Pastor Terry Jones has been banned from entering the UK. Terry Jones is the controversial pastor who attempted to burn the Koran on the anniversary of 9/11.
The Press Complaints Commission wants us to think it has renewed itself. That it is no longer the feeble outfit that was derided for doing nothing about the McCann scandal and thinking everything was fine at the News of the World. It has new people in charge, it has carried out a governance review and its code of conduct for journalists is being revised. It’s also Tweeting to draw attention to how proactive it is.
So, is the investigation it has just announced into last month’s Daily Telegraph sting against the Liberal Democrats evidence of a new assertiveness? There’s a hint in their press release that they want us to think so, where they say: “The PCC was contacted by around 200 members of the public on this subject, and proactively sought the comments of party representatives.” That word “proactive” again: it is code for “we don’t just sit here waiting for complaints to come to us”.
Now they have received a formal complaint from the Lib Dem president, Tim Farron, alleging that the Telegraph breached the PCC editors’ code rules on use of subterfuge, and in consequence have launched their investigation.
It will be an interesting case. You might argue that the Telegraph uncovered something that was in the public interest in Vince Cable’s remarks (to reporters posing as constituents) about the Murdoch media. But then you have to note that the Telegraph, for reasons of its own, didn’t actually intend to publish that story.
The real issue, however, is likely to be this: before they visited the MPs’ surgeries, and before they turned on their hidden recorders, did the Telegraph journalists have an idea of what they were going to hear? Did they have reason to believe, for example, that Cable would tell them what he told them? If not, then they were merely fishing, and in the past the PCC has taken the view that newspapers are not justified in lying to law-abiding people and secretly recording them just to see what they might get out of it.
It is obviously a big case for the PCC. A finding against the Telegraph will be unpopular in the industry that pays the PCC’s bills and would doubtless be presented as bad for journalistic freedom. A finding that absolves the Telegraph will be unpopular with MPs, who already believe the PCC is wimpish and toothless. It’s good to see this tackled, and we watch with interest.
But to come back to the opening point: does the launching of this investigation reveal a new and assertive PCC? Maybe it’s a good sign, but it’s not convincing. The Commission’s rules allow it to investigate an issue of concern on its own authority, without waiting for — or soliciting, or negotiating — a complaint from anyone, victim or otherwise. It doesn’t do that, and it hasn’t done it here.
It has been proactive in only a limited sense since in the end the authority and initiative for the investigation have been carefully located with the LibDems. Maybe that’s appropriate in this case, but it means this can’t be described as a real flexing of muscles by a reformed PCC. It’s complaints processing — what they always did.
Until we see it being seriously proactive, elbowing its way into difficult areas of public concern and showing initiative and authority, the PCC’s claim to the role of serious industry regulator and its claim that it upholds standards in anything more than an indirect and intangible way will remain weak.
Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University London, he tweets @BrianCathcart
If it’s true that Avon and Somerset police excluded ITV News from its Joanna Yeates inquiry briefing today in response to criticisms on last night’s News at Ten, then the Dumb Cop of the Year award is sorted with only days of 2011 gone.
It is so obviously unacceptable for a public service such as the police to exclude representatives of a public service broadcaster that a demeaning apology cannot be far behind.
It’s the sort of crass news management I associate with the Nixon presidency in the 1970s, and the sort of behaviour we might expect from a spoiled and sulking schoolgirl.
Not, it should be said, that the general business of access to briefings, press conferences and interviews is remotely transparent, or managed in the interests of news consumers. Heavy-hitting interviewers such as Lynn Barber and Simon Hattenstone are used to being blacklisted by movie stars and movie studios, and PR agencies always have journalists they deal with and journalists they don’t.
To take a really big example of selection and exclusion in news delivery, the BBC and Sky are probably still cross that Prince William and Kate Middleton gave their engagement interview to ITV’s Tom Bradby, a reporter they apparently find sympathetic. Ideally, picking which reporter does which job is the editor’s job.
The police, with their often generously staffed PR departments, are not immune to the selection impulse, but in my experience it is normally possible for a reputable reporter, or one working for a reputable organisation, to gain access to police press conferences. Deliberate filtering on the grounds that you have a record of criticising the police is, I think, as unusual as it is indefensible.
The rules are different, of course, for other useful forms of access such as one-to-one interviews, off-the-record briefings and tip-offs. These depend on trust between officers and reporters, the kind of relationship that journalists always need to be be wary of.
A man has been charged with soliciting murder and offences under the Terrorism Act in connection with a blog that listed MPs who voted for the Iraq war. Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, 23, was arrested last week for allegedly using the blog to call for action against those MPs. RevolutionMuslim.com, hosted in the USA, has previously been cited as one the websites responsible for radicalising Roshonara Choudhry. She was sentenced to life imprisonment earlier this month for attempting to murder Labour MP Stephen Timms. US authorities have closed the site at the UK’s request.