The Culture, Media and Sports Committee has heard evidence on the tabloid voicemail hacking scandal. Padraig Reidy reports
(more…)
The news could not have come at a worse time for free speech campaigners. Revelations about private detectives have been paid large sums by the tabloid press to hack into the mobile phones and other records of public figures will cause damage to the newspaper at the heart of the practice, the News of the World. It will not enhance the credibility of its former Editor, Andy Coulson, now David Cameron’s trusted Director of Communications at the Conservative Party.
But the consequences are far more important than the future of a tabloid and a spin doctor. The scandal — for it is a scandal –– has unleashed a further bout of yelping from the “something must be done” brigade, the people in public life who argue that the media has long been “out of control”. Their cheerleader is Tony Blair, who famously used one of his last days as prime minister to take revenge on journalists, deriding them as “feral beasts”.
The painful truth is that, in one respect, these people are not wrong. British journalism contains no shortage of sleazy practice. And yet the context is entirely misleading. The biggest problem with the Fourth Estate is not that it finds out too much, but that it finds out too little. Investigative journalism is a declining art. Much of that is due to economics. It costs a considerable amount to deploy a team to eke out information about, say, a dodgy arms deal, unethical corporate practice, or British collusion in torture. Sometimes months of probing leads to nothing, and editors are under pressure to account for every penny they spend. Some of the decline is attributed to simply laziness. It takes a lot of effort to commission and see through difficult stories.
But the main impediment comes from Britain’s horrific libel laws. So skewed is the legislation and the practice that the burden of proof in court falls entirely on the media, rather than the plaintiff. The costs have grown beyond all proportion and are entirely out of sync with the original “offence”. This has led to malicious threats of prosecutions by the rich and famous, forcing newspapers to retract, even where they know the information to be correct, simply because they cannot afford to sustain their defence.
Britain has now become the libel capital of the world, the home of what has come to be known as “libel tourism”, the destination of choice for Russian oligarchs and others to prosecute not just journalists, but book authors, even NGOs. The chilling effect is hard to quantify, because beyond the prosecutions and threats lies the self censorship that is affecting so much journalism at the moment. The new mantra, from the BBC to most newspapers, even now to some bloggers, is: “why cause trouble?”
The House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport is putting the finishing to an enquiry it has been carrying out on “press standards, privacy and libel”—note the order. At Index on Censorship, in conjunction with English PEN, we have been conducting our own inquiry into the impact of libel. We have spoken to editors, lawyers, journalists, publishers, bloggers and NGOs in a unified campaign for changes in the libel law. We intend to issue our report in coming months as the government ponders its response to the Select Committee. We urge those preparing their conclusions to distinguish between robust investigative journalism that seeks to find out what the powerful would rather conceal from us and grubby and often illegal practice.
If they fail to make this distinction, if they tarnish us with the same brush, democracy and free expression will be the losers.
This is a guest post by Katriona Lewis
The Culture, Media and Sport committee met yesterday in parliament where MPs quizzed key figures in the press such as Private Eye’s Ian Hislop and the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger press standards, privacy and libel.
‘Privacy is the new libel,’ said Ian Hislop. ‘I am less sued,’ he continued. ‘There are fewer libels but each one is a lot more expensive and you can run into huge figures on one story.’ While libel is becoming harder to accuse privacy is not. Hislop attested to being sent fortnightly injunctions against privacy by the notorious Schillings law firm. He claimed to have had three privacy cases against him just this year. ‘It’s time to say: “What is privacy law?”’
MPs were surprised to hear of the growing trend of lawyers requesting ‘prior notification’ of story details before they go to print. Hislop classed this as ‘censorship by judicial process.’
Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, refused to comment on the cost of the settlement in legal action following two mistakes printed in a story about Tesco’s tax dealings. However, he did say that after the incident they spent £90,000 on legal advice in advance of printing a tax avoidance supplement. ‘If you hit newspapers in this way the media won’t write about it.’ Rusbridger commented in a discussion of Tesco’s motivation to sue. ‘Confidence is an issue for us.’
The editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler said that they now talk to the Press Complaints Commission up to the publication of most stories. ‘No editor wants an adjudication against them,’ said Myler. ‘I’ve had three.’
Rusbridger suggested the PCC clarified it’s position saying: ‘They are more of a mediator and less of a regulator. The PCC needs to acknowledge that we take privacy seriously and make it clear that people don’t need to go to the courts.’