The editor of the Independent on Sunday has defended his decision to publish a story about former Downing Street communications chief Andy Coulson's shareholdings in News Corp, which was published after the paper saw Coulson's confidential witness statement to the Leveson inquiry.
Mullin said the Independent on Sunday was shown Coulson's witness statement last Thursday but that the paper already had three independent sources to stand up the story, which was published on Sunday and claimed that Coulson held shares in News Corp while he was working for the prime minister – at a time when the government was looking at the case for the company taking full control of BSkyB.
Mullin told the Leveson inquiry today: "I think it's human nature that if you're presented with something and you're a journalist you would read it. I think in retrospect it would be much better if all round if I had not read it."
He later added: "The fact that your inquiry is going on shouldn't stop us from doing good honest journalism."
Mullin said he did not consider the witness statement to be a "fourth source of information", saying: "The story stands absolutely on what we had. We didn't use the statement as a source. We have used nothing from his statement in our story.
"We had three sources for the story – none of them relied on Mr Coulson's statement. My view was that the order did not apply to our story.
"Nothing that appeared in our story didn't come from the three sources that I've outlined."
Lord Justice Leveson said: "I am very anxious to ensure that the evidence that we are going to deal with is going to be presented in an orderly fashion. I'm not trying to censor it, or keep it secretly.
"Tonight, everybody will see it and it will be spoken about this afternoon – but the risk is that by doing what you've done you've created a dialogue in the public, with questions being asked and allegations being made, before we've even heard it and that is likely to disrupt the process that I'm trying to advance."
Mullin said: "I made a decision ahead of pressing the button and I made that decision with the facts and calculations I made at that time.
"I think with hindsight there certainly would have been scope for me to have at least sought some informal guidance from the inquiry but I wouldn't want that to be taken as an acceptance that that decision I made on Saturday night was incorrect."
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