Yes, I do.

Thank you, my Lord.

Yes.

I can, yes.

I can see you, yes.

Thank you very much indeed.

In that case, either.

Lord Justice Leveson, the whole story is about information that didn't get passed through, and as you remember, when we spoke last time in this room, one of the things that we discussed was the nature of an audit trail, and I said to you that I believed that ...

I think this gets to the heart of it, really. We felt we had a problem in terms of the behaviour of a reporter and that in terms of the culture of the newsroom at the time, the culture asserted itself, that as soon as we were informed of a ...

So we then -- as is often the case with these things -- what happens is you report a story, you seek to answer a question, you get the answer. That in turn raises two questions, and the two questions that were immediately raised there were: how did this fit into the ...

This is before that, I think.

Yes, and what happened, of course, is that we -- I'd brought this issue into the public domain in my original witness statement. When I came here two or three weeks ago, we didn't discuss it. It's then in the public domain. I then ask our media reporter ...

Yes.

Yes.

But, Mr Jay -- so can I try and explain the process here?

Yes.

Yes. Yes, yes.

Where are we?

Yes.

When you look back at all of this, sir -- I really hope you understand -- it's terrible. I really hope you appreciate that. I know that as keenly as you do. But I also hope you appreciate that the reason we're here and the reason we're discussing this ...

I didn't know that Mr White had fought it for me.

Yes.

Yes.

Mm.

We were all --

Sir, I don't mean to be -- who would have asked him? Mr Brett had instructed Mr White. Mr Brett had not informed Mr White that this had happened.

No. As I said, our statement -- Mr Brett, the then legal manager, as I understand it, did not believe and still does not believe that the court was misled.

When I read these documents, when I went through them, I felt that information had not been disclosed to the judge ...

I know you're going to find this ironic, but we felt that, having taken up the court's time and Mr Justice Eady having found in our favour, we had to, amongst other things, respect his judgment. We felt that we had little choice but to publish.

Yes, yes.

If -- if it had been the case that Mr Foster had brought this to me and said, "I'd like to get access to Mr Horton's email account for the purposes of this story", I would have said no. If Mr Brett had come to me and said, "Mr ...

Sorry, I keep on trying to make the same point, which is --

Yes.

I cannot -- I cannot remember the exact nature of everything that everybody said in that room. What I've tried to reflect to you is what dominated our thinking, what informed the decision to publish.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Sorry, which page are you on?

No, I appreciate what you're saying, but what I'm trying to explain is that -- actually, no, this was not a high level of abstraction for us. For all journalists, we are really trying to understand the nature of what we do and the nature of information on the ...

I think what I've tried to explain was the arguments of the public interest, if you like, the balance of the arguments was not about public interest versus privacy; it was: was this in the public interest? Ie, public interest versus rights of anonymity on the web and the ...

So again, we'll try to go back to June 15, this is, 2009, and just again to give some context, this is in the aftermath of the Iranian elections. We had a reporter in Tehran and, do you remember, it turned quite violent. So this was what was occupying ...

Yes.

No. I keep on trying to make it point to you, Mr Jay. I was not aware of exactly what he had done. I was aware that we had a concern about what he had done, but I was not aware of exactly what he had done, and that's ...

I should say that pretty much reflected the nature of the conversation, I think, the following day on Monday, 15 June.

Okay.

Right.

Much worse than that, Mr Jay. I had no idea that the case had been brought to court. I didn't know what the legal correspondence was, I didn't know who had been instructed, I didn't know what the instructions were, I didn't know the subject matter ...

Sorry, I keep trying to be clear. You're saying to me: "If we could strip away the fact that there was a political crisis going on, and if you could strip away the fact that you had not been informed of this litigation at all, if you could take ...

I'm sorry, Mr Jay, you're asking me to make judgments on things I didn't know about. I didn't know about this email. I didn't know about the advice that Mr Brett was giving. How would I be able to go back and ask for different ...

Yes.

Mr Jay, I have to own my responsibility and my failure here. As I say in the statement, I can see now that we paid insufficient attention to this matter at the time. We did. We paid it insufficient attention.