12 Oct 11 | Leveson Inquiry, Uncategorized
The hazy terrain of press regulation formed the core of discussion at this morning’s Leveson Inquiry seminar.
Eve Salomon, chair of the Internet Watch Foundation, kicked off the session by making the case for self-regulation, arguing that the PCC’s successor should be an enhanced model that both raises standards and deals with complaints. Salomon argued the current Press Complaints Commission is merely a mediator,and that having investigative powers that would characterise it as a regulator. Referring to the phone-hacking scandal, she added that “no amount of regulation” will deter criminals.
Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre was scathing, his speech attacked the “anarchic” internet and “elite” journalists who have “disdain” for tabloids, Dacre said the press is already “on the cusp of being over-regulated” due to the courts’ use of the Human Rights Act.
Though Dacre largely defended the PCC — he maintained it was “not a failed organisation” — he did concede that it needed reforming in order to regain public trust, and claimed it had “blunted the Sunday papers’ ability to find sensational stories.”
Any notion of licensing journalists or imposing fines was condemned; of “experts” in favour of licensing reporters, Dacre said: “my own view is they should emigrate to Zimbabwe.”
He added that the press are better behaved now than in the 1970s, during which time “harassment was rule rather than exception.”
Dacre went on to reveal that his newspaper, as well as its sister titles the Mail on Sunday and Metro, will introduce a corrections and clarifications column on page 2 of the paper next week. Currently no other tabloid runs such a column.
Will Moy of independent fact-checking organisation Full Fact followed Dacre, noting that, while some newspapers and journalists are “excellent” when confronted with mistakes, they are the “exceptions”. Citing the Daily Express’s twisting of house price quotes, Moy added that “newspapers cannot be trusted to regulate themselves”, arguing that a regulator was “essential.”
He did see potential for “indirect regulation”, such as a readers’ editor, and added that the PCC needs to have more effective sanctions for dealing with repeat offenders. The readers’ editor of Observer, Stephen Pritchard, also made the case for more internal news ombudsmen, arguing that they could enhance trust (there are currently only two of them in the UK, at the Guardian and the Observer).
Later, the role of corporate governance in maintaining standards was discussed. Labour life peer Lord Borrie made the case for stronger ethical standards, arguing that they should not merely be “something that slips off the tongue of chairman at the annual general meeting.” Non-executive director of Channel 4, Stephen Hill, spoke in favour of “scrupulous” corporate governance, while Trinity Mirror‘s Sly Bailey argued that “no system of corporate governance” was bomb-proof: it could not stop a determined wrongdoer, but may “minimise wrongdoing.”
Damian Tambini, a lecturer on media policy and regulation at the London School of Economics, said it was unhelpful to oppose statutory regulation as a sort of “ogre”, noting that self-regulation might need statutory back up. Cardiff University journalism professor Ian Hargreaves also noted that we cannot compel individuals to join a system, and can only “create a system that’s so good most people want to be part of it.”
For Index CEO John Kampfner, the challenge of the Leveson Inquiry will be “setting out strength of corporate governance and ensuring that regulation doesn’t chill speech.” He added that any future regulation must not lead to any “excess of caution that damages investigative journalism.”
Follow Index on Censorship’s coverage of the Leveson Inquiry on Twitter – @IndexLeveson.
Click here for the full text of John Kampfner’s speech at this afternoon’s session of the Inquiry.
30 Sep 11 | Uncategorized
The need to maintain freedom of expression while we work to restore faith in the press was emphasised by one of the journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal at an event in London organised by The Guardian last night.
Carl Bernstein said he was “struck by the parallels” between the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and the saga that brought down US President Richard Nixon in the 1970s. He added that the two events were “shattering cultural moments of huge consequence that are going to be with us for generations”, and that both were “about corruption at the highest levels, about the corruption of the process of a free society”.
Chaired by Channel 4 News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the event, titled After Hacking: How Can The Press Restore Trust?, brought together a panel consisting of Bernstein alongside George Eustice, David Cameron’s former press secretary; Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of French newspaper Le Monde; and The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger.
Regulation of the press was high on the agenda. Eustice, while disagreeing with Ivan Lewis’s suggestion of “striking-off” journalists guilty of malpractice, claimed there was “not much wrong” with the existing Press Complaints Commission (PCC) code, besides that it needed to be better enforced. He argued that the British press needed stiffer regulation in order to prevent a repeat of the phone-hacking scandal and raise journalistic standards.
Bernstein was at odds with Eustice, arguing that “any kind of prior restraint on what we publish would be a slippery slope inhibiting free speech.” He said the press must be regulated in the same way as our speech is, through general law rather than a specific code. Otherwise, we would be “heading towards a truth commission”.
Kauffmann also agreed that regulation was unfeasible, as “journalism is not an exact science.” Rusbridger, meanwhile, was in favour of continuing the UK’s current model of having two systems of regulation for press and broadcasting, though noted the complications that may lie ahead as papers continue to develop their web strategies. Where regulation of journalism ends and regulation of blogging begins, an issue also raised at last week’s Law Society debate, was flagged as a stumbling block of tighter controls.
Yet any possible solutions to restore faith in the press go beyond mere regulation, it was argued. Kauffmann noted that the scandal that has rocked Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire has brought into focus the fundamentals of journalism: “Why do journalists do what they do? What is right and what is wrong? We need to ask these questions.”
The thorny conflict between privacy and the public’s right to know, Bernstein opined, would also help to define who we are and deciding what is news. The latter, he said, was the “most important task of journalism”.
He also emphasised that the scandal is part of a “cultural breakdown” that goes beyond Rupert Murdoch, involving politicians and consumers alike. “We’ve not heard much about the consumers of trash,” he said. “They also have a responsibility for culture.” He later asked: “Why are people seeking information to reinforce already held beliefs? That’s where journalism is going.”
He noted we are experiencing a global loss of trust in our institutions, from the press to politicians. Giving them more secrecy would be “awful”, he said, adding that we need to be “more aggressive” in breaking this down.
With the fear of a potential backlash on the press, Rusbridger noted that the next few years will be “uncomfortable” for journalists. But he reminded the audience that it was “an act of outstanding journalism that exposed an act of bad journalism.”
“Without reporters,” he concluded, “we’re all fucked.”
Marta Cooper is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship
28 Sep 11 | Leveson Inquiry
Index attended this morning’s hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in which Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers expressed concern that the six-strong panel in the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking lacks tabloid or regional newspaper experience.
Associated legal team argued that the panel, members of which Lord Justice Leveson stressed were appointed due to their expertise in a specific field, may be partial and “filter” their prejudices into judgments made throughout the inquiry. Leveson responded that the panel’s role is merely an advisory one, and that any conclusion of the inquiry “will be mine and mine alone”.
With the backing of Trinity Mirror, the Newspaper Publishers’ Association and Guardian News & Media, the publisher also argued that the panel should have more members, noting that the inquiry would “benefit from experts across the industry” that would “fill the gap” left by the lack of representation of mid-market or tabloid papers. A solicitor representing Associated said the omission of such bodies would be “unfortunate in such a major inquiry”.
Leveson’s six advisers are Sir David Bell, former chairman of the Financial Times; Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty; Lord David Currie, former chairman of Ofcom; Elinor Goodman, former political editor of Channel 4 News; George Jones, former political editor of the Daily Telegraph; and Sir Paul Scott-Lee, former chief constable of West Midlands police.
Leveson argued that the essence of the panel, as well as upcoming seminars attended by core participants and non-core participants alike, was to encourage debate and provide a balance of views. He stressed,
“I am very conscious that I am stepping into a profession that is not the one that I spent 40 years of life in. It is critical that I obtain advice from those who have made their life in this area, not least because I would be keen to understand any flaws that I might have because of lack of experience.”
He concluded he would reserve a ruling on the application to invite further assessors and would provide a decision in due course.
Index will be tweeting from throughout the inquiry at @IndexLeveson
21 Sep 11 | Uncategorized
With this year’s slew of superinjunctions and the exposure of the phone hacking scandal, the fine lines between free speech, privacy, media regulation and public interest have never been so topical. On 20 September, lawyers Gideon Benaim and Hugh Tomlinson QC were joined by the Guardian’s David Leigh and Index editor Jo Glanville at the Law Society to pick apart this complex balance of principles and interests and evaluate the press’s role in upholding it.
It was first put to the panel whether the UK’s current privacy laws were working. Hugh Tomlinson QC argued they were, but he felt that rather than continuing to leave such decisions to judges, there needed to be legislation.
Leigh, meanwhile, was concerned about what he dubbed “the ballooning approach to privacy law” and its potentially restrictive effects on the journalism trade and free speech. Benaim, however, did not buy into what he termed “Doomsday” rhetoric — the assumption that investigative journalism and democracy were on the brink of tighter sanctions.
The subject of whether — and how — the press should be regulated in light of the recent phone hacking scandal that has marred Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation proved contentious. While Benaim was in favour of more controls, Leigh, Tomlinson and Glanville expressed concerns. “Regulation is attractive on the surface, but it cannot work because where journalism ends and blogging begins is not clear,” Tomlinson said.
He added, however, that he would like to see an “independent quasi-judicial regulatory body for the press” that mixes incentives and disincentives for reporters.
An audience member asked whether or not phone hacking would have occurred had regulations been in place and the reporters involved had received more rigorous journalistic training. For Leigh, this was a non-issue in News Corp’s case: “The tabloid culture of anything goes took over.” In this atmosphere, hacking unsurprisingly became acceptable.
Glanville agreed that controls may well have proved futile. “Even if regulations were in place, how would they have stopped hacking when even the police and the CPS ignored it?”
The panel added that the very reason phone hacking persisted was due to widespread concerns — and fear — over the power of Murdoch and his media empire. An issue raised, but left unanswered, was whether or not an independent regulator would have held back over such concerns.
Glanville closed the debate by noting how we are seeing a “massive cultural shift in how we treat our own privacy. This is mismatched with what is legally possible in terms of what is published.” In the short term, the upcoming Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions and the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking should provide a pause for thought and help refocus both British journalism and the public’s relationship with it.
Marta Cooper is an editorial assistant at Index on Censorship.
