that the UK has a free, vibrant and economically viable media, will be the challenge of the months ahead."

The YouGov sample involved 1,705 adults. They were polled online between 20-21 May.

The full results of the poll are published online by IPPR here

Channel 4 executive suffered from 'depression and elements of post traumatic stress disorder'

A verdict of suicide by opiate toxicity has been returned by the coroner investigating the death of Sarah Mulvey, the Channel 4 executive who died in January 2010.

Delivering the verdict at St Pancras coroner's court, Dr Shirley Radcliffe said that the case of Mulvey was "extremely complex" and that she suffered from "depression and elements of post traumatic stress disorder characterised by flashbacks and elements of personality difficulties".

This was combined with what the coroner called the "tragic element" of her "acute sensitivity to rejection or abandonment", which was in part triggered when she left a treatment centre in Essex, the Causeway Retreat, a few months before her death.

Mulvey, 35, died a day after she left the Drayton Park crisis centre in Camden where she was being treated following her four-month stint at the Causeway Retreat.

Radcliffe noted Mulvey's difficulties at Channel 4. Mulvey had instigated a grievance procedure against her employer which had been rejected and which she was appealing against at the time of her death.

"[Mulvey] referred to her work as an important part of her life," said the coroner in her summing up. "It was her life, it identified the person she was."

Mulvey's troubles at work contributed to what the coroner referred to as her "breakdown".

"It was clear that Sarah Mulvey was an exceptionally bright person with an extremely successful life and career," she said. "But it became clear that she suffered from some deep-seated psychological problems from an early age."

The coroner said Mulvey "consumed an extremely large dose of opiates", leading to her death, and that she was "satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that she killed herself".

Channel 4, which is not a party to the current hearing, issued a statement after the verdict on Wednesday: "Since Sarah's tragic death in January 2010 we have worked closely with the Mulvey family to support them and to celebrate Sarah's career and achievements. She was a valued employee and an exceptional creative talent whose death shocked and saddened everyone."

Earlier today the court heard how Mulvey had become "shattered" by an ongoing grievance procedure with the broadcaster. Mulvey joined Channel 4 in late 2006, with responsibility for commissioning for Cutting Edge, the First Cut new talent strand, and formatted documentary series.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Anne Bird, who treated Mulvey, said Mulvey's problems at work coupled with the termination of her four-month course of treatment at the Causeway Retreat on Osea Island in Essex had left Mulvey feeling "high and dry".

"I think her problems with her boss at work had been particularly difficult," Bird, who works with the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust, told the second day of the inquest at St Pancras Coroner's Court on Wednesday.

Also testifying was another of Mulvey's clinicians, consultant psychotherapist Dr Luigi Caparrotta who treated her in the final few weeks of her life. He said: "The main thing she spoke about was her grievance against Channel 4 which was stressing her quite a lot."

Mulvey had initiated a grievance procedure against the broadcaster in April 2009 which had been rejected. She was on sick leave and preparing to appeal the decision when she was found dead at her home in Hampstead in January 2010.

Caparrotta, a Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy at Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, said Mulvey was "deeply preoccupied" with the grievance procedure which he said "shattered her".

He also said she suffered "several flashbacks" that were linked with a previous case of "sexual abuse" that "escalated" over time.

Bird said she did not think Mulvey would take her own life. She described Mulvey as a "very gifted person" who "wanted to get better".

A previous coroner's hearing was abandoned because the coroner was replaced.

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• This article was amended on 24 May 2012 to remove details of the method of suicide.

Search giant's executive chairman rejects suggestions it will have to change how it presents search results in Europe

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Tuesday is set for a showdown with the European Commission's antitrust commissioner when he rejected suggestions the search giant will have to change how it presents search results in Europe.

Speaking at Google's Big Tent event in Hertfordshire, Schmidt said "we disagree that we are in violation" of European monopoly rules and said Joaquín Almunia, the antitrust commissioner, had not outlined the EC's objections.

Almunia wrote to Schmidt on Monday saying the EC has identified "four concerns where Google business practices may be considered as abused of dominance". In Europe Google has about 90% of the search market.

The two sides have scheduled a meeting for the coming weeks, he said.

Schmidt said "the letter is all we've heard from them" – although the EC's investigation opened in November 2010. "We haven't heard the details. I'm not going to speculate on the details."

Almunia's letter said the EC is concerned about Google's promotion of its own products over rivals' in searches for items such as shopping, over its copying and re-display of content from restaurant sites, over its restrictions on competitors' ads appearing alongside its own, and the portability of advertising campaigns from Google's Adwords system.

The EC has the power to exact fines of up to 10% of a company's global revenues if it determines that a company has abused a dominant position. For Google, that could amount to $4bn (£2.6bn). Microsoft and Intel have fallen foul of its antitrust group, suffering swingeing fines. Almunia has indicated that he would wish to settle with Google without seeking legal recourse in order to have a speedy remedy – but if not, that a full "statement of objections" could follow.

"He is encouraging us to have a conversation," said Schmidt. "We completely agree [to that]. We disagree that we are in violation. Until they are precise about what areas of the law we have violated, it will be very difficult for me to speculate."

Regulator says BSkyB's video on demand rivals such as LoveFilm and Netflix provide a vibrant market for consumers

BSkyB is to face no action from regulators over its monopoly of UK pay-TV film rights, after the Competition Commission decided that video on demand rivals such as LoveFilm and Netflix provide a vibrant market for consumers.

The decision marks a U-turn by the competition regulator, which provisionally determined last August that BSkyB's contracts with the six major Hollywood studios – Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and Universal Studios – were anti-competitive and needed to be weakened to allow rivals to flourish.

However, in March the commission signalled a change of heart after deciding it needed to extend the investigation to take into account the impact of Netflix launching a UK-subscription VoD movie service in January and the move by LoveFilm, which is owned by Amazon, to extend its rental-by-post model to offer a similar online service to customers.

The regulator has decided that as a result, consumers now have more choice. "Competition between providers of movie services on pay TV has changed materially and, as a result of these changes, consumers now have much greater choice," said Laura Carstensen, chairman of the movies on pay TV market investigation at the Competition Commission.

"For the purposes of our inquiry, the key effect of the market developments is that, as a result of the new options available to them, consumers' choice of pay-TV platform can more easily be decoupled from their choice of pay-TV movie service.

"As a result, Sky Movies no longer provides Sky with the advantage that it used to when competing with other traditional pay-TV platforms, like Virgin Media or BT Vision."

While the regulator has now dropped any proposal to act against BSkyB, it said that competition in the overall pay-TV retail market was ineffective.

However, the Competition Commission said it could not act on this as the scope of the investigation was limited to movies in the what was termed the first subscription pay-TV window only.

"Virgin Media strongly disagrees with today's provisional findings by the Competition Commission and continues to support its earlier findings of 2011 – that Sky's control of movie rights is restricting competition in the UK," said a spokeswoman for Virgin Media.

"The recent emergence of providers such as LoveFilm and Netflix has done nothing to impact Sky's advantage and we're currently working to better understand the reasons for the commission's decision as we consider next steps.

"The commission states very clearly in these provisional findings that competition in the wider pay-TV retail market remains ineffective."

In March, Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of Netflix, said he believed BSkyB should not have its movie channels regulated and that he was looking forward to a fair fight.

"We appreciate the Competition Commission's work and encourage it to monitor the situation to ensure that competition in the major studio deals area is real," said a Netflix spokesman, responding to the regulator's decision on Wednesday.

"It should raise concerns if no competitors are actually able to outbid Sky for major studio content in the coming year."

BSkyB recently announced it intended to launch its own VoD service called Now TV, which would include Sky Movies. Consumers would not have to have a Sky TV subscription to use Now TV.

A spokesman for BSkyB said: "We welcome today's revised findings. We have long argued that UK consumers are well served by strong competition between a variety of movies providers.

"We remain committed to innovating for customers so that we can make Sky Movies even better, building on developments such as Sky Anytime+ and Sky Go. At the same time, we're focusing on the launch of Now TV, which will offer consumers even more choice in this vibrant sector."

In April, Ofcom told the Competition Commission to stick to its guns and break Sky's hold on the pay-TV film market, arguing that the arrival of Netflix and LoveFilm had not altered the broadcaster's dominance.

A spokesman for BT said that the company is "disappointed" the Competition Commission did not act on its acknowledgement that the UK pay-TV market is still "ineffective".

He said BT still felt "locked out" of being able to offer the most recent films on subscription.

"We are pleased that the Competition Commission has acknowledged that competition in the pay-TV retail market overall is ineffective," he added. "It is disappointing that it has not taken the action available to it to deal with this problem."

"Like BT, new entrants are still locked out of the chance to offer their customers the most recent films on subscription. We cannot see how this is in the best interests of consumers and we intend to respond to the Competition Commission's consultation on this basis."

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Plan submitted to Ofcom would see some weekday regional content replaced with aggregate of news from several regions

ITV has proposed cutting back on its regional news programming as part of its submission to Ofcom on the renewal of its broadcasting licences from 2015.

The proposal has been officially submitted as part of Ofcom's 86-page report to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on the options available for renewing Channel 3 (ITV) and Channel 5 public service broadcasting licences, which expire at the end of 2014.

The Ofcom report also asks Hunt to consider using the communications bill to look at issues including the highly contentious area of retransmission fees and rules to make sure internet service providers or IPTV companies do not overcharge for distributing PSB programmes or favour paid-for streaming services.

Ofcom's report contained a proposal from ITV to cut back the local content within its weekday evening regional TV news programmes.

Only 20 minutes during the half-hour programmes would be devoted to regional news, with the remaining 10 minutes used to deliver an aggregate of news events of interest to viewers across several regions.

ITV is also proposing to cut regional lunchtime news bulletins from six minutes to three minutes, late evening bulletins from nine minutes to five minutes and weekend bulletins from 10 minutes to five minutes.

In Ofcom's report published on Wednesday, ITV is also proposing increasing the number of regional news programmes it broadcasts in England, Wales, the Scottish Borders and Channel Islands from nine back to the 17 it offered before 2009.

An ITV spokesman said in a similar vein to the news programme the time cut back on local bulletins would be filled with more of a pan-regional news update.

"ITV makes a major contribution to news plurality in the UK – at no cost to the taxpayer," said the ITV spokesman. "In making the case for licence renewal or long-term extension, ITV has committed, in the area of news, to continue to broadcast a high quality, accurate and impartial national/international news service as we do at present – and to deliver high quality regions and nations services in England, Wales, the Scottish Borders and the Channel Islands on an economically sustainable basis."

Ofcom's report said the plan has "the potential to deliver more localised and news-driven content, potentially addressing viewer needs within the scope of existing costs". Ofcom will make the ultimate decision on any changes of ITV's regional news service, after Hunt decides whether or not to auction or renew the broadcasting licences.

Channel 5's submission to Ofcom calls for a cut in its requirement of a quota of its programming to come from production companies outside of London.

"We believe the modest burdens placed on Channel 5 from its existing obligations would continue to represent an appropriate contribution by the channel to the fulfilment of public service purposes in the next licence period," said Ofcom.

An analysis by Ofcom of Channel 5's output in 2010 shows 59% of original content shown by the broadcaster was repeats. This compares to a quarter across the ITV network and 51% of Channel 4's commissioned output.

Ofcom also asked Hunt to consider how the proposed communications bill might be used to "consider whether and how benefits of PSB status could be reformed to further encourage the fulfilment of public service purposes".

Ofcom highlighted four potential PSB issues to be considered, including the debate over retransmission fees.

Public service broadcasters, including the BBC, claim that if the US example was followed they should be paid up to £120m a year for providing rivals such as BSkyB with some of its top-rating programmes.

"Any changes in this area could affect the balance of payments between PSBs and platforms, potentially to the benefit of PSBs," said Ofcom.

Ofcom has also said that Hunt might look at strengthening regulation around electronic programming guide prominence – one of the biggest benefits for PSBs is being guaranteed the top positions on the EPG – and to look at extending it officially to new video on demand platforms.

Ofcom has also raised the issue of PSB content being carried in IPTV services and the role of internet service providers.

"Over time, distribution on IP-based platforms is likely to become more important to PSBs, with the result that new factors will become significant," said Ofcom. "The aggregators and ISPs carrying such content to consumers could contend that the distribution of PSB material places a heavy burden on their network capacity.

"If ISPs or IPTV aggregators elect to charge content providers for carriage, then even limited carriage payments could become relatively significant to PSBs."

Ofcom has said Hunt might look at a "must carry" provision for PSB content on such services to make sure that elements such as costs and charges could be regulated, as they are for example on BSkyB's satellite platform.

"Such an approach might effectively reduce the costs incurred by PSBs in securing wide distribution for public service content," said Ofcom.

"It could also mitigate against possible commercial incentives that might develop over time for some platforms to favour or prioritise treatment of other services (such as a paid-for streaming services) ahead of PSB content."

The fourth area that Ofcom raises is potentially to look at how rules regarding advertising minutage could be "used as a lever to help incentivise investment in UK content, both generally, and by the public service broadcasters in particular".

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Scotland Yard investigates NoW hacking of its editor's messages in 2006 to Hannah Pawlby, then aide to the home secretary

Voicemails left by Andy Coulson for the aide to former Labour home secretary Charles Clarke are believed to be among those allegedly hacked while he was editor of the News of the World.

Coulson is one of a number of journalists whose messages to Hannah Pawlby were allegedly targeted by the News of the World in 2006, when he was in charge of the now-closed Sunday tabloid.

Ian Kirby, former political editor of the News of the World, said the Metropolitan police believe that his voicemails to Pawlby were also allegedly intercepted when she was special adviser to the ex-Labour home secretary.

Scotland Yard has also told Jon Craig, chief political correspondent of Sky News, that his messages to Pawlby were allegedly targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, the former News of the World private investigator. It is understood that voicemails left by the BBC correspondent, Carole Walker, and the Times journalist, Francis Elliot, were also intercepted on behalf of the paper.

Pawlby is suing News International after police said her phone was hacked while she was special adviser to Clarke in 2006.

Detectives from the Metropolitan police's Operation Weeting investigation into phone hacking are contacting those allegedly targeted by the News of the World.

Craig, a veteran politics correspondent for Sky News, said he has contacted lawyers over the saga and is actively exploring legal action against Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group.

Kirby, who was political editor of the now-closed Sunday tabloid at the time, said he was told by police that his messages were intercepted on behalf of his own newspaper.

He said: "My details, including private telephone numbers, were also uncovered in Glenn Mulcaire's notes. Our politics team was never involved in hacking in any way. I still do not now know who decided to intercept messages I left with a contact, or why."

Pawlby was an aide to Clarke throughout his time as a cabinet minister, from education secretary in 2002 to home secretary until 2006. She filed the legal claim at the high court in London last week.

A spokeswoman for Coulson's legal representatives declined to comment on client matters. The Met police said it would not provide a running commentary on Operation Weeting.

News International declined to comment.

Never mind the pollocks – get a load of these characters

Thank you, Mark Morris, fish merchant, on The Fish Market: Inside Billingsgate (BBC2). Thank you for standing up and telling it like it is, saying what no one else has the cojones to say: that pollock's bollocks.

He says it better. A few years ago no one wanted pollock. You couldn't give it away. Then Gordon Ramsay and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall told us we had to eat pollock instead of cod, because it was more sustainable. And because these men were on the television we did what we were told. Now, as well as making more money than cod does, it's going short. Which is daft, says Mark.

"That's a pollock," he says, holding one up. "Lovely piece of fish, lovely bright colours, that sort of thing. Tastes like shit. Then you get cod [holds up a cod]. That's a fish that's been swimming in the North Atlantic, feeding on the right products, since the day it was born. If that's a human being, that goes to the gym every day, yeah? It eats all the right foods. It probably drives a Porsche, right? [Goes back to the pollock] This – pollock – is sitting at home on the settee, in a tracksuit, watching Jeremy Kyle, eating a burger."

I'm not sure I'd totally trust Mark on the environmental stuff. But he's dead right about pollock being flabby and rubbish and tasting like shit.

Mark's not even the main star of this excellent fly-on-a-piece-of-fish documentary about an old London institution struggling to keep up in a changing world. That's Roger Barton, also an old London institution – and an old rogue, albeit a lovable one – struggling to keep up in a changing world. It's not just the dwindling fish stocks, the general economic gloom, and the fact that supermarkets bypass Billingsgate altogether and go straight to source; it's that people now want their fish to be fresh (most of the flies seem to be on Roger's fish). "All this date nonsense has come in the last 10 years," he moans. "As far as I know, no one's died of fish poisoning."

Roger wears a straw boater and a bluetooth earpiece, even when he's on the landline. That seems about right – he's making an effort to keep up, to move with the times, but he doesn't quite get it. It's not only Roger's relevance that's questionable, but Billingsgate's itself. Now his out-of-date fish is being investigated by the inspectors. "The world's changing, maybe I'm too old", he says. We leave him, walking sadly across the market floor, to the Chorus of Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco. Because this is a posh doc, with a soundtrack of Italian opera. Which actually goes very well with the fish, like a crisp pinot grigio.

One little thing. That box of razor clams, the only one in the market, which Roger wants to keep a secret, but then it breaks open … Did it though? Break open? Just like that? Or was that just a teeny bit staged? I'm just asking, that's all. They were probably off anyway.

Otherwise, lovely – a touching portrait of an amazing place with brilliant characters. And now we know who it is who watches Jeremy Kyle: pollocks. Appropriately.

So farewell, House (Sky1). Everybody Dies – episode number 177! – is the last. Not the greatest finale to a brilliant show. Maybe it's too ambitious for an hour of television; they're trying to cram in too much. House wakes up in a burning building, next to the body of a dead patient. He discusses the case with his subconscious, which takes the form of various characters from the House back catalogue – Lawrence Kutner, Amber Volakis, Stacy Warner, Allison Cameron. It's a way of saying some goodbyes, I guess, a curtain call, but four different personae for one subconscious, that's a big ask. And you need to be pretty much on top of the entire eight seasons to know exactly what's going on.

House is wrestling with his own demons too, deciding whether to try to get out of there alive. It's an interesting situation, one I'm sure everyone has wondered about – if people think you've died in something (like a fire) but you hadn't, would you run away and start again? It would certainly be tempting.

That's what House does. After the funeral (more curtain calls) comes the resurrection. And he's off on a mid-life crisis motorcycling holiday with best (only) mate Wilson. OK, end-of-life crisis for Wilson, because he's dying of cancer, and beginning-of-life crisis for House, because he's starting over. But even so, they're outside, it's bright and sunny, there's a feeling of optimism … well, not so much for Wilson of course. But for House it's almost like everything's going to be fine. And that doesn't seem quite right.

Stop the Games! The security staff can't get through the Olympic traffic jams. But the beach volleyball show will go on

• Don't panic, but the Olympics may have to be cancelled. The Diary has been given a top-level briefing by the head of Olympic security for G4S, which is providing 10,000 guards for the Games, and the news is not good. At its Games security hub at Canary Wharf, which remotely manages logistics and staffing for the Olympic Park, there is a Truman Show-style bank of giant TV screens providing a stream of the latest info. Two of them permanently display the Transport for London web page, which gives tube and bus info. Forget missile strikes by al-Qaida, G4S's No 1 nightmare is the tube breaking down, as it has done repeatedly this week. If that happens, security staff can't get to the site, and, if staffing drops below specified levels, venues can't operate. Boris?

• More Olympics news. Transport for London today launched its planning tool on temporary road changes, which lets drivers check road closures during the Games. And it did it in the most shameless and chauvinistic way possible. TfL got the women's British beach volleyball team to set up their net in Parliament Square, guaranteeing gridlock as white van men overheated. Yes, we realise you were demonstrating Games-related traffic jams, but parading women in bikinis and sports bras is nothing but a cheap PR stunt. The Diary was trapped in the square for four hours and, frankly, it was a disgusting spectacle.

• Talking of Boris, which we vaguely were, two journalists with strong links to the London Evening Standard – former newsdesk hack Sam Lyon and current chief news correspondent Ross Lydall – are in the frame to replace the recently departed mayoral mouthpiece Guto Harri. Anyone would think there was an umbilical link between Boris and the Standard.

• Bob Geldof has given a fascinating interview to ShortList magazine. Q: Are you passionate about recycling? "No, I don't want to think about it at all. It's just a fucking pain in the arse, all these coloured bins and stuff. I don't have a choice, though. Down in London you get fucking hung, drawn and quartered in the fucking public square if you don't." Good points, thoughtfully made.

• Tony Blair may be set to re-enter frontline politics, but what about Gordon Brown? When, if ever, will he re-emerge? The ex-PM is said to be concentrating on being a good local MP in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. Yet the diligent Fife Free Press has recorded little about Brown since he attended Cowdenbeath FC's vital match against Forfar Athletic, which clinched its elevation to the first division. That was on 21 April. Fife MSP John Park, who is said to be close to Brown, believes he could be part of the "dream team" (along with Alex Ferguson) to beat the SNP in the independence referendum. "He's potentially more popular than Alex Salmond," says Park, who must be extremely close. As the Heathcliff of the heather broods, the silence becomes deafening.

• Was too much champagne taken at the Journalism Foundation gala evening, which we reported on yesterday? There is growing confusion over who got the replica of the ring jeweller Stephen Webster created for Elizabeth Taylor. The hammer went down on Hugh Grant's bid of £10,000, but it has now been claimed by the Hon Geraldine Harmsworth Maxwell, a friend of Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev. The Journalism Foundation is checking its sources, and the Diary hopes to keep this starry ring cycle going for at least a month.

• Back to Bob's aperçus. Q: How many foreign-language films are in your DVD collection? "I don't have a DVD collection. I snap it out of the thing, watch it and give it back to the rental store. But we have a lot of foreign language, because the missus is French. They're always about some 85-year-old shagging an 18-year-old." Holy Motors!

• Hugh Muir is back next week, thank God, and apparently he's planning a hibu-style rebranding of the Diary. There's sure to be controversy, but ignore the whingers, Hugh. Merci, large drink tonight!

Twitter: @StephenMossGdn

Culture secretary wrote memo to David Cameron supporting family's £8bn bid, despite being warned he should not intervene

Jeremy Hunt's grip on ministerial office looked increasingly precarious after the Leveson inquiry heard that he had written an outspoken memo for David Cameron, staunchly supporting the Murdoch family's £8bn bid for BSkyB, a month before he was handed the task of adjudicating on whether to approve the media merger in an apolitical, "quasi-judicial" manner.

The culture secretary also demanded that the prime minister intervene to rein in Vince Cable, who was at the time responsible for the BSkyB bid – a request that explicitly contradicts a statement Hunt gave to parliament last month, in which he told MPs that he made "absolutely no interventions" to put pressure on the business secretary to wave the controversial takeover through.

It also raised fresh questions about the judgment of the prime minister and in particular his then cabinet secretary, Lord O'Donnell, who had ruled that Hunt would not prejudge the £8bn takeover even though he had publicly supported the bid. Cameron did not tell O'Donnell of the memo, but No 10 insisted the memo was "entirely consistent" with Hunt's previous public statements that the Murdoch's bid for BSkyB raised no media plurality issues.

The inquiry heard that the culture secretary drafted the email on his private Gmail account on 19 November 2010 despite being warned by his officials that he should not intervene because the decision was being taken exclusively by Cable. In the memo he voiced concern that Cable, the business secretary, had referred the takeover to media regulator Ofcom, warning him that James Murdoch was "pretty furious" and that the government "could end up in the wrong place in terms of media policy as a result".

Hunt wrote enthusiastically about the bid, saying Murdoch wanted to combine Sky television with the Sun and the Times to create a company spanning "from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad" and would revolutionise the media in the same way that James's father Rupert transformed newspapers by crushing the print unions at Wapping – although there was widespread opposition to a takeover that would have brought the largest broadcaster and the largest newspaper group together.

The News Corp bid was opposed by the rest of Fleet Street, including the owners of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph as well as the publishers of the Guardian and the Daily Mirror, and briefly by the BBC – but in his memo Hunt chose to characterise the deal's opponents in nakedly political terms, saying: "I think it would be totally wrong to cave into the Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line."

At the time, formal responsibility for adjudicating on the bid rested with Cable, who was stripped of the role by Cameron in December 2010 after it emerged that he had been secretly recorded by two reporters working for the Daily Telegraph saying that he had declared "war on Murdoch". Cable was deemed unable to rule fairly on the bid in the light of his remarks.

In the memo Hunt also requested that Cameron organise a meeting with himself, Nick Clegg and Cable, who was refusing to meet Murdoch, "to discuss the policy issues that are thrown up as a result" – although the sole legal responsibility for determining whether the bid should be approved rested with Cable. No such meeting took place.

Last month, however, Hunt denied to MPs that he sought to lobby against Cable. Speaking in the Commons Hunt said: "I made absolutely no interventions seeking to influence a quasi-judicial decision that was at that time the responsibility of the secretary of state for business. However, it is my responsibility to understand what is going on in the media industry and the impact of this very important sector, which employs thousands of people. That is why I was interested to find out what was going on."

It is a breach of the ministerial code to fail to tell the truth to parliament and the shadow culture secretary, Harriet Harman, said it was clear from evidence that Cameron gave responsibility to Hunt for ruling on the BSkyB bid when he knew only too well that the culture secretary was actively supporting it. "The prime minister should never have given him the job. It is clear Jeremy Hunt was not the impartial arbiter he was required to be, and he should already have resigned."

No 10 hit back, claiming: "Hunt's note is entirely consistent with his public statements on the BSkyB bid prior to taking on the quasi-judicial role. It also makes clear that 'it would be totally wrong for the government to get involved in a competition issue which has to be decided at arms length'. The PM has made clear throughout that he recused himself from decisions relating to BSkyB and did not seek to influence the process in any way."

Hunt was not himself at Leveson, which heard evidence from his former special adviser Adam Smith, who resigned last month after it emerged he had been in repeated contact with James Murdoch's chief lobbyist, Frédéric Michel, during the year-long bid approval process. The inquiry heard that Smith had been in contact with Michel more than 1,000 times by text, phone or email in the year after the Sky bid was launched in June 2010, with the two men sometimes speaking as often as four times a day. On one occasion Michel texted Hunt: "You were great at the Commons today" and Hunt replied: "Merci. Large drink tonight!"

Michel was repeatedly asked whether he thought that Smith was speaking for the minister. The inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC asked Michel: "You don't appear very willing to tell us, Mr Michel, whether Mr Hunt was supportive [of the Sky bid] or not ... or are you frankly not assisting us? Can we be clear?" Michel replied: "My view is that Jeremy Hunt was probably supportive of some of the arguments."

The Hunt memo was drafted by him and Smith to be sent to Cameron as part of a process of providing him with fortnightly political updates. Downing Street confirmed that Cameron received the memo dated four days after Hunt had a phone conversation with James Murdoch – a telephone call that was necessary because the minister had been banned from meeting the media mogul by his permanent secretary Jonathan Stephens.

Downing Street was further embarrassed yesterday when it emerged that Cameron's press secretary Craig Oliver met Michel for a "discreet" dinner in July 2011 two days after the Guardian broke the story about the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone.

Draft of Jeremy Hunt's letter to David Cameron, November 2010

James Murdoch is pretty furious at Vince [Cable]'s referral to Ofcom [of News Corp's bid to take full control of BSkyB]. He doesn't think he will get a fair hearing from Ofcom. I am privately concerned about this because News Corp are very litigious and we could end up in the wrong place in terms of media policy. Essentially what James Murdoch wants to do is to repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping and create the world's first multi-platform media operator available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad. Isn't this what all media companies have to do ultimately? ... we must be very careful that any attempt to block it is done on plurality grounds ...

The UK has the chance to lead the way on this as we did in the 80s with the Wapping move but if we block it our media sector will suffer for years ... I think it would be totally wrong to cave into the Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line that this represents a substantial change of control given that we all know Sky is controlled by News Corp now anyway... It would be totally wrong for the government to get involved in a competition issue which has to be decided at arm's length. However I do think you, I, Vince and [Nick Clegg] should meet to discuss the policy issues that are thrown up as a result.

Jeremy Hunt to MPs, 25 April 2012

I made absolutely no interventions seeking to influence a quasi-judicial decision that was at that time [Cable's] responsibility ... However, it is my responsibility to understand what is going on in the media industry and the impact of this very important sector, which employs thousands of people. That is why I was interested to find out what was going on.

If this module of the Leveson inquiry has a smoking gun, it is the memo Jeremy Hunt wrote to the prime minister on 19 November 2010

If this module of the Leveson inquiry has a smoking gun, it is the memo Jeremy Hunt wrote to the prime minister on 19 November 2010. Mr Hunt, as culture secretary, was not in charge of the News Corp BSkyB bid at the time – Vince Cable was – and Hunt's officials were emphatic that he should keep his nose out of it. He was forced to cancel a planned meeting with News Corp – instead arranging a mobile phone conversation with James Murdoch.

Having, quite inappropriately, spoken to Mr Murdoch on a private line, Mr Hunt could not, apparently, help himself. He promptly wrote a memo to Mr Cameron telling him that Mr Murdoch was "pretty furious" at Mr Cable's decision to refer the bid to Ofcom. He warned the prime minister the government "could end up in the wrong place" and demanded that they shouldn't cave in to the "Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line". He wanted the government to support Murdoch's vision – "to repeat what his father did … with Wapping and create the world's first multimedia operator available from paper to web to TV to iPhone". He requested a meeting with Cameron, Clegg and Cable. A month later, Mr Cable was removed from overseeing the bid on the grounds he was biased against it. Mr Hunt – whose bias in favour of the bid was evident from this memo – was asked by Mr Cameron to take over.

The memo was revealed at the end of a long day in which the inquiry's counsel, Robert Jay, had examined News Corp's lobbyist, Fred Michel, on the avalanche of material revealing the staggering degree of contact between the company and government while the bid was supposedly being dealt with in a quasi-judicial way. The inquiry will, in due course, be publishing more than 1,000 text messages and details of 350 calls and emails between Mr Michel and the DCMS. Mr Hunt's adviser, Adam Smith, admitted he had no contact at all with the coalition of newspapers – including the Guardian – which opposed the bid.

There are three obvious questions that flow from this new evidence. The first – for Mr Hunt – is why he so recklessly defied the advice of his officials to intervene with Downing Street over a matter in which he not only had no role, but had been positively warned to stay clear of. The paperwork turned over to Leveson clearly shows Hunt's bias towards the bid before he assumed responsibility for it. He showed virtually no interest in the counter-arguments once he was running the process and will have to explain the voluminous insider back-channel contacts between his office and News Corp.

News Corp must answer questions about the "son of Wapping" plan that has now been revealed by the memo. Throughout the bid its executives denied any plans to bundle together its newspapers, digital and TV offerings, companies, platforms and content. Sometimes it suited News Corp to claim that Sky was an entirely separate company. At others the argument was reversed (and duly adopted by Mr Hunt): Sky was controlled by News Corp, anyway, so there was no real proposed change of control. But it now seems apparent that there was, indeed, a well-advanced plan to bring the Murdoch platforms and content into one unity. Leveson should ask to see those plans.

Finally, there are ever-more delicate questions for Mr Cameron. Why, knowing that Mr Hunt was privately lobbying on behalf of the bid, did he think it was appropriate to appoint him to run it, given that Mr Cable – with different sympathies – had just been forced to step down over the appearance of partiality? And what is he going to do about Mr Hunt, who is due to give evidence to the inquiry next week? Mr Hunt has been shown to have defied his officials' advice and to have run the bid (under the ministerial code he has to take responsibility for Mr Smith) against a background of clandestine contacts having made his own position clear in advance. Had it not been for the Leveson inquiry we would have been kept in the dark about what went on. We are, daily, getting a fuller picture, and it is not an edifying one.

Jeremy Hunt's career hangs on credibility of middle men whose close relationship left no room for conflicting interests

They are the middle men whose hundreds of texts and emails go to the heart of the government's handling of Rupert Murdoch's aborted £8bn takeover of BSkyB.

News Corporation lobbyist Frédéric Michel and Adam Smith, former special adviser to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, finally emerged from the shadows to take centre stage at the Leveson inquiry.

French-born Michel, stepping down after giving four and a half hours of evidence at the Royal Courts of Justice, flashed a smile towards Smith as he passed him on the way to the witness stand.

The gesture may not have been reciprocated; Smith fell on his sword last month after Michel's boss, James Murdoch, released 164 pages of emails to the inquiry that showed a remarkably close relationship between the two men.

Except that Michel may not have been quite as close to the culture secretary as the emails at first appeared to suggest.

The lobbyist began his evidence on an ignominious note when he admitted that he had written hundreds of emails to James Murdoch claiming to have had briefings, feedback, "strong" and "long conversations" with Hunt throughout the 13-month passage of the bid.

"I provide below a full and detailed explanation of the references to 'Hunt', 'JH', 'He', 'Jeremy' in these emails are in fact summaries of what I was told by Adam Smith," read Michel's opening in his written witness statement.

The admission was overshadowed by the revelation immediately afterwards that the culture secretary's department had exchanged as many as 799 text messages between June 2010, when Murdoch announced his bid, to July 2011, when it was abandoned after the phone-hacking scandal. In addition, there were 191 telephone calls and 158 emails between Michel and Hunt's department – and 90% of these communications were with Smith. There were also phone calls with Hunt and texts from Michel praising the minster's performance in the House of Commons and on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show.

Michel even texted Hunt his support for Rafael Nadal after he spotted the minister at a tennis match on television. Michel admitted he was a compulsive texter but denied the messages amounted to "schmoozing". There were no such daily updates and "jokey texts" with other interested parties, including an alliance of newspapers and broadcasters including the Guardian, the Mail, Telegraph and Channel 4 opposed to the News Corp-BSkyB deal, the inquiry heard.

"If I were to ask you where is evidence of equivalent contact, any equivalent contact with another interested party, namely the anti-bid coalition, is there any or not?" asked Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, of Smith.

"There wouldn't be, because from my memory, I don't remember them getting in touch with me, no," replied Smith.

The inquiry heard how Smith had responsibility for managing the relationship with interested parties during the bidding process but that as far as he was concerned this meant News Corp only. He was asked whether this did not raise alarm bells in terms of what "arguably is a lack of balance here". Again Smith saw nothing inappropriate in this apparent favouritism shown to one side.

"No, not really," he replied, explaining to a rather sceptical Jay that the contact he had with Michel was because "often things needed to be sorted out, like redactions to documents or process points".

By the time Lord Justice Leveson intervened, saying "you didn't have to be a lawyer" to know "a judge hearing a case can't speak to the parties outside the case", it was clear Smith had not been briefed on whether the contact with Michel was appropriate in the quasi-judicial process.

At the end of the hearing, it appeared that Michel had an open door to the culture department, whether to Hunt or not, and the opposition did not.

Over four and half hours, the News Corp lobbyist was questioned about emails purporting to show he had a daily inside track on how its bid was faring against mounting opposition from the media regulator Ofcom and an anti-bid coalition of media organisations.

Jay tried to establish whether the welter of emails sent by Michel to James Murdoch claiming they were "in a good place" or that "there shouldn't be a media plurality issue" and "the UK government would be supportive throughout the process" were based in fact.

"Isn't the truth here, Mr Michel, that this [reference to government support] is an example of exaggeration by you to … whether it's to boost morale or to frankly puff yourself up, it's not what happened?" Michel batted straight back. "No, I don't need to puff myself up."

What Jay was trying to establish was whether the emails from Michel to Murdoch were accurate reflections of conversations he had had with Smith and whether Smith had been sanctioned to have this communication by Hunt. If they were, and Michel proved to be a credible witness, then Hunt would be in trouble when it came to his turn at the inquiry.

While he often appeared to get the better of Michel, Jay had difficulty nailing the lobbyist. "You don't appear very willing to tell us, Mr Michel, whether Mr Hunt was supportive or not … or are you frankly not assisting us? Can we be clear, Mr Michel?"

He replied: "My view is that Jeremy Hunt was probably supportive of some of the arguments."

Hunt's career is hanging on the credibility of these two witnesses. Had he sanctioned Smith to have this back channel of communication with Michel or did the special adviser exceed his brief?

Smith described himself as a "buffer" and a "channel of communications" between Hunt and News Corp. "Mr Hunt never gave me precise instructions as to what he perceived my role as special adviser to be," he said. "It was generally understood between us as a result of the way our working relationship had evolved." There was no doubting the high regard within which he was held in government, however. Hunt described him in an appraisal as "my eyes and ears at meetings … brilliant at handling difficult situations".

Even with the most significant developments in the BSkyB bid, Smith said he would only have meetings with Hunt "if they were leading up to him saying something". But Michel believed that on two or three occasions the "feedback I had had been discussed with the secretary of state before it was given to me".

Smith, who continues his evidence , has yet to be challenged about Michel's claim. But he conceded his view was "very broadly" the same as Hunt. "I didn't particularly mind either way whether it happened or not. In a funny sort of way, I couldn't see why everyone was getting quite so worked up about it." He does now.

Pressue will grow on culture secretary to resign after former aide reveals private email to Leveson inquiry

If Jeremy Hunt hoped the resignation of his close aide Adam Smith would draw the sting of the scandal surrounding his handling of Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB bid, his hopes would have been dashed by Smith's brief appearance before the Leveson inquiry on Thursday .

Though he spent little more than an hour in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice, Smith dropped the bombshell of the day by handing to the inquiry an email from his private account which could yet sever the slim thread connecting Hunt to his cabinet job.

The email contained a draft of a remarkable memo Hunt sent to David Cameron on 19 November, after a little drafting help from Smith. The memo railed against the business secretary, Vince Cable, for moving against the BSkyB takeover bid being promoted by the Murdoch family, father and son. It nailed Hunt's own colours firmly to the mast, as a committed, even passionate supporter of the bid.

Hunt even summoned up the spirit of Margaret Thatcher and her historic Tory struggles against the unions in the 1980s, writing enthusiastically: "Essentially what James Murdoch wants to do is to repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping and create the world's first multiplatform media operator available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad."

This was not quite the way News Corporation had publicly presented its bid at the time, assuring the world it had no intention of "bundling" advertising and subscriptions to create a dominant media behemoth.

More significantly for Hunt's personal political fortunes, the words of the memo are the exact opposite of the picture he has sought to present to the world, that he approached the BSkyB bid – which he became responsible for deciding from late December 2011 – in an impartial spirit.

Furthermore, Hunt had attempted to save himself by forcing the resignation of his own special adviser on the grounds that the "tone and content" of Smith's emails and texts to News Corp had gone too far, because they represented Hunt as supportive of the bid. It now seems, after the publication of the Hunt memo, that his special adviser was reflecting the contents of his master's mind with perfect accuracy. If anything, he was too mild in the way he put it.

Hunt had used strong terms in private: he told the prime minister James Murdoch was "furious" that Cable was interfering with his media plans, and that it would be "totally wrong" to "cave in" to the bid's opponents.

No one will call this language "quasi-judicial" – the term the government repeatedly used to characterise Hunt's handling of the bid after he took over responsibility for it. It is likely to appear to his critics just as biased in the other direction as was Cable when he lost his control of the bid for recklessly saying he had "declared war" on the Murdochs.

The history of events at the end of 2010, from the moment on 4 November when Cable called in the regulators, shows how relentlessly James Murdoch and his PR man Frédéric Michel lobbied and berated the politicians who were trying to stand in their way. Only three days later, Murdoch was lunching at Chequers with Cameron. The next day, Michel lunched an aide to George Osborne, the chancellor, who he hoped could be persuaded to intervene.

Cable's own advisers refused to meet any of the Murdoch camp, saying it would be improper. So did Treasury minister Danny Alexander.

Michel and James Murdoch therefore concentrated their fire on Hunt and his team at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), even though they had no official role in the legal process being carried out at Cable's business department. Murdoch phoned Hunt and also arranged to meet him.

Hunt caused growing dismay in his department by his apparent enthusiasm for intervening on behalf of the Murdochs. As Michel's published emails reveal, and as counsel to the Leveson inquiry confirmed on Thursday, the DCMS legal director gave him a stern warning not to meet James Murdoch or interfere in Cable's handling of the bid. While not strictly illegal, he said that it would be "unwise".

Hunt was apparently more concerned to appease Murdoch than bow to all his department's proprieties: he appears to have held a mobile phone conversation with Murdoch, although he cancelled his face-to-face meeting. Hunt was already well-briefed on Murdoch's plans: Michel had previously sent him, via his adviser Smith, a lobbying package, outlining Murdoch's ambitious plans for a multimedia breakthrough comparable in scale to his father's move to Wapping in the 1980s.

Within weeks of Hunt launching his anti-Cable campaign in Downing Street, the business secretary would fall victim to a newspaper sting in which he confided that he had "declared war" on Murdoch, and responsibility for the bid was turned over to Hunt.

Hunt's critics will now read the text of his memo to Cameron as the final nail in the coffin of his claims to have switched mentally to a "quasi-judicial" role. This will certainly increase the pressure on him to step down. But it will also raise the question of why Cameron, knowing what a committed supporter of the bid Hunt was, thought it appropriate to give him the job of deciding on it.

What is now known, thanks to the Leveson process, is that James Murdoch was considerably mollified at the time. In the runup to that Christmas, he and Cameron shared a now notorious Christmas lunch at the Oxfordshire home of News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, in a less "furious" and presumably more festive spirit.

No 10's director of communications dined with News Corp lobbyist at height of hacking scandal, submissions show

Craig Oliver, No 10's director of communications, had a "discreet" dinner with News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel at the height of the phone-hacking scandal.

It took place on 6 July 2011, two days after the Guardian had published the story about the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone that unleashed a wave of national revulsion and led to the closure of the News of the World.

Oliver was named as one of eight Downing Street advisers with whom Michel had contact, and it appears from submissions to the Leveson inquiry that Oliver specifically asked that they find a discreet location.

Although the special adviser's code requires that hospitality received by special advisers is disclosed on government registers, the meal was not declared by Oliver. Downing Street explained on Thursday night that Oliver and Michel shared the cost of the bill, and so no hospitality was extended and nothing need be declared. It is only ministers, rather than special advisers, who are required to declare meetings with senior newspaper executives, Downing Street said. Michel is likely to have been regarded as a senior newspaper executive by the Cabinet Office.

Oliver has taken the role of No 10 communications director in succession to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, and would have been seen as an important target to cultivate by News International.

The original purpose of the meeting was for Oliver to be introduced to Will Lewis, the former Daily Telegraph editor appointed by News International to oversee its handling of the hacking scandal. Michel said the meeting was originally going to include wives, but this did not occur and the eventual location of the meeting "was not discrete discreet at all".

The lobbyist said the meeting was social and the pair had not discussed business issues.

The Leveson inquiry also heard that Michel wrote to Oliver's deputy, Gabby Bertin, on 6 July 2011 thanking her for sending messages to Rebekah Brooks. Michel said he was not aware what was in the messages.

It was apparent Michel had one further weapon in his arsenal: be French. He had been 'melodramatising'

Until 24 April, when as a result of James Murdoch's evidence to the Leveson inquiry he was frogmarched towards the nearest cliff face and invited to fling himself forth, Adam Smith was extremely close to his boss, Jeremy Hunt. He was "under the wing" of the culture secretary, he said on Thursday, his "eyes and ears", his "early warning system", his "buffer". They would speak two, three, four times a day, fostering an intimacy so great that even when the minister wasn't present, in Hunt's own assessment, "[Smith] knows exactly what I would want to happen".

Which is just another reason – along with all the other ones – to wonder just what and how much Hunt knew about Smith's bit on the side. For however much attentive buffering the Spad performed to and for the minister, his attentions between the summer of 2010 and the following year were being claimed by another, a seduction to which the young special adviser was more than willing to submit.

How else were we to interpret the evidence that emerged when the two former intimates – the ministerial adviser tasked with handling the "interested parties" in News Corp's bid to take full control of BSkyB, and Frédéric Michel, the company's chief lobbyist – were reunited once more?

In the 13 months from June 2010, it emerged, when News Corp announced its intention to buy the remainder of the company, Michel made 191 phone calls, wrote 158 emails and sent 799 texts to Hunt's office, the overwhelming majority of them to Smith. He, in turn, texted Michel 257 times between November of the same year and July 2011.

On one night alone, on the eve of Hunt's announcement that he intended to accept News Corp's undertakings in lieu for the bid, the two men were still exchanging texts and calls at 1.09am, 2.59am, 3.05am. "This is in the middle of the night!" noted Lord Leveson, not incorrectly. There are lovers who have less contact.

Such a shame these things don't last. When Murdoch decided to release to the inquiry 163 pages of emails detailing News Corp's contact with Jeremy Hunt's office, their proxies found themselves forced to turn on each other. Although he resigned, Smith insisted he didn't recognise much of Michel's account of their contact.

The reputation of each now depends to an extent on how persuasively they can portray the other to the inquiry as a liar.

Though Michel was first to take the stand, Smith was in court 73, accompanied by his lawyer and a formidable stash of folders, almost from the moment the hearing opened. They sat at the back, side by side, on each of their laps a small yellow Post-It pad, ready to scribble discreet notes throughout the Frenchman's testimony.

Smith, who is 30 but blessed with such a youthful complexion that Leveson couldn't resist asking his age when he later took the stand himself, was impassive as the Frenchman gave evidence, only his eyes flicking between witness and interrogator.

Would Michel deliver the fatal blow to Hunt? Offer corroboration of some of the more apparently damning claims in his emails? Damn his former friend to shore up his own job at News Corp, which he still holds, apparently with the Murdochs' full confidence?

What he offered instead, as Robert Jay QC led him through selected highlights from his cache of emails, was a masterclass in the arts of advocacy.

There are, it transpires, a number of key attributes to being a successful director of public affairs for a major media behemoth. Chutzpah, for instance, is handy. The court had access not only to the original cache of his emails but to texts from Smith and Hunt among other records.

More than once, as Jay pointed out, his exuberant accounts to his News Corp team demonstrably bore little resemblance to the correspondence on which they were based. Was he exaggerating? "No." Perhaps to "puff himself up" in the eyes of his colleagues? "No, I don't think I need to puff myself up." (A healthy vanity also helps.)

Flattery is useful. "You were very impressive yesterday," he had texted Hunt after a meeting at the department in January 2011. "You were great at the Commons today," read another on 3 March; "Very good on Marr" on 13 March. "Is this an example of, to use the vernacular, of schmoozing, Mr Michel?" asked Jay. Michel gave a smile and a sad little shake of his head. "No. It's a friendly text." "Humph," grunted Jay.

If all else failed, it was apparent, Michel had one further weapon in his arsenal: be French. Yes, perhaps his account on that occasion had been overblown – he had obviously been "melodramatising". He was French, you see.

OK, so maybe the last sentence of that email was overblown – "you could probably put that on my sort of … way of writing English".

And his description to his bosses of a "one hour" conversation with Smith that the phone records showed had in fact been 34 minutes? "French time." Oh, and while we're at it, je ne regrette rien.

His evidence done, he stepped down from the stand to give way to Smith, a manoeuvre that forced them to shuffle around each other.

As they passed, the two former intimates exchanged the briefest ghost of a smile.

Culture secretary told parliament he had no unofficial contact with News Corp lobbyist while considering the BSkyB bid

Jeremy Hunt exchanged texts with Frédéric Michel at least four times despite telling parliament he had no unofficial contact with the News Corp lobbyist while he was considering the company's bid for BSkyB.

The culture secretary told MPs on 25 April that all of his contact with Michel while he had quasi-judicial oversight of the bid was minuted and in the company of government officials.

"Throughout the bid process, when I got responsibility for it, the contact that I had with Fred Michel was only at official meetings that were minuted with other people present," he told the Commons on the day after emails released by the Leveson inquiry appeared to reveal inappropriate communication between his department and News Corp.

However, text messages shown to the inquiry suggest Hunt had undisclosed conversations with Michel as recently as July last year. Michel told the inquiry that he exchanged "one text every three months" with Hunt over the period.

The texts

Michel to Hunt:

20 January 2011, 20.54

Great to see you today. We should get little [children's names redacted] together in the future to socialise. Nearly born the same day at the same place! Warm regards, Fred

Hunt to Michel:

20 January 2011, 23.45

Good to see you too. hope u understand why we have to have the long process. Let's meet up when things are resolved. J.

Michel to Hunt:

3 March 2011

You were great at the Commons today. Hope all well. Warm regards, Fred.

Hunt to Michel:

3 March 2011

Merci. Large drink tonight.

Michel to Hunt:

13 March 2011 Very good on Marr as always.

Hunt to Michel:

13 March 2011 Merci. Hopefully when consultation over we can have a coffee like the old days.

The pair also exchanged text messages in July 2011 after Michel spotted Hunt on TV at a Wimbledon tennis match between Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, the inquiry heard.

Leveson inquiry hears culture secretary had urged PM to support BSkyB takeover before he was appointed to oversee bid

Downing Street has been drawn further into the argument over News Corporation's bid to take over BSkyB after it emerged that David Cameron appointed the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to oversee the bid even though Hunt had directly lobbied him to resist the Murdoch company's rivals, including the BBC and the Guardian.

Hunt undertook his lobbying in November 2010, two months before Cameron appointed him to succeed the business secretary, Vince Cable, who had been revealed to have "declared war" on the Murdoch empire. Hunt claimed broadcasting would suffer for years if the bid did not go ahead.

Labour was pointing out on Thursday night that in late December 2010 it had written to the cabinet secretary, Lord O'Donnell, asking him not to appoint Hunt to oversee the bid, owing to his perceived bias.

O'Donnell replied to the then shadow business secretary, John Denham: "The prime minister specifically asked me whether there was any legal impediment to moving it to Mr Hunt. I took advice from lawyers, and in providing advice that there was no such impediment I was of course aware of the former statements from Mr Hunt which you cite. I am satisfied that those statements do not amount to a pre-judgment of the case in question."

He added in evidence to the Leveson inquiry: "I think the legal question as it was put to me was: do those ministers' comments amount to a pre-judgment of the issue? And that's where the lawyers were clear that it didn't."

It is now likely that Cameron, when he gives evidence to the inquiry next month, will be asked why he did not disclose the Hunt memo to O'Donnell, and whether he thinks he should have.

No 10 will argue that he "did not sit on the memo with knowledge", and that O'Donnell was only looking at Hunt's public statements. It was also being suggested that O'Donnell was anyway not making his ruling primarily on the basis of Hunt's previous statements, but how he would behave in the future, and whether he had the capacity to be neutral.

But it is also likely that O'Donnell will himself be asked by Leveson whether, in coming to a judgment on Hunt's suitability to judge the bid, he should have been informed of Hunt's lobbying of No 10, and whether it would have changed his view.

O'Donnell has already given wide ranging evidence to the Leveson inquiry once, but was only superficially pressed on this issue.

Hunt's officials argued on Thursday that the memo does not show a bias or a prejudgment, as Hunt explicitly says the bid should only go ahead subject to competition considerations, and this was a legitimate position to adopt.

Hunt's allies added that, in a prior Financial Times interview on 16 June, Hunt had been much more explicit in his view that plurality issues did not arise because News Corp already owned 39.1% of BSkyB. He told the FT: "It does seem to me that News Corp do control Sky already so it is not clear to me that in terms of media plurality there is a substantive change, but I do not want to second guess what regulators might decide."

Downing Street sources claim the memo released at Leveson was far more caveated than these previous public media remarks. It was also suggested that the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, also takes this view. Downing Street said the memo makes clear that "it would be totally wrong for the government to get involved in a competition issue which has to be decided at arm's length".

Labour pointed out that Hunt had told parliament he had "made absolutely no interventions seeking to influence a quasi-judicial decision that was at the time the responsibility of the secretary of state for business".

Hunt and his permanent secretary, Jonathan Stephens, are facing questions over the extent to which they briefed Adam Smith, Hunt's special adviser, on how to handle contacts with News Corp when handling a decision of a quasi-judicial nature.

O'Donnell told the inquiry this month that the minister or the permanent secretary should specify this was a different quality of decision and in particular "you should make sure that the same information is passed on all parties in a case. This is not least to protect against a future judicial review". Smith admitted he spoke far more regularly to News Corp, and there is no parallel traffic with those opposed to the bid.

The News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel washed his hands of Hunt's behaviour, saying of his contacts: "If anyone from Hunt's office thought this inappropriate they would have told me. It's not for me to say how Hunt's office should work."

Culture department sources claimed the contacts were tilted in one direction as News Corp was the organisation fighting to keep the bid on track, and trying to persuade the government that its assurances of editorial independence for BSkyB were genuine. There was no need to talk as much to those opposed to the bid.

If Stephens declares it was the responsibility of Hunt to control the contacts of his special adviser, and that he did not, then Hunt may prima facie be in breach of the ministerial code. Cameron has been resisting referring any such breaches of the code to the independent adviser on the code, Sir Alex Allan, at least until this wave of hearings has ended.

Culture secretary tried to persuade David Cameron to lean on Vince Cable over News Corp's BSkyB bid

Jeremy Hunt's memo for David Cameron appears to reveal what many suspected all along. The culture secretary's words show he was desperate to please a "pretty furious" James Murdoch – so desperate in fact that he tried to persuade the prime minister in the middle of November 2010 to lean on Vince Cable, the minister with sole legal responsibility for taking the decision over News Corp's desire to take over the whole of BSkyB.

Hunt's memo to the prime minister also betrays more inside information about the frustrated mogul's thinking. Hunt says James Murdoch wants to "create the world's first multi-platform media operator available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad". Or, to put it another way, Murdoch wanted to bundle together Sky with the Sun and the Times – from Sky football matches to Sun match reports, or rolling TV news integrated with Times journalism – all wrapped together for a single price.

It was precisely this scenario that terrified everybody else in Fleet Street, from the Telegraph to the Guardian, from the Mail to the Mirror, because it would have fused together the nation's biggest broadcaster with the country's largest newspaper group, boasting content that rival titles could not match.

Hunt was so taken with the prospect he describes it as akin to a second Wapping revolution. But this was precisely the scenario that News Corp refused to discuss in public; the company consistently said it saw the purchase of BSkyB as essentially financial. For example, in a phone interview with the Guardian earlier that month, James Murdoch explicitly played down the possibilities of bundling Sky with his company's newspapers. He almost laughed when the question was put, knowing it was the basis of the objections of his Fleet Street rivals to the £8bn bid for BSkyB.

It isn't clear where Hunt's information came from. There is no documentary evidence to explain it – at least not yet. But the memo to Cameron was dated 19 November 2010. Four days earlier, Hunt was due to meet James Murdoch, but he was told he could not by his permanent secretary. It was too sensitive. Instead, the pair spoke on the phone – and whatever was said was probably fresh in the minister's mind.

Cable was prevented from adjudicating on the Sky bid because of unguarded comments given to Daily Telegraph reporters – his declaration of "war on Murdoch" – who covertly recorded him.

Hunt, meanwhile, seems to have been James Murdoch's biggest advocate. He may have been handed a quasi-judicial responsibility but, it seems, he had already made up his mind.

Under persistent questioning, Adam Smith reiterated that the culture secretary had always said there wasn't a problem with the Murdoch bid

American Idol is still attracting millions of viewers, despite perceptions of flagging ratings and cultural irrelevance

This is a good week to be an American Idol alum.

Sure, Phillip Phillips, the likeable Georgian with massive talent and aw-shucks modesty, handily won the 11th season on Wednesday night. But the interesting news lies with contestants of Idols past.

Adam Lambert, the eighth season runner-up, debuted on the top spot of the Billboard charts this week with Tresspassing. He is the seventh former Idol contestant who can claim a number one record. Lambert's second album dethroned another Idol alum, Carrie Underwood (season four winner), selling 77,000 copies.

Lambert also beat the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is Adele's 21 for the week by 14,000 units.

With this feat, the singer becomes the first openly gay musician ever to top the Billboard 200. (Although former Idol contender Clay Aiken topped the charts before he was publicly out.)

Aside from Lambert and Underwood, there are three other Idol acts represented in the Billboard 200 this week. Kelly Clarkson's Stronger is at the 52 spot, Scotty McCreery occupies the 97th slot with Clear as Day and hanging in at 171 is Daughtry's Break the Spell.

Still, Lambert's coup is somewhat diminished by the fact that his album reached the top spot with the least sales of any number one for the past year.

So what can Phillips take from this?

"Not every season can churn out the stars. Does anyone remember Lee DeWyze?" asked Billboard's Keith Caulfield.

"Phillip Phillips is interesting becaue you can peg him as a David Cook, Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze winner: a guy with a guitar singing guy-with-a-guitar songs. That can work. And sometimes it doesn't."

Despite a perception of flagging ratings and a diminished cultural relevance, Idol still averaged 18 million viewers for the season, according to Adweek's Anthony Crupi. The closest competitor, NBC's The Voice, a sexier show in its second season, averaged 14.1 million.

"Idol is basically still the top-rated thing that doesn't have football in it," said Crupi.

And, as such, appearing on the show remains a good career move, regardless of whether you win. But it does help if you got on the show early: of the top 10 selling Idol alums, nine were from the first five seasons.

While it remains to be seen whether Phillips' career will reach the heights of Underwood, Clarkson, Daughtry or even Lambert, he was the clear favorite in a season that still attracted millions of (increasingly aging) viewers. In its first season the average Idol viewer was 31. In its eleventh? 50.

But season 11 runner up Jessica Sanchez can take a little heart: not winning the show is hardly a predictor of failure. Ruben Studdard, the second season winner, has sold far fewer records than Clay Aiken, that season's most successful runner-up.

"Some acts just aren't necessarily meant to sell millions and millions of albums," said Billboard's Caulfield. "Sanchez has such an amazing voice. But does that translate into a singer people want more from?"

Jennifer Hudson, who finished in seventh place in season three, is one of the biggest stars to emerge from Idol, having won an Academy Award for her stirring performance in Dreamgirls. Still, in terms of album sales, she is in tenth place among former Idol contestants.

"Right now [Phillips and Sanchez] are TV stars," said Caulfield. "So we will see if they can make the transition from regular, weekly fixture on the television to something you want to buy on iTunes."

• Hunt drafted memo to Cameron backing News Corp's Sky bid
• Smith admits no contact with anti-bid coalition
• Michel: Smith gave updates on timings and process of bid
• DCMS 'encouraged News Corp to stay in the game on Sky bid'
• Michel denies he exaggerated DCMS position to Murdoch
• Hunt adviser sent 257 texts to News Corp lobbyist
• Over 1,000 texts between News Corp and DCMS over Sky bid
• Michel: 'I apologise if my texts are too jokey sometimes'

6.16pm: The Guardian's Josh Halliday has just tweeted:

Hunt to MPs 25/04: No unminuted/unofficial contact with Michel (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201212/cm …); Michel to #Leveson 24/05: "one text every 3 months"

— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) May 24, 2012

6.13pm: The Guardian's Patrick Wintour has just tweeted:

Downing Street claims Hunt memo is the same as his remarks in newspaper interviews and did not show he had prejudged the issue.

— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) May 24, 2012

5.13pm: Lisa O'Carroll adds this:

Following the meeting to hand over responsibility for the BSkyB from Vince Cable's office to Jeremy Hunt's office, an email was circulated to summarise the key points.

The confidential memo which was shown to the inquiry in court 73 but has not yet been published raised concerns about several issues including a rumoured plan by Rupert Murdoch to "bundle" content from his newspapers with content from BSkyB enabling readers and viewers to subscribe to packages of coverage of, for instance, sport from the Sun and the Times along with Sky Sport.

The memo reads: "Is bundling a competition issue and something that we need to think about?"

The memo goes on to also raise concerns over an imminent Ofcom report into plurality issues arising from the takeover bid.

"Are we permitted to share the Ofcom report with News Corp but not with other interested parties? " the memo asks.

Finally it says Jeremy Hunt would like some reading material for his Christmas break to familiarise himself with interventions made to Vince Cable.

"The secretary of state said that he would be grateful for some reading material that he could peruse over the Xmas break – we should keep this concise. He would particularly like to see a summary of the representations that were made prior to Vince Cable's intervention notice to Ofcom (eg Enders Analysis) as well as the EC Rreport. You also explained that the EC report is not in the public domain."

5.12pm: The Guardian's John Plunkett adds:

The special adviser at the centre of the controversy over Jeremy Hunt's handling of News Corp's aborted BSkyB takeover said he "couldn't see why everyone was getting quite so worked up" about the £8bn merger.

Adam Smith said his position on the merger was "very broadly" the same as Hunt.

"I didn't to be honest particularly mind either way whether it happened or not," said Smith.

"In a funny sort of way I couldn't quite see why everyone was getting quite so worked up about it."

Jay told the inquiry: "This is the sort of issue which for whatever reason has the tendency to divide opinion, where people hold strong points of view on either side. You're aware of that?"

In his evidence, Smith said he remembered Hunt saying he wanted to be fair to everybody, including News Corporation.

"Was there a sense that the previous incumbent [Vince Cable] had not been fair to News Corp?"

Smith said: "I think that was the view, yes. I think it more meant that he would consider the bid on the grounds of media plurality rather than anything else."

5.06pm: The Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has this on Smith's evidence:

Jeremy Hunt's special adviser Adam Smith admitted he had no contact with the coalition of newspapers and broadcasters that was officially opposing News Corp's £8bn BSkyB bid.

He told the Leveson inquiry that that might "possibly" have been an "interested party" but he didn't have any contact with them because "I don't remember them getting in touch with me."

Robert Jay, counsel to the inquiry, repeatedly pressed him on the point that this might have amounted to bias in what was a quasi-judicial role. Smith made it clear that he did not understand the quasi-judicial process to mean he had to have equal contact with all interested parties.

"Did that even intuitively raise alarm bells with you? Mr Smith," Jay asked.

"No not really," said Smith explaining much of his contact with Michel was "redactions to documents or process points and obviously you don't necessarily meed to talk to other interested parties."

"My understanding of 'quasi-judicial' was that Mr Hunt had to decide on media plurality issues," he added.

The media alliance that opposed the BSkyB have accused the government of showing bias towards Rupert Murdoch in the bid and said they had only one "wooden" meeting with the culture secretary which was as good as a "chocolate teapot".

4.58pm: Here is an evening summary of today's Leveson inquiry evidence:

• Jeremy Hunt drafted a memo to David Cameron saying it would be "totally wrong" to block News Corp's BSkyB bid four weeks before he was put in charge of the controversial takeover.

• Hunt told Cameron that James Murdoch was "pretty furious" at the Ofcom referral by Vince Cable.

• Hunt aide Adam Smith confirmed he was broadly in favour of the BSkyB bid while DCMS had judicial oversight.

• Smith admitted having no contact with anti-bid coalition, despite more than 1,000 text messages between his department and News Corp.

• News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel was given Hunt statement on BSkyB bid four hours before culture secretary spoke in Commons.

• Michel denied exaggerating conversations with Smith or that he received a "running commentary" on confidential government process.

• Smith sent 257 text messages to Michel over the course of the BSkyB bid.

4.51pm: The Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has just tweeted:

Leveson over. Clearly Smith had no concept of quasi judicial process even though this affected stock Market fr news corp and BskyB

— Lisa O'Carroll (�@lisaocarroll) May 24, 2012

4.47pm: The inquiry has finished for the day.

Smith will return to complete his evidence tomorrow morning from 9.30 am.

4.43pm: Here is the full final exchange in which Smith confirms that he broadly agreed that News Corp should be allowed to buy BSkyB.

Jay: "Would you in essence describe your position on the merits of the bid as broadly speaking same as Mr Hunt's position?"

Smith: "Very broady. I didn't, to be honest with you, particularly mind either way where it happened or not. In a funny sort of way I couldn't quite see why everyone was getting quite so worked up about, but broadly speaking yes."

Jay: "Broadly speaking?

Smith: "Yeah, broadly."

4.41pm: Smith says his view on the plurality issues around the bid was drawn from the expert advice, "not much" more than that.

He adds that "broadly speaking" he shared the view of Hunt that the deal should go through.

"I didn't particularly mind either way whether it happened or not. In a funny way I couldn't see what everyone was getting worked up about. Broadly speaking, yes [I was in favour]".

4.39pm: Jay asks if this apparent bias raised any eyebrows.

"Not really," answers Smith. Jay suggests that Smith treated his role in the BSkyB bid as any other media policy decision. Smith says he did.

4.36pm: Smith "can't remember" whether Hunt asked him to the be point of contact for News Corp's Michel over the bid. The permanent secretary did not explain it either.

4.35pm: The Guardian's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted:

Wapping 2 (multi-platform, from paper to web to tv to digital) is just what News Corp denied was aim w Sky bid ‪#Leveson

— Alan Rusbridger (�@arusbridger) May 24, 2012

and

Memo reveals that Cam knew Hunt was passionate supporter of Sky bid just before he appts him in place of Vince

— Alan Rusbridger (�@arusbridger) May 24, 2012

4.33pm: Smith does not remember having any contact from the coalition of media groups who were opposed to the BSkyB bid.

Smith says: "There wouldn't be any [correspondence] because I don't remember them getting in touch with me".

4.33pm: Was there a view that Cable had not been fair to News Corp, asks Jay? "I think that was the view, yes," Smith replies.

4.31pm: media veteran Andrew Neil has just tweeted:

Cameron knew Hunt was pro BSkyB but still put him in charge of takeover process. Hunt memo to Cameron v revealing ‪#leveson

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) May 24, 2012

4.31pm: In his written statement, Smith says Hunt expressed a desire to "do things differently from Mr Cable" and "be more open" and hold more meetings with interested parties. Smith explains that Hunt was aware Cable had held no meetings with News Corp over the bid, and that he wanted to be seen as open to receiving representations.

4.30pm: Smith says there was "no direct instruction" about what he could and could not do in relation to his correspondence around the BSkyB bid.

4.30pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Hunt's memo to Cameron reveals a piece of News Corp strategy that was NOT in the public domain. News Corp ruled out TV/newspaper bundling

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

4.27pm: The Guardian's Patrick Wintour has just tweeted:

Pm spokesman says hunt statement to parliament on april 25 was given in context of evidence to leveson day before. Does not say accurate.

— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) May 24, 2012

and

Pm spokesman had 4 chances at briefing to say hunt gave fully accurate account to parliament of his contacts with news international.

— Patrick Wintour (@patrickwintour) May 24, 2012

4.25pm: Leveson intervenes to say that you do not have to be a lawyer to understand that "quasi-judicial" means that whoever has this oversight cannot speak to the parties "in the evening" or in any way other than is "open and transparent to everyone".

4.23pm: Jay turns to a meeting on 22 December 2010 between BIS officials handing over the bid to DCMS officials, including Hunt.

Hunt's "quasi-judicial" role was likely discussed at this meeting, Smith says.

4.21pm: Here is the draft text of the memo from Hunt to Cameron from November 2010:

James Murdoch is pretty furious at Vince's referral to Ofcom. He doesn't think he will get a fair hearing from Ofcom. I am privately concerned about this because News Corp are very litigious and we could end up in the wrong place in terms of media policy. Essentially what James Murdoch wants to do is to repeat what his father did with the move to Wapping and create the world's first multiplatform media operator available from paper to web to TV to iPhone to iPad. Isn't this what all media companies have to do ultimately? And if so we must be very careful that any attempt to block it is done on plurality grounds and not as a result of lobbying by competitors.

The UK has the chance to lead the way on this as we did in the 80s with the Wapping move but if we block it our media sector will suffer for years. In the end I am sure sensible controls can be put into any merger to ensure there is plurality but I think it would be totally wrong to cave into the Mark Thompson/Channel 4/Guardian line that this represents a substantial change of control given that we all know Sky is controlled by News Corp now anyway.

What next? Ofcom will issue their report saying whether it needs to go to the Competition Commission by 31 December. It would be totally wrong for the government to get involved in a competition issue which has to be decided at arm's length. However I do think you, I, Vince and the DPM [deputy prime minister] should meet to discuss the policy issues that are thrown up as a result.

4.19pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Hunt memo to Cameron is extraordinary. Firmly takes side of James Murdoch, dismisses critics as BBC + Guardian.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

and

Hunt memo divides media world into Murdoch and publicly owned/trust owned media orgs. No room for Mail or Telegraph or ITV

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

4.17pm: Hunt received legal advice from officials that "it would be unwise" to intervene on the BSkyB bid because Cable was handling it. Hunt later sent the memo to Cameron.

The culture secretary said in the memo that it would be "totally wrong to cave into the [BBC], Channel 4, Guardian line" of opposition to the bid.

4.16pm: Smith says he spoke to Jonathan Stephens, the DCMS permanent secretary, about comments made publicly by Hunt about the BSkyB bid.

Pressed on whether he asked for private comments as well, Smith says: "I believe it was public comment".

4.16pm: The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted:

Hunt memo to Cameron Nov 19 10: "James Murdoch is furious .. he wants to repeat what his father did at Wapping."

— Alan Rusbridger (@�arusbridger) May 24, 2012

4.12pm: Hunt said in his memo to Cameron that News Corp's BSkyB bid raised "no plurality issues as we all know Sky is controlled by News Corp now anyway."

4.12pm: Smith says to the best of his knowledge there was never a meeting between Hunt, Cable and the prime minister over the bid, following Hunt's intervention to David Cameron.

4.07pm: Hunt emailed Smith on 19 November 2010 saying he was "privately concerned about this because News Corp are very litigious" and that James Murdoch was "pretty furious" about Cable referring the bid to Ofcom.

Hunt told Smith that Murdoch wanted to "create the world's first multiplatform operator" and "if we block it our media sector will suffer for years".

He added in the email that sensible controls could be put in place and that they should discuss this with Cable.

Smith says "yes, I suppose" when asked by Jay whether this email shows the culture secretary saw no impediment to the bid.

"His personal view then was yes," adds Smith.

This was a draft version of a fortnightly update that was to be sent to David Cameron.

4.03pm: Leveson asks what this had to do with the DCMS and Smith, given that the BSkyB bid in October 2010 was being handled by Vince Cable's department for business.

Smith says it was a hot media topic at the time and the documents were just for information.

4.02pm: Smith is asked about the briefing documents he was sent by Michel on 7 October 2010 titled "Strictly confidential but very interesting". One related to plurality issues and the other was about competition issues.

Smith forwarded the documents to Hunt and the culture secretary replied that they were "very powerful actually".

Michel interpreted that as Hunt believing the documents were "persuasive".

4.01pm: Smith says he cannot remember having informal comments with Hunt about the bid before it was announced on 15 June 2010.

I think his public comments were well known. He said something along the lines of 'he couldn't see a particular problem with it but didn't want to second-guess the regulators' and that's something he [adhered to] throughout the process.

3.59pm: Jay turns to Hunt's thinking on the BSkyB bid before 21 December 2010. Smith says he did not believe Hunt was close to News Corp.

"He [Hunt] did not have that much of a relationship with either of the Murdochs or the chief executive of News International ... but he was not close to News Corp," Smith says.

Smith denies that Hunt was a "cheerleader" for News Corp's BSkyB bid.

3.58pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Smith's A* appraisal of Dec 10 -"effective operator; bright, articulate, insightful, extremely well briefed".

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

3.57pm: In his witness statement, Smith describes himself as a "buffer" for outside organisations that wanted to meet Hunt. "It was to help him focus on what he wanted to do," he says. It was at Smith's discretion whether to suggest meetings to Hunt.

3.54pm: During News Corp's BSkyB bid, Smith's contact with Hunt about the takeover was "not as frequent" as you would expect and not daily. It was driven by events.

He spoke to Hunt around News Corp's publication of its undertaking in lieu, he confirms.

Smith would often speak to Hunt if events "were leading up to him announcing something," he adds.

3.54pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Adam's five star appraisal in Dec 10 is flashed up on our screens. "An ideal bridge with the dept and minister" + "consistently adds value"

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

3.53pm: Smith says he would generally speak to Hunt between two and four times a day. He was based down the corridor from Hunt's office at DCMS headquarters in central London.

3.52pm: Smith says it is fair to say that he was "under the wing" of Hunt as his special adviser.

Hunt gave him specific instructions on some occasions, he says, but generally he acted in accordance with what he believed Hunt expected of him.

3.50pm: Smith says that the permanent secretary had a supervisory role over him and others in the department. Jay asks who Smith's line manager was.

I didn't really have a line manager if you like. I reported in to Mr Hunt and would meet with senior officials.

3.40pm: Leveson thanks Smith for appearing and says it "can't be an easy time" for him. He resigned the day after his correspondence was published by the inquiry at the end of last month.

Leveson asks Smith his age, and he says he is 30 years old.

3.39pm: Adam Smith, Jeremy Hunt's former special adviser, takes the witness stand.

3.38pm: Michel has now completed his evidence.

3.37pm: Michel texted George Osborne's chief of staff asking him to recruit the chancellor to support News Corp's Sky bid:

Michel text to Rupert Harrison Nov 09 2010

Rupert just spoke with James it would be helpful if George were to send a letter to Vince on our Sky merger and its economic importance separate from the Ofcom process. Do you think it is a possibility. I can of course help with the content. Best, fred

3.37pm: Michel says it was never put to him that he would get a substantial pay bonus if News Corp was able to purchase the remaining shares in BSkyB.

3.32pm: Michel later texted Gabby Bertin, the prime minister's spokeswoman, saying "thank you for your messages to Rebekah last night":

Michel text Gabby Bertin - 06 Jul 2011 08.17

And thank for your messages to Rebekah last night xxx

3.31pm: Michel tried to organise a dinner with News Corp's Will Lewis and No 10 press chief Craig Oliver, on 6 July 2011, shortly after the Guardian's Milly Dowler revelations.

Here is Michel's text to Oliver and email to Osborne's special adviser, Rupert Harrison:

Will suggests we meet for dinner with no wives. Is that okay/ what time?

Email to Rupert Harrison
10 July 2012
Hi, Quick question for your advice, you think it would be possible/helpful to get a senior govt person to come out condemning strongly phone hacking, ask for thorough police investigation but insisting on the need or the legal process to be follows ? Incredible that a business decision on a massive taker could be left to Parilament to oppose/influence no? Hope all is week , Fred.

Jay says Michel "wanted to find a discreet location".

Michel says in the end Oliver could not make it.

"It was social. The idea was to introduce Will to Craig," says Michel.

3.30pm: The inquiry has resumed and Jay turns to text messages from Michel to various individuals.

On 13 May 2011, Michel texted Craig Oliver, the No 10 adviser, saying "phone hacking case to be launched against Daily Mail on Monday".

Michel tells the inquiry: "It was a rumour I had been told. It never happened".

3.27pm: Former Guardian media correspondent James Robinson has just tweeted:

Poor Adam Smith has been waiting to come in to bat all day. Those pads must be getting very uncomfortable #leveson

— james robinson (@jamesro47) May 24, 2012

3.26pm: The Guardian's deputy editor, Ian Katz, has just tweeted:

Michel insists key mail to Brooks saying Hunt and No 10 want help shaping response to hacking broadly accurate tho language poss bit strong

— ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

3.20pm: The inquiry is now taking a short break.

3.18pm: Michel says Smith told him on 7 July about possible public inquiries (such as Leveson).

Michel says he offered to brief the DCMS and other government departments on phone-hacking issues after the Guardian broke the Milly Dowler story "and it was something that was welcomed at that time".

Smith says he didn't know about this.

3.17pm: Michel tried to secure a meeting with Hunt's deputy Ed Vaizey around 7 June but was rebuffed by the department and Smith.

3.16pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh reports that Adam Smith's evidence is now likely to run on into tomorrow given the pace of Michel's evidence.

3.12pm: Jay quotes emails from Michel highlighting News Corp's increasing frustration with the bid process, at one point even threatening that it might walk awy from the bid.

Michel says he was "reflecting the internal frustration from high up" when he told Smith that News Corp could withdraw its bid if lengthy regulatory hurdles continued.

3.04pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel's "one hour" phone call with Smith on March 10 was actually 34min long. "French time" Michel says.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

2.59pm: Michel was told by Smith that Hunt was "minded to accept" and that he would make a statement the following day.

Jay says if the correspondence is correct Smith gave Michel a preview of Hunt's statement at 3.25am – four hours before it was delivered to parliament.

2.57pm: Jay turns to the events of 3 March 2011, when Hunt publicly announced that he was minded to accept News Corp's undertakings in lieu for the BSkyB bid.

There was a spike in correspondence between Smith and Michel, the inquiry hears, at around midnight when News Corp was putting the finishing touches to its press statement about the bid.

2.52pm: On 11 February 2011, Michel emailed Murdoch to say:

JH called:

- he now knows what OFCOM and OFT will send him tonight: both will recommend he refers to CC

Jay suggests that by this time Michel knew that DCMS backed News Corp's BSkyB bid.

Michel says: "They [the DCMS] were encouraging us to stay in the game, but I wouldn't say they were parti pris."

2.51pm: The Guardian's deputy editor, Ian Katz, has just tweeted:

Michel says call in which he tld Hunt (via Smith) to shw "some backbone" was attempt to "reflect frustration + language we wr using in team"

— ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

2.49pm: The next day, Michel emailed Murdoch and others to say: "Just had a strong and long exchange with him
again now."

Jay puts it to him that the call was just over three minutes – hardly "long".

2.48pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel told J Murdoch he spoke to "JH" before Swan Lake on Feb 9 when in fact Smith spoke to Hunt at 19.03 and appears to have relayed back

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

2.46pm: Hunt and Smith exchanged calls and text messages just before the culture secretary apparently went to see Swan Lake on 9 February 2011, says Jay.

Smith and Michel spoke later on the phone for about half an hour, the inquiry hears.

2.46pm: The Labour MP Chris Bryant has just tweeted:

One other point: Hunt told parl 25/04: "I have published all advice.. together with corresp between myself and News Corp". Clearly a lie.

— Chris Bryant (@ChrisBryantMP) May 24, 2012

2.42pm: Michel says there was a "toxic relationship and mistrust of Ofcom" at News Corp and that he was getting on well with Smith even after the bid process.

2.40pm: The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted:

Michel claims Hunt's man offered to provide him confidential documentsfrom opponents of Sky bid#Leveson

— alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) May 24, 2012

2.40pm: Jay turns to a 23-minute phone call between Smith and Michel.

In a follow-up text, Michel asks Smith to send him written submissions to the DCMS from a group which opposed the bid.

In the reply, Smith says "don't mention them to anyone like OFT". Michel was not given the documents, Jay says.

2.33pm: Michel is asked about a further text exchange of 25 January 2011:

FM/AS: Today went well. Look at the coalition campaign's statement: so weak!

FM/AS I think we re in a good place tonight no?

AS/FM I agree. Coverage looks ok. Let's look again in the morning though!

Michel later emailed James Murdoch to say:

Just had update on today's events with JH.

Given the opposition has very few arguments on the impact on media plurality...

JH believes we're in a good place tonight. Let's see what the morning's coverage brings.

Michel says he interpreted that as the undertakings in lieu had been represented well.

2.31pm: This is the email in which Smith allegedly told Michel it would be "game over for the opposition" if strong undertakings in lieu in relation to the bid for BSkyB were published.

The inquiry is told by Jay that Smith "hotly contests" the email.

To: Anderson, Matthew
From Michel, Fred
Date: 23/01/2011
Time: 8.59pm

He still wants to stick to the following plan:

- Monday: receive further details on UIL - but to need to meet at this stage

- Tuesday: Publication of Ofcom report; our submission and announcement that he has received UIL proposal and is looking into it

- Ask OFT to work with us on the UIL

- Put the UIL to Ofcom for advice. He said he would be able to send it to them with a specific question to limit their ability to challenge it [ie - 'your report demonstrates that Sky News is the core concern; I would like you to consider the following UIL which addresses all of these issues] He said Ofcom would not be able to create major obstacles in that way

- That in 2 weeks time, he announces he is minded to refer but has received a very substantial UIL and would like to consult publicaly

- He predicts it should all be done by mid-Feb.

His view is that he announces publicly he has a strong UIL, it's almost game over the opposition.

He understands fully our concerns/fears regarding the publication of the report and the consultation of Ofcom in the process, but he wants us to take the hear with him, in the next two weeks.

He very specifically said that he was keen to get to the same outcome and wanted JRM to understand he need to build some political cover on the process.

If he were to follow our Option 1 and not provide any details on the Ofcom report, he would be accused of putting a deal together with us behind closed doors and it would get in much more difficult place. The more this gets out now, the better it will be as the opposition with lose arguments. This week's events do not give him much choice

He said we would get there at the end ad he shared the objectives.

Finally he asked us to stick with him in the coming weeks plan the upcoming Tuesday's publication and the debate which will unfold

Fred

2.27pm: Smith continued:

Other than what jeremy and I have told you! We have no legal wriggle room in a statement to parliament.

2.25pm: On 25 January 2011, Smith texted Michel to say:

There's plenty- potential to mitigate problems! We can't say they are too brilliant otherwise people will call for them to be published. Will check on meetings.

Michel agrees that this refers to News Corp's undertakings in lieu.

2.22pm: Michel admits he was surprised that Smith sent him pre-notification of Hunt's statement on the BSkyB bid before it was made to parliament.

The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel was surprised that Smith shared info with him about the content of Hunt's Jan statement on Sky bid as early as 3.21pm the day before

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

2.22pm: Michel is asked why he told Murdoch he had been given sensitive documents from Smith "although absolutely illegal".

He answers: "It was a very bad joke. In hindsight, I wouldn't have put such words ... It's just an expression of surprise from me."

2.20pm: On 24 January 2011, Michel emailed James Murdoch:

Subject: RE: CONFIDENTIAL - JH STATEMENT

At the end, JH will indicate..

Subject: CONFIDENTIAL-JH STATEMENT

Managed to get some infos on the plans for tomorrow [athough absolutely illegal…>!]

JH will announce that...

2.20pm:

[On UILs - inthe Sky bid, News Corp proposed hiving off Sky News as separate company, diluting concentration of Murdoch-owned news power]

— Ben Fenton (@benfenton) May 24, 2012

2.19pm: The Financial Times's Ben Fenton has just tweeted:

[On UILs - inthe Sky bid, News Corp proposed hiving off Sky News as separate company, diluting concentration of Murdoch-owned news power]

— Ben Fenton (@benfenton) May 24, 2012

2.18pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel writes on Jan 23 - days before Hunt goes to the Commons -that Smith "wants us to take the heat with him in the next two weeks".

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

2.16pm: Michel says he believed that whatever Smith said was also the view of Hunt.

"He's communicating the view of the secretary of state," he explains. "I was representing News Corp; he was representing the secretary of state in the discussion."

Jay asks how Michel interpreted his phrase that Hunt "shared our objectives".

Michel says he "took comfort" that News Corp had a strong chance of securing BSkyB because of its undertakings in lieu, but denies Jay's suggestion that they were given "immense reassurance".

Michel adds: "Yeah, it was encouraging."

2.08pm: Jay refers to an email from Michel to News Corp's Matthew Anderson, Jeff Palker and Andrea Appella of 23 January 2011 stating:

Subject: update - confidential.

He still wants to stick to the following plan …

He predicts it should all be done by mid-Feb …

His view is that once he announce publicly he has a strong UIL [undertaking in lieu], it's almost game over for the opposition.

He very specifically said that he was keen to get to the same outcome and wanted JRM to understand he needs to build some political cover on the process.

Michel agrees that "he" refers to Hunt, through his spokesman Smith.

Smith hotly denies that he told Michel News Corp's undertakings in lieu meant it was "game over" for the opposition.

Michel says he believes that Smith used the phrase "game changer" in reference to News Corp's undertakings in a meeting.

2.03pm: Frédéric Michel, the News Corp lobbyist, is back at the witness stand.

Michel denies he was engaged in a "running commentary" on News Corp's Sky bid, but says there were "back-and-forth discussions" with Jeremy Hunt's adviser, Adam Smith.

2.03pm: The inquiry has resumed.

Lord Justice Leveson opens by saying that the inquiry will begin at 9.30am tomorrow. Jonathan Stephens, the top civil servant to Jeremy Hunt, is listed to appear.

1.47pm: Lisa O'Carroll's story on Michel's evidence so far is now live. Lisa writes:

Jeremy Hunt had indicated to News Corporation by the end of 2010 that he was "probably in favour" of arguments for allowing its £8bn BSkyB takeover, the company's lobbyist responsible for contact with the culture secretary's department has told the Leveson inquiry.

Frédéric Michel told the Leveson inquiry on Thursday that by December 2010, just before Hunt was given quasi-judicial responsibility for the bid, the Conservative cabinet minister and his Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) were supportive of News Corp's argument that the BSkyB deal would not be detrimental to UK media plurality.

Michel was asked by Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, whether the DCMS was considered by News Corp to be "on side" in terms of being in favour of the Sky bid by December 2010.

"I think they were probably in favour of, or in agreement with, the arguments we had put forward in terms of plurality, definitely," replied Michel, who at the time was News Corp's European head of public affairs.

You can read the full story here.

1.13pm: The Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has sent us this transcript of text messages between Michel and Hunt as seen at the Leveson inquiry.

Michel to Hunt:
20 January 2011
20.54
Great to see you today. We should get little [children's names redacted] together in the future to socialise. Nearly born the same day at the same place!
Warm regards
Fred

Hunt to Michel:
20 January 2011
23.45
Good to see you too. hope u understand why we have to have the long process. Let's meet up when things are resolved. J.

Michel to Hunt:
20 January 2011
6.58am
"We do, and we'll do our very best to be constructive and helpful throughout. You were very impressive yesterday. "

Michel to Hunt:
13 March 2011
Very good on Marr as always.

Hunt to Michel:
13 March 2011
Merci. Hopefully when consultation over we can have a coffee like the old days.

1.07pm: Here is a lunchtime summary of the key evidence heard by the Leveson inquiry today:

• Jeremy Hunt's department and News Corporation exchanged more than 1,000 text messages during the controversial BSkyB takeover bid.

• Hunt's adviser, Adam Smith, sent 257 text messages, plus a string of emails from his personal account, to News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel.

• Michel believed Hunt was "probably in favour" of News Corp's £8bn BSkyB bid by December 2010.

• Michel denied he was given "running commentary" on the bid by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

1.05pm: The Guardian's deputy editor, Ian Katz, has just tweeted:

Michel says Smith may not have "made a plea" that News Corp help identify errors in Ofcom report but he was encouraging him to do so

— ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

and

That was important: the "help find errors" email is key. Michel rowed back tiny bit on it but defended substance. Mail: bit.ly/I97mLM

— ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

1.03pm: The inquiry has broken for lunch and will resume at 2pm.

1.00pm: Michel says in another email to Murdoch that Hunt had met Ed Richards, the Ofcom chief executive, and challenged him over the regulator's issues letter about the bid.

Jay says Michel spoke to Smith three times on the day Hunt had a critical private meeting with the Ofcom boss. The conversation lasted for 27 minutes.

Michel interpreted Smith's view as encouraging News Corp to find legal flaws in Ofcom's report.

"On this particular subject of the Ofcom report you could say he was probably agreeing with me on areas where we could justifiably find some criticism," he says.

12.55pm: Jay asks about an email he sent to James Murdoch on 31 December 2010 stating:

Got a debrief from DCMS on their short meeting with OFT and Ofcom this morning.

The details of the remedy were not discussed. OFT mentioned to JH they were meeting us this aftemoon.

The conversation was solely on how they can set a process and timetable; but also on whether they can both work together [!].

JH asked them to adhere to the timing set out in the terms of reference, Le. 2 weeks.

12.54pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Hunt text to Michel Mar 13 "Merci hopefully when consultation over we can have a coffee like the old days".

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

12.52pm: Jay asks if the texts were "schmoozing".

"No, it's a friendly text," replies Michel. "I think it's one text every three months."

12.52pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Hunt txt to M jan 20: "Good to see u too. Hope u understand why we have to have the long process. Let's meet up when things are resolved".

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

12.51pm: Michel sent Hunt a text congratulating the culture secretary on his performance in the House of Commons.

"Merci! Large drink tonight," replied Hunt.

In another message, Michel says "Very good on Marr as always".

"Merci," replies Hunt, again.

12.50pm: Michel says the DCMS had an approach "based on transparency" compared to Cable's department.

News Corp lawyers were aware of Michel's level of correspondence with Smith, he confirms.

12.45pm: Michel denies that Smith have him a running commentary on the bid, but did give him "atmospherics" of the takeover as well as updates on timing.

12.45pm: Michel says he was not surprised at Cable's secretly-recorded remarks about "declaring war on Murdoch" because they were "very much" in line with what he already believed about the business secretary's views.

12.42pm: Jay turns to correspondence between Michel and Rohan Silva, a senior adviser to prime minister David Cameron.

Cameron wanted to see media plurality, Silva told Michel, and in a meeting between the pair Michel mentioned the plurality issues around the BSkyB bid, the inquiry hears.

Michel met Silva and Cameron's adviser, Steve Hilton, in No 10 on 10 December 2010.

12.41pm: The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted:

Hunt & Cable advisers saying same thing in mid Nov 10: don't meet with News C "Wrong, inappropriate, don't do it" #leveson

— alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) May 24, 2012

12.37pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel: "I apologise if my texts are too jokey".

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

12.36pm: Jay suggests Michel was frustrated because Cable's department would not allow him to trade text messages with them, which he was "very good" at.

Michel responds: "I am a compulsive texter, I will accept."

12.36pm: Michel says that Hunt's department took a "very different approach" when the culture secretary was given responsibility for the bid.

When the bid switched to DCMS there was "much more openness" about hearing News Corp's arguments, he adds.

12.35pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Nov 15 2011 - Hunt told he could not meet Murdoch. Cable also refuses to meet Murdoch. Michel says Cable wrong but Hunt more open later

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

12.33pm: Michel tried again to meet Cable's special adviser, says Jay, but was once against rebuffed.

He believed that this deserved to be "tested" and asked News Corp lawyers whether they should be allowed to lobby Cable and his special adviser.

12.29pm: Michel says: "If anyone from Hunt's office thought this inappropriate they would have told me. It's not for me to say how Hunt's office should work."

Jay turns to a meeting between Michel and George Osborne's special adviser, Rupert Harrison. It was rushed but Harrison told Michel there were "coalition tensions" around the bid, the inquiry hears.

12.27pm: Michel says that in Cable's department there was "definitely a view that no representation would be taken" on the BSkyB bid.

Jay suggests that was different with DCMS and that the conversations turned "clandestine". Michel contends that it was "advocacy".

Michel says there are a lot of lessons to learn from this process and that he can understand Jay's argument.

12.24pm: The Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has sent us emails flashed up on screens at the Leveson inquiry containing the assertion that Hunt found News Corp's arguments for a successful BSkyB were "persuasive".

EMAIL ONE: MICHEL TO SMITH OCT 7, 2010

From: Michel
To: Smith
Date: Thursday 7, Oct 2010
Time: 16.11

Adam,
Hope you're well.
As promised in Birmingham, attached briefing memo for Jeremy on the transaction, including Sky News audience shares.
I hope it's helpful. Let me know if he needs more info
I will keep you aware re timing
Warm regards
Fred

EMAIL TWO - MICHEL TO SMITH

To: Michel
From: Smith
Date: Friday 8, Oct, 2010

Attached briefing on competition issues around the transaction as well

EMAIL THREE: SMITH TO HUNT

From Adam Smith
To: Fred Michel
Re: Confidential - Urgent
Date : Monday 11/10/2010 7.02am

Jeremy's response to this - 'persuasive'

12.24pm: Jay resumes his questioning about Michel's contact with Cable's department.

In one message, Michel was told by one of Cable's advisers that a meeting was completely off-limits because it was highly sensitive.

Jay asks whether he found it strange that DCMS's stance was more open.

"No, I thought DCMS's stance was more normal," Michel says.

12.13pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

So News Corp was told that Hunt found their bid arguments "persuasive".Was Hunt minister for Murdoch then?

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

12.12pm: The inquiry is now taking a short break.

12.10pm: Jay turns to Michel's dealings with Vince Cable's department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Michel says that in September and October 2010, many Liberal Democrat and Labour politicians were telling him that phone hacking would be a problem.

12.08pm: The Guardian deputy editor, Ian Katz, has just tweeted:

2 interesting things so far: 1. Michel protecting Hunt to point by saying he wasn't supportive 2. Smith will deny lot of what Michel claimed

— ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

and

If you're following Michel at #Leveson you may find this mega-timeline of the BSkyB bid and Micehl's lobbying helpful bit.ly/I97mLM

— ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

12.07pm: Jay turns to correspondence recently passed to the inquiry.

On 7 October 2010, Michel sent a confidential email containing commercially-sensitive information to Smith (Jay says Smith had two email accounts but Michel denies he saw any difference between them). Smith replied saying he had passed the information on to Jeremy.

The following day, Michel sent Smith a briefing note on media plurality issues. Smith replied on 11 October 2010 saying "Jeremy's response to this persuasive".

Jay asks if this was suitable reassurance.?

"There is two items: the plurality side and competition side. On the plurality side it was definitely something the UK was focusing on. The competition side was being focused on in Brussels," Michel says.

Jay asks whether Michel had the same correspondence with other departments.

Michel says he only did it with the DCMS and BIS.

12.03pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel won't say it strongly but seems obvious to a dodo that Hunt preferred the Sky bid when compared to the 'biassed' Cable.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

and

Michel now agrees that Team Hunt was "probably in favour" of Sky bid by Dec 10

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

12.03pm: Michel and Smith had a 22-minute phone conversation after Ofcom released its "issues letter" on the bid.

Michel later wrote from this conversation that Hunt was supportive of the bid and suprised at Ofcom's stance.

12.00pm: As Jay leads Michel through the trail of correspondence, the counsel indicates that Smith will later repeatedly deny Michel's interpretation of their conversations.

Jay asks again if Michel believed Hunt was supportive of the bid.

Michel replies:

My view is that Jeremy Hunt was probably supportive of some of the arguments we were putting forward and he has made that public on the plurality [issue].

In another email, Michel says: "Jeremy has also asked me to send him relevant documents privately".

He tells Jay that he meant "directly" rather than "privately".

11.55am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel tripped up. Writes June 10 mail that UK govt would b "supportive" of bid after spkng to Smith - but says didn't know if Hunt onside

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

11.55am: Michel denies exaggerating Smith's comments about government support for the BSkyB bid, saying: "I don't need to puff myself up."

As Jay turns to another email to Murdoch, Michel denies again that he exaggerated what he was being told by Smith.

11.54am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel - "I was never told otherwise" that it would be wrong to work w Smith on bid behind scenes.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

11.52am: Michel says his conversations with Smith were to "check on an ongoing basis the temperature in Westminster".

"Precisely," says Jay, before moving on.

11.50am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Hunt told Michel in a pre Xmas texts - all contact must be through "official channels" - ie Smith.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

and

Hunt told Michel in a pre Xmas texts - all contact must be through "official channels" - ie Smith.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

and

Leveson asks why Michel wrote to Murdoch it was "fine to liaise at that political level". Michel-Smith linkin addition to lawyer contact

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

11.50am: Jay asks whether he exaggerated that text conversation with Hunt in a memo to Murdoch.

Michel denies he exaggerated the conversation, but says he put his own interpretation on it.

11.46am: On 24 December 2010, Michel text Hunt to say James Murdoch asked him to be the point of contact for the culture secretary and Smith. Michel says in the text "glad John Zeff is in charge of dossier".

Hunt replied to say: "All contact with me now needs to be through official channels until decision made."

Michel says he took this to mean Hunt's office was his official channel.

He adds that he stopped having contact with Hunt "except for a few private contacts during the day".

11.44am: Jay says it is clear that Michel was working with Smith to send Hunt "helpful arguments" relating to the BSkyB bid.

Hunt replied: "Pleasure".

Michel says he does not know if these arguments were about the BSkyB bid.

11.40am: Jay raises a memo from 15 November 2010 to Michel which explained that Hunt was unable to meet James Murdoch. The memo says: "Jeremy's very frustrated about it but the permanent secretary has also now been involved."

Michel confirms that this message was from Smith, Hunt's special adviser, who suggested Murdoch and the culture secretary have a private conversation by mobile phone.

11.38am: In October 2010, Michel asked Hunt if he will see News Corp"s arguments for Sky bid. Hunt later texts back to say this is "persuasive".

Jay says these exchanges between Hunt and Michel showed that the culture minister was "reasonably favourably disposed to the bid".

Michel replies he would not have drawn that conclusion.

11.35am: Jay turns to text messages sent by Michel between June 2010 and December 2010.

On 27 August 2010, Michel sent a text message to Hunt about a speech by BBC director general Mark Thompson. Hunt replied: "Thanks. I agree, nothing about BBC role in competitive market". Michel described Thompson's speech as "a whimper" in a follow-up text. Hunt replied: "Because he trained his guns on you he failed to make his case to me".

These text messages were in response to Thompson's MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh, in which he warned that BSkyB was too powerful and threatened to "dwarf" the BBC and its competitors.

11.34am: The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted:

Jay: did you big up your role (by exaggerating in emails)?Michel: No i don't agree with that. I didn't need to#Leveson

— alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) May 24, 2012

11.31am: Jay asks whether Michel exaggerated Smith's position in his emails to James Murdoch.

Michel says his emails were "accurate accounts of the conversations" but adds: "Maybe I was trying to keep the morale up internally" because News Corp was facing closed doors from other government departments.

He does not agree that he spun the emails to put himself in a good light.

"It was a very few, rare occasions where this happens," he says.

11.30am: Michel describes Smith was "very straightforward" and available to him.

Jay asks whether he believed Hunt was in favour of the BSkyB bid.

"It's something I can't say," Michel answers. He believed that Hunt was acting impartially over the takeover.

11.26am: Jay says that there were 191 telephone calls, 158 emails, and 799 text messages between Michel and the DCMS, of which 90% were with Smith. Between 28 November 2011 and 11 July 2011 Smith sent 257 text messages to Michel, Jay adds.

Michel says he did not have any reason to believe Smith was or was not in favour of the BSkyB bid.

11.25am: The Guardian-editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted:

Michel I always assumed Smith, special adviser, represented Hunt's views at all times#Leveson

— alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) May 24, 2012

11.24am: Michel says he believed that special advisers always represented the views of their boss, the secretary of state.

He believed some of the information from Adam Smith came after the special adviser's conversations with Hunt.

"There was two or three events where I had the impression some of the feedback I was given was discussed with the secretary of state before it was given to me."

11.22am: Michel's first witnes statement has now been published on the Leveson inquiry website.

11.21am: Michel is asked why he did not make clear in emails to James Murdoch that "JH" did not mean conversations with Hunt himself.

He explains:

I think it's a shorthand I decided to use, both because I was having a lot of conversations at the beginning of January with the office of the secretary of state and I was trying to be as quick as I could when writing those.

Michel traded "less than five" messages with John Zeff, Hunt's head of media, the inquiry hears.

11.20am: Michel says there were no conversations with Hunt between 24 December 2010 and the end of July 2011, but there were texts with Hunt.

11.19am: Michel is asked why he lobbied other government departments outside Cable's before December 2010.

He says that News Corp was not given much chance to make representations to Cable "even though we tried".

Jay asks whether he hoped another government department might be able to influence Cable.

Michel says other departments were "very interested in hearing our case" because they wanted a debrief on the complex issues and undertakings involved in the takeover.

11.17am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel says "JH" meant Hunt or his spads or civil servant. Therefore Michel should not made any inappropriate contact w any of them.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

11.16am: Michel says he did not believe it was inappropriate to lobby the office of the secretary of state.

"I was never of the view that it was inappropriate to at least try put the view or make representation to his office," he adds.

Jay asks why, then, he used "JH" as referring to Hunt's team in his emails to James Murdoch.

"I don't think anything inappropriate ever took place," he says.

11.15am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel edgy, cautious. Jay moving slowly, stalking him. Leveson's early tone sceptical.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

11.12am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted:

Michel says (dubiously) that he didn't have a specific view whether Tories or Labour would be more favorable to a Sky bid.

— Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) May 24, 2012

11.12am: The Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has just tweeted:

Michel written statement says "reference to hunt, JH, Jeremy in the emails are I'm fact summaries of what I was told by Adam smith #leveson

— lisa o'carroll (@lisaocarroll) May 24, 2012

11.11am: The Guardian deputy editor, Ian Katz, has just tweted:

Here's what Michel reported to his bosses about his June 15 conversation with Cable on bid bit.ly/KcPEWD #Leveson

— ian katz (@iankatz1000) May 24, 2012

11.10am: Michel is pressed on when he first knew about News Corp's £8bn bid for BSkyB.

He says there were internal discussions and reports in the media from when he joined in May 2009, but that he was formally told the day before it was publicly announced.

He adds that he did not have a specific view on which government ministers would and would not be in favour of the bid. He was tasked to discover what government ministers – including business secretary Vince Cable – thought of the bid.

11.07am: Michel says he was only aware News Corp was launching a bid for full control of BSkyB the day before it was publicly announced. He adds that he was not in the "circle of confidence" that knew in advance.

In his witness statement, Michel says his only contact with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was "solely with Mr Hunt's adviser Adam Smith and the (DCMS) director of media Jon Zeff," according to the Evening Standard reporter Tom Harper at the court:

Frederic Michel w/s: "My contact was solely with Mr Hunt's adviser Adam Smith and the (DCMS) director of media Jon Zeff"

— Tom Harper (@TomJHarper) May 24, 2012

11.04am: Michel joined News Corp as director of public affairs for Europe in May 2009.

He says News Corp's BSkyB bid "became a very full job" from September 2010 and increased "further and further" throughout the process. It took up 80% of his time, he adds.

11.02am: The inquiry has resumed and News Corporation lobbyist Frédéric Michel takes the witness stand.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, is leading the questioning.

11.01am: Sky News reporter Martin Brunt has just tweeted:

#phone Ex-News International CEO Rebekah Brooks bailed for another two months on phone hacking and bungs allegations

— martinbrunt (@skymartinbrunt) May 24, 2012

10.57am: The Guardian's Maya Wolfe-Robinson has just tweeted:

Here's the judgment in the Trimingham v Associated Newspapers Ltd bit.ly/KcNJBa

— Maya Wolfe-Robinson (@mwolferobinson) May 24, 2012

10.56am: Brooke has completed his evidence and the inquiry is taking a short break.

10.55am: Brooke is asked what functions he believes the reconstituted press regulator should have.

He says: "I wouldn't want to do a big bang," and advises that the powers of the new regulator be increased over time instead of all at once.

Leveson asks when there be this appetite for change.

Brooke says a "big bang" change to press regulation "needs a big person to do it".

10.50am: You can watch today's hearing live on the Leveson inquiry website here.

10.48am: Brooke says it is a "great pity" the government and press was not able to reach an agreement and move forward.

The government might have been able to sleep better at night because it had not crossed the Rubicon, but it might have been better if had, says Brooke.

10.47am: The Guardian's Josh Halliday has just tweeted about the Trimingham case:

The Judge Tugendhat ruling on Trimingham-Daily Mail sounds significant. What did Trimingham, a PR, do to limit expectation of privacy?

— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) May 24, 2012

and

Trimingham describes ruling as potential "blueprint for bullies and bigots" – @BBCNews

— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) May 24, 2012

10.42am: Brooke is asked whether he was lobbied by the press in this period.

He says he cannot recall any lobbying over press regulation between 1992 and 1994.

10.42am: Brooke says he was effectively being asked by the then prime minister, John Major, to take the white paper back to the drawing board.

Later, in June 1994, the then home secretary proposed that the white paper could be published without the contested draft clauses.

10.41am: The Guardian's Josh Halliday has just tweeted about the Trimingham case:

Judge on Trimingham: [She] was not the purely private figure she claims to be. Her reasonable expectation of privacy has become limited" -PA

— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) May 24, 2012

10.38am: No 10 wrote to Brooke to recommend continuing pressure to improve self-regulation but asked that a white paper be redrafted featuring arguments against it, the inquiry hears.

10.34am: Lord Wakeham was instrumental in incorporating a privacy tort into the Press Complaints Commission code, says Brooke.

10.29am: Brooke is asked whether the government believed the Press Complaints Commission, when established, would be a regulator.

He replies: "We believed it would be a self-regulator".

Lord Justice Leveson presses Brooke on what he understood by "self-regulator".

Brooke says "he would not go to the stake for the phrase," indicating that the government was not entirely sure of the self-regulatory function.

10.23am: Sky News has just tweeted about the Trimingham case:

Court orders Carina Trimingham to pay £250,000 in costs within 14 days after losing privacy case.

— Sky News Newsdesk (@SkyNewsBreak) May 24, 2012

10.22am: Brooke says it is correct that the government gave the press one more chance to avoid regulation after the 1993 Calcutt report.

He describes further proposals suggested by the MP Clive Soley as "draconian".

10.19am: Calcutt's report on the press was leaked so the government had to bring forward its response, says Brooke.

His 1993 Review of Press Self-Regulation reiterated the potential need for a statutory press tribunal, as well as sterner laws to protect privacy.

Brooke says in his witness statement that the government was "extremely reluctant" to introduce statutory regulation of the press.

He adds:

The press has been not subject to statutory interference since 1695. The first time it happens is going to be a very significant event.

10.17am: Elsewhere at the high court, BBC political correspondent Carole Walker has just tweeted about a privacy case involving Chris Huhne's partner Carina Trimingham:

Carina Trimmingham has lost her case against the Daily Mail

— Carole Walker (@carolewalkercw) May 24, 2012

10.15am: Brooke was the national heritage secretary between 1992 and 1994, replacing David Mellor in the post.

Barr asks whether the press exacted revenge on Mellor because he appointed Sir David Calcutt to review self-regulation of the press.

Brooke cannot remember having any conversations about that at the time.

10.07am: Lord Brooke, the former national heritage secretary, has taken the stand.

David Barr, junior counsel to the inquiry, is questioning Brooke.

10.05am: The Guardian's John Plunkett has sent us breaking goat news from the steps of the high court. No kidding: that is a real goat.

9.58am: The Guardian's Esther Addley has just tweeted from the high court:

Adam Smith is in court, with (i assume) his lawyer. Order of witnesses: Lord (Peter) Brooke, Frederic Michel, Smith #Leveson

— esther addley (@estheraddley) May 24, 2012

9.51am: Good morning and welcome to the Leveson inquiry live blog.

All eyes will be on the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt today as his former special adviser, Adam Smith, and the News Corporation lobbyist, Frédéric Michel, give evidence about their role in News Corp's abandoned £8bn bid for BSkyB.

It will be the first time the pair have spoken publicly since the huge row over Hunt's handling of the bid erupted at the end of April.

Smith resigned on 26 April after he admitted he allowed the impression to be created of too close a relationship between News Corp and Hunt's Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

More than 160 pages of emails published at the Leveson inquiry showed that News Corp's Michel was given inside information on ministerial thinking over the company's bid for BSkyB, including handing over commercially confidential information and repeatedly suggesting that Hunt wanted the bid to succeed.

Smith will be pressed on whether he was a rogue operator acting without the authority of Hunt and other senior colleagues in the department. Jonathan Stephens, the department's top civil servant, will give evidence on Friday and Hunt is expected to be called in the coming weeks.

The pair will appear after evidence from Lord Brooke, the Tory cabinet minister between 1989 and 1994. Brooke was the national heritage secretary from 1992 to 1994 in a department later renamed Department for Culture, Media and Sport; he was the Northern Ireland secretary between 1989 and 1992.

The inquiry begins at 10am.

Please note that comments have been switched off for legal reasons.

Ronnie Bedford, one of the Daily Mirror's great specialist reporters from its heyday, has died. He had just turned 90.

He was the paper's science editor in days when it even had a deputy science editor. He also served as health editor for a period and chaired the Medical Journalists Association in the 1970s.

I plan to write a full obituary next week after talking to his widow, Thelma.

Brief highlights of Thursday's evidence to the inquiry into media standards

• Jeremy Hunt's department and News Corporation exchanged more than 1,000 text messages during the period of the BSkyB takeover bid

• Hunt adviser, Adam Smith, sent 257 text messages, as well as a string of emails from a personal account, to News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel

• Michel believed Hunt was "probably in favour" of News Corp's argument that an £8bn BSkyB takeover would not be detrimental to UK media plurality by December 2010

• Jeremy Hunt drafted a memo to David Cameron saying it would be "totally wrong" to block News Corp's BSkyB bid four weeks before he was put in charge of the controversial takeover

• Hunt told Cameron that James Murdoch was "pretty furious" at the Ofcom referral by Vince Cable

• Hunt aide Adam Smith confirmed he was broadly in favour of the BSkyB bid while DCMS had judicial oversight

• Smith admitted having no contact with anti-bid coalition, despite more than 1000 text messages between his department and News Corp

• Michel was given Hunt statement on BSkyB bid four hours before culture secretary spoke in the Commons

• Michel denied exaggerating conversations with Smith or that he received a "running commentary" on confidential government process

• Smith sent 257 text messages to Michel over the course of the BSkyB bid.

Data shows US president vastly outspending Romney in internet advertising, with GOP rival preferring more traditional approach

Barack Obama is vastly outspending his challenger for the White House Mitt Romney on internet advertising, pouring millions of dollars into attempting to sway online voters in a move that his campaign strategists hope will give him an edge in November.

New data compiled by the internet marketing research firm comScore shared with the Guardian shows that in April the Obama for America campaign placed more than 30 times as many digital ads as Romney's equivalent operation. Though Romney's digital team has promised to up its game as the presidential election approaches, their presence in the online political battlefield remains negligible.

ComScore records that Obama paid for 865m online display ads across the web last month. By contrast, the Mitt Romney for President campaign mustered barely 26m ads.

Romney's online presence is running at a level that the Obama campaign surpassed a year ago. By May 2011 Obama was already placing 70m online ads, and this January it vamped up its digital investment to almost 800m ads where it has remained ever since.

The new figures are surprising because April was the first month in which Romney was clearly the presumptive Republican candidate for the presidential election. Observers had expected to see a more aggressive attempt on Romney's part to play catch up now that the nomination was in the bag, but it has failed to materialise.

"We expected that Romney's activity would have ratcheted up at this point, but we are not seeing that. The early indication is that there isn't any major closing of the gap," said Andrew Lipsman, a comScore analyst specialising in political and digital advertising.

While the Romney campaign is managing to make serious inroads into Obama's overall fundraising advantage, most of the extra firepower it is accumulating appears to be going towards traditional campaigning techniques. In particular, Romney's team, flanked by several well-funded partisan Super Pacs led by Karl Rove and the Koch brothers, are gearing themselves up to unleash a blitzkreig of negative TV ads on the American electorate.

Obama is also expected to devote most of his warchest to traditional TV advertising. But he has also set aside a substantial portion of the 2012 coffers for more innovative attempts to involve and engage online voters.

Already in the 2012 election cycle, the Obama For America team, headquartered in Chicago, has spent $19m on online advertising – more than the entire amount spent by Obama in this area in 2008. The interactive marketing news site ClickZ calculates that at current rates OFA will spend $35m on digital advertising by November, though that could prove to be an underestimate.

Obama's online advertising strategy is being masterminded by Andrew Bleeker and Nathaniel Lubin, who are veterans of Obama's first run on the White House four years ago. After 2008, Bleeker set up his own private consultancy, Bully Pulpit Interactive, where he was joined by Lubin who has now circled back to lead the on-the-ground work on online marketing in the Obama re-election HQ in Chicago.

Bleeker and Lubin have set out how they see the challenge for digital media in the 2012 presidential election in a new book of essays that explores the way that political campaigns are changing in the face of technological innovation. They predict in Margin of Victory , edited by Nathaniel Pearlman, that 2012 will "blow prior campaigns out of the water".

As more money and staff are devoted to online marketing, they say, the 2012 cycle will finally achieve the aspirations of previous campaigns. The authors identify three ways in which online advertising has the power to transform the battle.

First, messages can be targeted much more tightly than TV ads to core gropus of voters, reaching down they say to the level of the "zip code or even, in some cases, the individual level, bringing custom solutions to the table that will match the distinct messages to specific audiences."

Second, campaigns will this year move their online marketing away from desktop computers and on to cell phones. That will be particularly important in reaching certain demographics, such as Hispanic voters, who spend a disproportionate amount of their online time on mobile devices.

Third, online video advertising is going to be huge this year. Unlike TV advertising, which can only be targeted to a city or region, an online video can be served to a voter with his or her precise geolocation and behavioural interests, greatly enhancing the relevance and the impact of the message.

"The 2012 election is very likely to be incredibly tight. Winning messages are going to be the ones that cut through the clutter – not just with memorable creative work but alos by being tailored to key segments," Bleeker and Lubin write.

Social media is also going to be an important part of the jigsaw. Obama again has a massive headstart in this area, having already amassed more than 26.7m Facebook fans to Romney's 1.8m followers.

A comScore study of the uses of social media by the presidential campaigns highlights the value of social media as a way of amplifying the candidate's message. In January, for instance, Obama bought 800m online display ads at a cost of more than $4m.

In addition, though, comScore calculates, Obama leveraged an extra 66m display ad impressions as a result of Obama followers passing on messages to their friends.