08 Dec 11 | Leveson Inquiry
A group of academics told the Leveson Inquiry today that there is no lack of ethics training for students on journalism programmes, and that the issue to address is newsroom culture.
Professor Steven Barnett, of the University of Westminster, said ethics were like a “stick of rock” running through modules taught. Brian Cathcart of Kingston University (and Index on Censorship blogger) added that, in offering ethics training, he and his colleagues sought to produce “not just journalists but reflective journalists who think about what they’re doing.”
Cathcart, also founder of the Hacked Off campaign, added that we’ve “come a long way”, noting he received no ethical training at the start of his career.
Head of journalism at City University, Professor George Brock, added that the key issue was the newsroom culture, which he said determined behaviour. Barnett added that it is impossible to teach someone how to deal with ethical problems on national tabloids. “It is a matter of individual moral courage,” he said.
Angela Phillips, of Goldsmith’s College, noted that many young graduates want to work for more ethical papers but get “trapped” due to higher salaries offered by redtops.
Lord Justice Leveson was keen to reiterate he was “not on a witch-hunt”, adding that he was “anxious to find out what has gone wrong in an industry in which there is an enormous amount that goes absolutely right.” Brunel University’s Julian Petley (also an Index on Censorship contributor), while noting that the term tabloid should not be a “dirty word”, was eager to differentiate between the redtops and broadsheets. He suggested it was time that “editors of ethical papers stop making common cause with editors of papers that have brought this Inquiry into being”, adding later that the Daily Mail “bullies” the government. Cardiff University’s Ian Hargreaves replied, “nice liberal broadsheets can be bullies as well.”
Both Petley and Phillips argued journalistic standards could be improved by a statutory right of reply and for offending newspapers to print adjudications.
Brock spoke in favour of rewriting privacy legislation, arguing that balancing Article 8 and Article 10 of the Human Rights Act had “not worked well”. He advocated legislation that protects private life while not chilling solid journalism, and called for a greater focus on public interest defences.
There was a consensus that the Press Complaints Commission needed reform, with Hargreaves arguing that robust regulation does “not come in the thickness of the armour, but in the cunningness of design.” Petley advocated a new regulatory process with a “limited” statutory backdrop and more investigatory powers, while Barnett suggested those who choose not to sign up to a new, independent self-regulatory system should pay VAT.
Petley added later that “journalism rarely recognises its own power”, while Cathcart and Barnett argued that the press had not been “caught up in the move towards greater accountability.”
“Public trust in journalism has been damaged,” Cathcart said, adding that any remedy “must be seen to be radical.”
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with evidence from former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas.
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
31 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
The UK press may show more restraint in reporting of high-profile cases if contempt laws are vigorously enforced, says Brian Cathcart
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27 Aug 11 | Uncategorized
It will probably surprise many people — I wish I could say it surprised me — to know that the Press Complaints Commission still thinks it has a future. If recent weeks have taught us anything about the PCC, you might think, it is that the so-called regulator has failed to uphold press standards and a new approach is needed. The prime minister thinks so, Labour thinks so, the public thinks so and the Leveson inquiry has been asked to devise that new approach. The PCC is doomed, and you would struggle, these days, to find a supporter who did not have a strong interest in the status quo.
But go to the PCC website and you will find something like defiance. We do a great job helping people with complaints, they say. A lot of the criticism we endure is unfair. Hacking was a matter for the law and not for us. Yes, there is a need for reform, even fundamental reform, but in the end you must come back to something like the PCC or democracy will be endangered.
This is misleading and smacks of self-delusion. The PCC’s failures did not begin with hacking; hacking is just the last and heaviest straw. The PCC, when it had its chance, gave the News of the World a clean bill of health on hacking although the same evidence led MPs on the media select committee to conclude that the paper was gravely at fault and senior executives were displaying ‘collective amnesia’. The PCC also criticised the Guardian, which broke the key hacking story in 2009. The MPs and the Guardian have been proved right and the PCC wrong.
Why was the PCC wrong? Because it is a complaints agency and doesn’t know what to do when a big problem comes along. In the McCann case it did nothing while for a year newspapers indulged in an orgy of libels — they have since admitted to publishing hundreds of false articles, possibly more than a thousand, grossly misleading millions and millions of readers. Like hacking, this was apparently not the PCC’s business.
Nor is the failure of accountability in the tabloid press the PCC’s problem. Again and again we see these large libel payouts, the latest to Chris Jefferies, the retired Bristol teacher so disgracefully treated in the tabloids. Has the PCC ever followed up such cases to see why lessons are not learned? Have they ever asked about internal systems and accountability in these papers? Have they asked about discipline? There is no sign of it.
Such matters are too big for the PCC. Its concern is the micro — individual complaints, and (largely) only those which are made by the people personally affected. This has nothing obvious to do with standards, though the argument was often made that by chasing up such complaints the PCC would effect a general raising of standards in the press. It has been nearly 20 years since the PCC began work and we are entitled to ask: has there been a general raising of standards? No.
The complaints work is worthwhile and something like it will be needed in the future. Few people dispute that. It does not follow that to meet our present needs all we have to do is improve the complaints agency. Though the PCC seems to be the very last to recognize this, we need radical change. We need a regulator.
As for the need to balance regulation with freedom of expression, that is a challenge the Leveson Inquiry will address and which it is perfectly capable of addressing successfully. It will have many options before it, and you can read some ideas here. To suggest that the only way to achieve a balance is to stick with a structure that has failed is nonsense. Far from being chained to the PCC we are about to discard it, and very few people who care about press freedom and press standards will be sorry to see it go.
This post is cross-posted with Hacked Off
Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University London. He tweets at @BrianCathcart
28 Jul 11 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
The Guardian has revealed that the News of the World hacked Sara Payne’s phone, which Rebekah Brooks had given her as a gift.
Payne had previously been told, accurately, that her name did not appear in Glenn Mulcaire’s notes, but her personal details were found there on Tuesday. The News of the World used its final issue to congratulate itself for its campaign for Sarah’s law.
Sara Payne herself wrote a column for the farewell edition, describing the News of the World reporters as her “good and trusted friends.” Tom Watson MP has decried this as “a whole new low”; and Sara Payne has said that she is “absolutely devastated and deeply disappointed.”
Read Brian Cathcart’s writing on the phone hacking scandal here.
