10 Jan 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The editor of the Financial Times has upheld his paper’s code of practice as a “model for self-regulation” at the Leveson Inquiry.
Lionel Barber told the Inquiry that the broadsheet’s internal code of practice goes further than PCC code with its provisions for data protection and strict rules governing share ownership and trading among its staff.
“FT journalists do not break the law”, Barber said.
While upholding the Press Complaint’s Commission’s mediation function as timely, fair and thorough, he argued that the current PCC code needs enforcement before serious amendments were to be made. He said that, in the case of phone hacking, it had not been enforced enough, adding later that it was “very difficult” for the body, as they had been lied to by News International over the extent of the practice.
“If this isn’t a wake-up call I don’t know what is,” he said of the closure of the News of the World.
He spoke in favour of fines being levied for serious breaches, arguing for a new body with investigatory powers and stronger leadership. He called for prominent corrections, but conceded that editors “hate” making them.
He also criticised the current PCC for being “dominated by insiders” for too long, giving the image of a “cosy stitch-up”. He said journalists should not fear being accountable, and that a new system must be credible “not just credible to those who are part of system”.
Responding to Barber’s suggestions, Lord Justice Leveson said, “it won’t be good enough to tinker around the edges”, arguing that a new, improved body must “work for public and the press.”
Barber, who has been editor of the paper since 2005, said that the title should “be the gold standard in journalism”.
He went on to say that multiple-source policy was “ingrained” at the paper, noting that using two sources for a story was a “minimum”. He said relying on one source opened a reporter up to manipulation and being misled, arguing he would rather “be right than first.”
He said using anonymous sources in financial journalism was “problematic”, adding that the FT has ban on the use of “it is understood that” and any loose use of the word “sources” (but not “sources close to”).
He also called prior notification a “dangerous path”, arguing that “you never want to get so close to a source that you’re offering prior notification or sharing everything.”
He alluded to the costly nature of libel claims in the UK, adding that they can have a “chilling effect” despite the robustness of a story.
He concluded, “I strongly believe there is a public interest in freedom of expression itself,” citing Hungary and South Africa as disturbing examples of infringements made to media freedom.
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18 May 10 | Uncategorized
Discouraging news from Amnesty.
The Human Rights group had planned a major campaign focused on oil giant Shell’s annual general meeting at London’s Barbican Centre today (18 May). A key part of this campaign was to be a full page advert in the Financial Times, portraying a champagne flute filled with oil.
But just as the working day came to a close yesterday, Amnesty staff received notice from the Financial Times that the ‘pink un would not be carrying the advert after all.
According to Index’s sources, the newspaper variously claimed that it was wary of libel claims and that the ad might be in poor taste, as some readers might mistake the oil in the glass for blood.
Taste issues aside, would it be legitimate for the FT to worry about libel? While Amnesty insists it “gave [the FT] written reassurances that we would take full responsibility for the comments and opinions stated in the advertisement”, the fact is that if the FT had published the ad, it could, potentially be liable in any proceedings.
But it’s extremely unlikely that Shell would sue. The company is quite keen on promoting its social credentials, and even a successful trip to court would more than likely involve an unpleasant trawl through the unfortunate effects of the oil industry.
Was it a commercial decision? Again, who knows? Big oil companies tend not to be so thin-skinned that they would pull money from a prestige publication such as the FT merely because it had carried a critical advert. Trafigura may have trampled all over free expression, but the issue there was company documents and detailed reports, not a generally critical ad.
It is genuinely quite hard to think of a good reason for the FT to pull this ad.
24 Dec 09 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Michael Smyth
European Court of Human Rights upholds protection of journalists’ sources
In Financial Times and ors v United Kingdom (Application no 821/03), the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) unanimously confirmed the importance of the protection of journalists’ sources as part of the media’s right to freedom of expression.
Five media organisations had been ordered by the High Court in London in 2001 to hand over a document they had each received from an anonymous source. The order was upheld on appeal, so they appealed further to the ECtHR, arguing, among other things, that the order was an interference with their right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The ECtHR agreed.
(more…)
21 May 09 | Uncategorized
Why Democracies Need an Unlovable Press
By Michael Schudson
Polity Press (£16.99)
This review is a guest post by John Lloyd
Democracy is served in curious ways: and one of these may have been the outburst last week of Michael Martin, the Speaker in the UK’s House of Commons, to a chamber struggling to frame an appropriate response as details of expense claims by members of parliament began to emerge. Ill humour bursting from his ruddy cheeks and avid to discover the source of the leak, Mr Martin was caustic with fellow MPs for “telling the media what they wanted to hear”. It was the voice of privilege challenged — but also of frustrated fury. Who are newspaper reporters to get so high and mighty about expense fiddles? What right have newspaper editors, in thrall to politically interventionist proprietors, to blame politicians for bringing democracy low?
These are good questions, although the Speaker was unwise to raise them in the middle of a moral storm in which the part of Jove the Thunderer is played by the British media. For this time the press — led by the Daily Telegraph, the receiver of the golden details — is right. Unlovable, hypocritical, slavish — it has done its job.
It has uncovered a scandal: and not just a scandal. The amounts of money are trivial and the infractions are mainly minor; but the public exposure of men and women deploying their creativity to wring every possible advantage out of their allowances is deeply unedifying. In some cases, it is shocking. These are the people who make the laws that tell us what to do on pain of fine or imprisonment. One does not have to be a hyperventilating tabloid columnist to expect better behaviour than that which has been revealed.
Revealed, we should remember, by the unlovable press. Michael Schudson, among the best of the academic writers on the media, has seen in the raucousness and hype of newspapers a pearl beyond price: the instinct to create trouble for the establishment, the panjandrums — them. In this collection of essays, the central one — which shares the book’s title — lays out four elements of necessary unlovability. These are: a love of the unplanned and the disruptive; an even greater love of conflict and dissent; a scepticism about the claims of politics; and a willingness to name names and connect the names with crimes and misdemeanors.
Schudson writes: “That is what serves democracy: the irresistible drive of journalists to focus on events, including those that powerful forces cannot anticipate and often cannot manage”. Thus when Matt Drudge began his subsequently richly rewarded career by showing, from his bedroom laptop, that President Bill Clinton was an adulterer; or when bloggers uncovered a speech made in 2002 by Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader, which pointed to racist views; or, more recently, when Paul Staines, a British blogger operating under the incendiary nom de guerre of Guido Fawkes, uncovered a sleazy plan on the part of prime ministerial aides to tar leading Conservatives with sex scandals – in all of these cases, the people glorying in their ill-gotten power and tearing down the powerful did well by us.
They fulfilled one of the necessary prerequisites of the free press: that it is free. In the words of Walter Meers ,a veteran AP reporter quoted in another of Schudson’s essays: “There are too many excursions into trivia,too much play for the public opinion polls, too many words about who’s ahead and who’s behind. There’s a reason. That is what people want to know.”
But here is the rub. Schudson is writing of American newspapers. In the much more overheated conditions of the British press — where populist tabloids far outsell upmarket broadsheets and where, in any case, the latter are just as liable to sink their teeth into politicians as the former — there is a larger problem. The expenses revelations come after many years in which, in diverse ways, the media have made of politics and politicians a cross between a spectacle, a reality show and a farce.
Recently playing in the cinemas has been State of Play, an Americanised version of a BBC television series that showed leading politicians to be monumentally corrupt, and In the Loop, a farcical rendering of the spin culture of the New Labour governments. A new, web-based radio station, Sun Talk, launched by the country’s most popular tabloid, fills hour after hour with political denigration. The second most popular but arguably more influential tabloid, the Daily Mail, is organising legal challenges to errant MPs.
This is part of a long struggle between the media and the political class for the allegiance of those whom the first call the audience and the second, the electorate. How far that competition is in our interests is another matter; and one for another day.
This review originally appear on the Financial Times website
