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 | Uncategorized
Index on Censorship’s event with the Hacked Off campaign and English PEN at Labour party conference was a useful exercise in ruling out possibilities. The phone hacking scandal is just one in a series that has rocked Britons’ faith in their institutions: a theme picked up by Labour leader Ed Miliband in his speech yesterday. Yet some of the solutions proposed for rebuilding faith in the fourth estate would have a disproportionate effect on freedom of expression. That’s why these events across party conference season have proved useful. Whilst there is no clear consensus on what should be done, the debate is ruling out options that would clearly be unpalatable, and slowly a middle-ground is emerging.
At our events at both Labour and Liberal Democrat conference it was evident there is a strong anti-Murdoch feeling amongst delegates. But alongside this, the consensus is that a free press is essential in holding politicians to account.
As for ruling out the unpalatable, Ivan Lewis MP, Labour’s Shadow Culture Secretary in his keynote speech to the party’s conference argued:
We need a new system of independent regulation including proper like for like redress which means mistakes and falsehoods on the front page receive apologies and retraction on the front page. And as in other professions the industry should consider whether people guilty of gross malpractice should be struck off.
The second idea provoked an immediate response. On this blog, Padraig Reidy described it as a “bizarre distortion of the idea of a free press. Roy Greenslade pointed out countries that licensed journalists included Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, King Khalifa’s Bahrain and President Nazarbayev’s Kazakhstan. Labour MP Tom Harris also sounded caution tweeting: “If a journalist commits a serious misdemeanour, they can already be sacked.” Dan Hodges, an influential Labour activist went further: “On the day of the leader’s speech we announce the state banning of journalists. Labour is ceasing to exist as a serious political party.”
It is interesting that Lewis did not float this idea at our fringe event. Though Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust distanced his organisation from the idea, he did point out that professional registration bears a similarity to John Lloyd’s proposals for a “Journalism Society” outlined in the Financial Times in July.
However regulation moves forward, the PCC in its current form is no longer credible. One reccurring theme is that Northern & Shell (owner of the Daily Express amongst other titles) don’t even belong to this arbitrator.
At these events, English PEN and Index on Censorship have outlined how not to do press regulation. Jonathan Heawood, the Director of English PEN, has warned against imposing regulations that could constrain investigative journalism, echoing John Kampfner’s warning that the real problem is that the press find out too little rather than too much.
Heawood told the Labour meeting:
“In my five-year-old son’s language, writers of conscience around the world are the “goodies” and the News of the World journalists hacking into Milly Dowler’s voicemail are the “baddies”. The problem is: in the real world, a lot of great journalism happens in the grey area between good and bad. Anyone who thinks that we need tougher media laws in this country should realise how desperately constrained investigative journalists are already.”
Through the Libel Reform Campaign alongside Sense About Science, we have campaigned effectively for a stronger public interest defence as the existing defence in libel has not been of practical use for authors, scientists, NGOs, and citizen journalists. It’s also been pointed out that internationally, states will be watching how Britain approaches press regulation. Any impediments to free expression imposed here will make it easier for despots abroad to justify their actions, as China did when David Cameron floated the idea of banning social media during disturbances.
Public confidence in the press has been shaken. It won’t be restored by ill-considered proposals from politicians. As the Leveson inquiry begins, the focus for reform must be clearer.
You can sign the Libel Reform Campaign’s petition here (http://libelreform.org/sign)
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
Sir Harry Evans deserves credit for organising this week’s debate about “the press we deserve” in central London . It was deeply depressing, however, to see a panel of the great and the good discussing the press they thought they deserved, with hardly a reference to the reading public and with no apparent awareness of the depth of failings in the (absent) tabloid press.
In a cloud of complacency, the systemic failings of the tabloids and of the Press Complaints Commission were lost altogether. Here, by way of reminder, are some of the problems that most of those present seemed happy to do nothing about.
– The shameful spectacle of mass, serial libel, followed by mass serial apologies and payout, followed by further mass, serial libel, The press did this to Robert Murat, to the McCanns, to Chris Jefferies in Bristol and in all likelihood we will see the same outcome in the case of the nurse Rebecca Leighton. Papers tell grotesque and damaging lies about people, pay up and then do it again (we even have a new courtroom ritual in which they all apologise together). Imagine these were railway accidents: would we allow train operators to pay modest fines after killing a few passengers, and then carry on as before? No, we would demand that they account for what had gone wrong, if necessary discipline those responsible, and improve their internal systems so it did not happen again. Nobody at all does that in the case of the tabloid press. They just go on defaming.
– The Mosley trial revealed the depths of dishonesty to which journalists can sink. The News of the World bullied, bribed, blackmailed, cheated and lied to get its story and its follow-ups, and then embellished what it had to the point where they bore no relation to the facts. The judge all but called the paper’s chief reporter a liar and a blackmailer in court, and yet that reporter was not sacked. After the paper was found guilty and ordered to pay a fine that it could laugh off, where was the regulator who would go in and ask what had gone wrong and what was being done to fix it? Nowhere.
– The sustained fantasy and dishonesty of the tabloid coverage of the Madeleine McCann affair. This went on for the best part of a year, with the PCC doing nothing at all, besides standing by and watching. It affected many more people than the McCanns; the public as a whole were lied to, to the point where a kind of hysteria was engendered. Many papers eventually paid damages, but does anyone doubt that something similar could happen again now?
– Phone hacking was illegal, and is a matter for the law. But the newsroom standards and ethics behind it are something different, and it would be a naive person who claimed that those exceptionally low standards prevailed only at the News of the World, or indeed that phone hacking only occurred at that paper. Baroness Buscombe’s claim that the PCC code of practice has driven up standards is utter nonsense. Moreover, the four-year cover-up by the News International management, which continued to employ and shelter hackers for years, demonstrates that these standards were not questioned by those in charge.
The sustained refusal of the tabloids to report the unfolding hacking scandal from 2009 until this summer was an abuse of editorial power and amounts to a cover-up in itself. Here was a scandal involving a huge international corporation, the prime minister, half a dozen former Cabinet ministers, two royal princes and more celebrities than you could shake a stick at, but tabloid editors systematically hid it from their readers because it was a scandal that embarrassed them too. In effect, they lied to their readers by implying the scandal was not happening. Not since the press concealed the brewing abdication crisis in 1936 have we seen such a collective violation of responsibility.
– Those are only the most gross and most recent offences, for which self-regulation had no remedy, nor even a response. It had no remedy because the PCC is a small-time complaints body and nothing more, and it was designed that way by editors and proprietors who did not have the slightest interest in raising or supporting ethical standards. Instead they wanted a fig-leaf behind which they could continue to behave exactly as they wished.
We are now witnessing another cover-up, just like News International’s. We are being told, by half of Harry Evans’s panellists and by the Daily Mail that there was indeed a problem in the tabloid press, but it was all down to one rogue newspaper. That rogue newspaper has been caught (admittedly a little late in the day, but that was the fault of the police) and dealt with. A message has been sent out to other newspapers which they will heed. Problem solved; let’s get back to normal.
That is a self-serving lie, just as it was when it was peddled by News International about Clive Goodman. There isn’t just one rogue newspaper, there are lots of them. The problem has not been dealt with at all. And if we go back to normal we are giving the libellers and blackmailers, the privacy invaders and the people-destroyers a licence to carry on as before. Who deserves that kind of press?
