Alleged phone-hacking victim Mary-Ellen Field today insisted she did not want to see the press muzzled.
Ellen-Field has been granted core-participant status by the Leveson Inquiry and says she was sacked from her job as an advisor to supermodel Elle Macpherson in 2006 after she was wrongly accused of leaking stories to the press.
In fact it appears that her phone messages were hacked by the News of the World.
She told the Leveson Inquiry seminar in London today: ‘I was not a victim of freedom of the press in this country, I was not a victim of self regulation – I was a victim of criminal behaviour…I am concerned that people are not separating the two.”
She said: ‘The reason I am here and the reason I have lawyers is because of journalists. A group of journalists got behind me from all over the world at the beginning of the year and the only reason I have a voice now is because some wonderful people have got behind me.”
She also said that some journalists had taken ‘great risks’to help her.
She said: ‘I don’t want to see the press muzzled, I want to see you doing your job – the job you are supposed to do, and that’s to be vigilant and protect our democracy.”
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
