tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/royal-charter-5478/articlesRoyal Charter – The Conversation2022-02-04T11:13:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1745632022-02-04T11:13:34Z2022-02-04T11:13:34ZUK city status: why even small towns compete for the royal honour<p>As part of the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations in 2022, towns from across the United Kingdom, and further afield, are competing for city status. The list of competitors numbers 38, with 23 from England, eight from Scotland, three from Northern Ireland, three from various British overseas territories and one – Wrexham – from Wales. </p>
<p>This year’s competition marks several firsts. It is the first time applicants from beyond the British Isles have been included. Also, the judging panel has been made public and for the first time, it includes not only government officials but heritage experts, among them Kate Mavor, the CEO of English Heritage.</p>
<p>Although the award is ultimately an honour bestowed by the Queen, towns interested in city status make their case to the government, traditionally to the Home Office but in recent times to whichever department of state accepts responsibility. This has included the ministries of justice and culture, media and sport and, for 2022, the Cabinet Office.</p>
<p>As I have shown in <a href="https://www.routledge.com/City-Status-in-the-British-Isles-18302002/Beckett/p/book/9781138252127">my book</a>, City Status in the British Isles, 1830-2002, if the administering department of state has changed regularly, just who is responsible for the competitions and their outcomes is not at all clear. Local MPs are expected to use their influence on behalf of their towns. In fact, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/article/inventing-and-reinventing-the-modern-city-the-2012-city-status-competition-in-the-united-kingdom/2A2944B1076DC7CB8033363B46D7205B">I have found</a> that city-status competitions are essentially about political patronage. </p>
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<img alt="An orange tender boat brings visitors ashore from a cruise boat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444339/original/file-20220203-25-asx4ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444339/original/file-20220203-25-asx4ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444339/original/file-20220203-25-asx4ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444339/original/file-20220203-25-asx4ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444339/original/file-20220203-25-asx4ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444339/original/file-20220203-25-asx4ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444339/original/file-20220203-25-asx4ij.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Is Port Stanley, on the Falkland Islands – population 2,000 – to be one of the newest British cities?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stanley-falkland-islands-february-2020-tender-2107389653">Vintagepix | Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>How towns apply</h2>
<p>There are no straightforward criteria a town has to meet in order to compete. Applicants need neither prove population size nor boast a vibrant local economy; they need no medieval churches or Grade I-listed buildings to their name either. </p>
<p>As such, the platinum jubilee list includes Reading, a southern English town with a population of 163,000 and Alcester, a small Warwickshire town with a population of 7,000. And then there’s Port Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, which counts just over 2,000 inhabitants. </p>
<p>The government has framed the 2022 competition in terms of civic pride. Applicants were told to emphasise notions of heritage, innovation and greater prosperity and opportunity in their application. They were also told to highlight royal connections, presumably because city status is in the Queen’s gift. Quite how these connections are taken into account by the judging panel is unclear.</p>
<p>Those towns that are successful in their bids will have the right to append “City of” to their names and to change their street signs. They will also update their coats of arms.</p>
<p>According to the UK government, this brings many benefits. Cities, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/full-list-of-places-aiming-to-become-jubilee-cities-revealed">it claims</a>, do better than non-cities: “Winning can provide a boost to local communities and open up new opportunities for people who live there, as is the case with previous winners Perth and Preston where the local economies benefited from their improved national and global standing.”</p>
<p>Less quantifiable outcomes include international exposure and the general buzz of local excitement as feelings of pride, community and nationalism are generated by winning the competition. </p>
<h2>How cities are chosen</h2>
<p>Towns and boroughs in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have competed in such civic honours competitions since 1977, when Derby, in the East Midlands, won on the occasion of the Queen’s silver jubilee. Between the 1992, 2002 and <a href="https://theconversation.com/jubilee-queens-elizabeth-and-victorias-diamond-reigns-5251">2012</a> jubilees, a total of 15 towns have been granted city status. </p>
<p>Jubilee honours aside, there are other instances where towns have been granted the title by <a href="https://privycouncil.independent.gov.uk/royal-charters/">royal charter</a>. An unexpected competition was organised as part of the Millennium celebrations in 2000, which saw Brighton and Hove, Wolverhampton and Inverness gain city status. <a href="https://theconversation.com/southend-on-sea-how-british-towns-become-cities-170236">Southend-on-Sea followed suit</a> in October 2021, in honour of the late David Amess and his longstanding campaign to see the resort town feted. </p>
<p>Applications for the 2022 competition were submitted in December 2021 and the winners are expected to be announced in the spring. There is no fixed number of winners in any given year. But since there are applicants from each province of the UK it is a fair bet on past performance that each will have at least one successful candidate.</p>
<p>As Wrexham is the only candidate from Wales it can probably expect to succeed. Northern Ireland has three candidates. Possibly these will all succeed given the need to recognise the different communities in the province. </p>
<p>Of England’s 23 candidates, on past performance, no more than three are likely to succeed. The presence on the panel of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/catherine-frances">Catherine Francis</a>, the director general for local government and public services at the housing department may suggest that the government is thinking politically about which towns might be promoted, and not just about heritage and royalty.</p>
<p>None of this makes absolute sense. If it is advantageous for a large town to be a city, and the government’s own data suggests it is, why should towns like Blackburn, or Bournemouth, Colchester, Doncaster, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, Northampton and others not automatically receive a charter? After all, the Centre for Cities, an independent thinktank dedicated to improving urban economies throughout the UK, lists, among the 63 urban areas that it covers, <a href="https://www.centreforcities.org/city-by-city/">25 English towns</a> which do not have city charters. These include Aldershot, Basildon and Slough, all with a population exceeding 180,000. </p>
<p>While a few places have taken matters into their own hands and declared themselves cities, either temporarily (like Milton Keynes) or permanently (Dunfermline in Scotland and Medway in England), for the most part, town officials abstain from using the term “city” in the absence of a charter. Instead, towns with city status pretensions go through these competitions, which are increasingly like as a sort of beauty contest, wherein patronage is key. </p>
<p>When Preston, a Labour stronghold succeeded in 2002, the Conservative MP for Chelmsford, Simon Burns <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/mar/15/communities.politics1">accused</a> Labour ministers in the House of Commons of engaging “in a cynical political fix” to only reward their stronghold towns with the title. After the Tories and the Liberal Democrats joined forces in 2010, the coalition government made <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/mar/14/st-asaph-chelmsford-perth-city-status">Chelmsford</a> a city in 2012, in what would appear to be a direct response to Burns’ criticisms. What began as a royal honour has now become now a tool for <a href="https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/88559/3/AHRC_Cultural_Value_KO%20Final.pdf">civic boosterism</a> and for currying political favour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Beckett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To fête the 70th year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, several towns – and a few villages – are to be granted the royal right to call themselves cities.John Beckett, Professor of English Regional History, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1702362021-10-22T14:02:37Z2021-10-22T14:02:37ZSouthend-on-Sea: how British towns become cities<p>Southend-on-Sea is to be accorded <a href="https://www.southend.gov.uk/news/article/2382/city-status-announced-for-southend-on-sea">the status of city</a> in honour of David Amess. On October 18, 2021, three days after the Conservative MP <a href="https://theconversation.com/david-amess-killing-threats-of-violence-and-harassment-have-become-commonplace-for-politicians-170078">was murdered</a> in his constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Boris Johnson announced the Queen had agreed to the grant. </p>
<p>Seeing Southend acquire this new label had long been Amess’s goal. As <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/david-amess-southend-city-status-posthumous-gift-1255753">he put it</a> in the House of Commons in 2019, “I know that the House has become tired of hearing me ask for city status for Southend … but I am not going to shut up until it happens.” </p>
<p>The UK counts 69 cities. Pre-reformation cathedral towns including <a href="https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol11/pp164-184">Canterbury</a>, <a href="https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/city-of-york/pp29-30">York</a> and <a href="https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9829/60/370732_vol1.pdf">Durham</a>, were cities by <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/article/inventing-and-reinventing-the-modern-city-the-2012-city-status-competition-in-the-united-kingdom/2A2944B1076DC7CB8033363B46D7205B">ancient prescriptive right</a>. In other words they have been regarded as cities from time immemorial.</p>
<p>As I have shown in my book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/City-Status-in-the-British-Isles-18302002/Beckett/p/book/9781138252127">City Status in the British Isles: 1830–2002</a>, the manner in which this honour has been granted to a town has changed considerably through the centuries. Though some towns, including Milton Keynes and Dunfermline in Scotland, have temporarily declared themselves cities, being granted the honour by royal charter remains a primary motivation.</p>
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<img alt="An aerial view of Canterbury cathedral and the city centre" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427991/original/file-20211022-14-1bpg489.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427991/original/file-20211022-14-1bpg489.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427991/original/file-20211022-14-1bpg489.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427991/original/file-20211022-14-1bpg489.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427991/original/file-20211022-14-1bpg489.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427991/original/file-20211022-14-1bpg489.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/427991/original/file-20211022-14-1bpg489.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Canterbury has held city status since time immemorial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/john_fielding/8636097884">John Fielding | Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Historical process</h2>
<p>The entitlement of the reigning monarch to create cities goes back to the 16th century, when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and founded six Anglican dioceses with the proceeds. As a result, half a dozen towns, including <a href="https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp74-180">Oxford</a>, became cities by virtue of their being diocesan centres.</p>
<p>When new dioceses were created in the 19th century, their diocesan centres were located in towns which had an appropriate parish church which could be consecrated as a cathedral such as Manchester. And most people’s understanding of how a place becomes a city still relates to it having a cathedral. </p>
<p>That, however, is a modern urban myth. The link was broken in 1889, when a charter was conferred on <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-makes-a-city/">Birmingham</a> as a result of its size and importance. </p>
<p>From that time onwards the status was given, often in conjunction with a royal visit such as Stoke on Trent in 1925. More recently, in 1994 St David’s in Wales and Armagh in Northern Ireland were promoted via the monarch’s prorogative.</p>
<p>By the 1960s, so many towns considered themselves suitable for city status that the Home Office decided to make the process <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/article/inventing-and-reinventing-the-modern-city-the-2012-city-status-competition-in-the-united-kingdom/2A2944B1076DC7CB8033363B46D7205B">a competition</a>. Rival towns would vie for the honour through a contest organised in conjunction with specific festivities such as the Queen’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/jubilee-queens-elizabeth-and-victorias-diamond-reigns-5251">jubilees</a> and the millennium. </p>
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<img alt="Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip ride in the back of a car" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428024/original/file-20211022-16-lisl7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428024/original/file-20211022-16-lisl7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428024/original/file-20211022-16-lisl7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428024/original/file-20211022-16-lisl7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428024/original/file-20211022-16-lisl7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428024/original/file-20211022-16-lisl7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428024/original/file-20211022-16-lisl7r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 was one of the occasions on which towns competed for city status.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thesuttonfamily/2967634802">Claire Sutton | Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prestigious-civic-honours-to-be-awarded-by-her-majesty-the-queen-for-first-time-in-10-years">Sunderland</a> was thus awarded city status on its fifth attempt, in 1992, on the occasion of the Queen’s ruby jubilee. And to mark the golden jubilee in 2002, five towns – Preston, Newport, Stirling and Lisburn and Newry in Northern Ireland – <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/1872577.stm">followed suit</a>. </p>
<p>In June 2021, the government announced a competition would be organised in conjunction with the platinum jubilee in February 2022. The closing date for applications is December 8 2021. Southend, guided by Amess, intended to throw its hat into the ring. </p>
<h2>What becoming a city does</h2>
<p>Being a city does not bring tax breaks or financial benefits, but it is generally held to benefit the citizens of those places which are successful in the competitions. The only guidelines for local government officers preparing the applications is that they need to emphasise civic pride, heritage, innovation and opportunity. </p>
<p>Urban planners speak about <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0362331904001065">civic boosterism</a>. Previous winners have emphasised the benefits the status has wrought. Stephen Parkinson, who led Preston’s successful bid in 2002, argued that it served to put his town on the map. </p>
<p>“We have joined an elite club,” <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/article/inventing-and-reinventing-the-modern-city-the-2012-city-status-competition-in-the-united-kingdom/2A2944B1076DC7CB8033363B46D7205B">Parkinson said</a>. “You are recognised internationally and nationally as a place that means business.” </p>
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<img alt="Nighttime shot of traffic and buildings in central Milton Keynes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428026/original/file-20211022-25-15tuq7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428026/original/file-20211022-25-15tuq7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428026/original/file-20211022-25-15tuq7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428026/original/file-20211022-25-15tuq7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428026/original/file-20211022-25-15tuq7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428026/original/file-20211022-25-15tuq7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/428026/original/file-20211022-25-15tuq7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Milton Keynes, a town that took matters into its own hands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/fr/image-photo/milton-keynesenglandseptember-2021-travelodge-jurys-inn-2047075688">Pajor Pawel</a></span>
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<p>Where does Southend fit into this? It is one of three Essex towns, along with Chelmsford and Colchester, to have entered all the competitions since 1992. </p>
<p>Chelmsford was successful in 2012. But even though Southend now drops out of the current competition, Colchester does not automatically qualify. It still must be judged, along with with aspirant cities from around the country, on the quality of its application. </p>
<p>There is nothing to stop a town declaring itself to be a city, but most applicants want the legitimacy conferred by a royal charter. No city, to my knowledge, has ever turned it down.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170236/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Beckett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is nothing stopping a place in the UK declaring itself a city – but most campaigns covet a royal charter.John Beckett, Professor of English Regional History, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/675822016-10-25T12:08:15Z2016-10-25T12:08:15ZPress regulation in Britain: a step forward – and a step back<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142970/original/image-20161024-28409-z9lr6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">zefart</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone reading recent <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/not-impressed-srf2bdrsj">editorials</a> in the British press will know that the industry is worried. Following the discovery in 2011 that journalists on a number of newspapers <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/phone-hacking-2415">had been hacking people’s phones to get stories</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/leveson-inquiry-7469">Leveson Inquiry</a> made a number of recommendations for independent and effective self-regulation of the press. </p>
<p>In a diluted form these were accepted by parliament and included an independent body, the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/">Press Recognition Panel</a> (PRP), designed to scrutinise would-be self-regulators according to criteria of good governance and effective implementation of a journalistic code. These were detailed in a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254116/Final_Royal_Charter_25_October_2013_clean__Final_.pdf">Royal Charter</a>, also passed by parliament. </p>
<p>Now, the PRP is meeting to decide whether to <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/board-meeting-on-impress-application-for-recognition/">recognise a regulator called Impress</a>, set up by free speech advocate Jonathan Heawood in order to meet those criteria. And, judging by the hundreds of column inches devoted to fulminating outrage about the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3857836/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Freedom-not-bend-blackmail.html">end of 300 years of press freedom</a>, editors fully expect Impress to be recognised. </p>
<p>Further steps are needed to complete the self-regulation framework agreed by parliament: in particular the incentive scheme whereby newspapers which choose not to sign up to a recognised self-regulator are <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/S40-briefing-with-timeline.pdf">liable for the court costs of both sides in civil cases</a> still has to be signed off by the culture secretary. But recognition of Impress will be a vital and historic step forwards after decades of bitter industry resistance to meaningful reform.</p>
<p>The newspaper industry’s collective hysteria was entirely predictable, if grossly inaccurate. Rather less predictable was a recent <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sir-alan-moses-free-press-in-the-uk-is-doomed-if-it-allows-government-to-corral-it-into-state-backed-regulator/">intervention by Sir Alan Moses</a>, the inaugural chair of the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a> (IPSO) which was established by the industry as their two fingers to parliament and the Leveson framework. IPSO, we should remember, was acclaimed by the press in paid-for advertisements as “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/press-announces-timetable-for-toughest-regulator-in-the-world-8902402.html">the toughest regulator in the Western world</a>” which would ensure that – finally – the press was genuinely accountable for breaches of its own code.</p>
<p>So what was the first chairman of IPSO’s message to the industry he was purporting to regulate? “Government, the powers that be, want to goad you, prod you like sheep into doing what they want.” And he continued: “The essence of successful regulation I believe is that it is voluntary. It’s something that you choose to do, not something into which you are driven.”</p>
<h2>Lobbying for the industry</h2>
<p>This was not the sound of someone preparing to get tough on an industry which breaches its own standards with impunity. It was a message that might have come straight from a Daily Mail, Sun or Telegraph editorial, a final confirmation that IPSO and its leaders have gone the same way as the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) which preceded it – swallowed up by its paymasters and unable to distinguish effective regulation from industry backslapping.</p>
<p>That history is repeating itself is abundantly clear from Sir Brian Leveson’s brief <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/comment/yes-the-pcc-was-discredited-by-leveson-and-heres-the-proof/">historical assessment of the PCC</a> in which he demonstrated how the PCC acted as – in his words – “an unabashed advocate or lobbyist for the press industry”.</p>
<p>The evidence was unequivocal. Under its second chairman, Lord Wakeham, the PCC lobbied for the press to be <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8534600/Lord-Wakeham-law-must-be-changed-to-stop-judges-handing-out-gagging-orders.html">exempt from Section 8 of the Human Rights Act</a>, which guarantees the individual right to privacy. Having failed, Wakeham negotiated with the then home secretary, Jack Straw, to <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcumeds/362/36205.htm">add a new section 12</a> designed to tip the balance of power towards the press in any trade-off between privacy and free speech.</p>
<p>Similarly vigorous lobbying under Wakeham’s successor, Christopher Meyer, was targeted at the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Exhibit-SA-X17.pdf">1998 Data Protection Act</a>, this time arguing against custodial sentences for breaches of section 55. Since this section related to unlawful procurement of personal data, and in light of a subsequent <a href="https://ico.org.uk/media/1042393/what-price-privacy.pdf">report by the Information Commissioner</a> that theft of confidential data by journalists was taking place on an industrial scale, it was hardly a regulatory priority to restrict penalties for offenders. As Leveson commented: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Little consideration appears to have been given to those who might be the subject of intrusive breaches of data protection at the hands of the press … Yet it is the complaints of those people which the PCC exists to mediate or resolve.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2005, the PCC coordinated its lobbying efforts in Europe to fend off a proposed clause in the <a href="http://www.budobs.org/other-projects/eu-observer/bo-documents/87-television-without-frontiers-the-convention-and-the-directive.html">Television Without Frontiers directive</a> which was considering a statutory right of reply to press inaccuracies.</p>
<p>It should be no surprise, then, that Leveson concluded: “At times, it seems that the PCC acted as both advocate and champion for this industry, a role that it rarely adopted in relation to those who had been wronged by the press.” </p>
<p>And as the PCC aligned itself unashamedly with the interests of those it was purporting to “regulate”, it constantly manoeuvred to reassure critics that it was becoming tougher and more independent.</p>
<h2>Keeping up appearances</h2>
<p>So following a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/271963/2135.pdf">highly critical second report</a> from Sir David Calcutt in 1993, the PCC’s first chairman Lord McGregor, and then Wakeham, sought to assure parliament that real changes were being implemented through a series of largely meaningless reforms such as minor tweaks to the editorial code. Several years later, Meyer announced another programme of reform couched in terms of “<a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcumeds/362/9032407.htm">permanent evolution</a>”. Then his successor, Lady Buscombe, launched an <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/assets/441/Independent_Governance_Review_Report.pdf">Independence Governance Review</a> which reported in 2010.</p>
<p>None of these measures amounted to a row of beans in terms of serious and effective systemic change – but each one was designed to give an impression of meaningful regulatory activity on behalf of the public. As Leveson wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Limited programmes of reform have been concerned with relieving pressure on the press and blunting calls for strengthening the self-regulatory system. A show of reform has been used as a substitute for the reality of it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://impress.press/about-us/">Impress</a> will provide an alternative self-regulator which is not funded by powerful media barons determined to protect their own interests but by a trust set up by Max Mosley and run by trustees who must – by law – operate in the public interest. With a transparently appointed and genuinely independent board, it will be able both to protect the interests of journalism and ensure that its code of ethics is taken seriously by member publications. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"790514196056244224"}"></div></p>
<p>It has <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-regulator-impress-claims-40-member-publications-with-combined-readership-of-2m/">yet to persuade any of the big beasts to join</a>, but everyone is watching. Once the full Leveson incentives are in place, bigger publishers will want to take advantage. </p>
<p>Perhaps Sir Alan Moses has done us a favour. He has shown us that, just like the PCC and its procession of industry-hugging chairmen, IPSO’s interests are now aligned with its paymasters. The spotlight can now turn to Impress and a new model of self-regulation which – if allowed to flourish – will both promote great journalism and prevent its worst abuses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New Leveson-compliant watchdog will provide firm hand for newspaper industry.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/534652016-01-22T10:10:35Z2016-01-22T10:10:35ZWhy new regulator could be a game-changing moment for journalism<p>You are unlikely to read about it in the mainstream press, but this week saw a major step forward for genuinely independent press regulation in the UK. The new press regulator <a href="http://impress.press/">IMPRESS</a> (Independent Monitor for the Press) has announced that it has not only signed up a dozen publishers but that it has submitted an application for formal recognition. This will now be assessed by the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/">Press Recognition Panel (PRP)</a>, the wholly independent body established by <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-report-cross-party-royal-charter">cross-party agreement</a>.</p>
<p>The dozen <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/20/press-regulator-impress-unveils-first-members-and-makes-charter-submission">founding members of IMPRESS</a> include local newspapers, online hyperlocal sites, New Internationalist Magazine and investigative journalism outfits Byline and The Ferret. None of the big beasts of Fleet Street, but that was never expected at this stage. IMPRESS says it is in discussion with another 30 or so publishers.</p>
<p>Given the levels of misinformation about press regulation in most national newspapers, this story is worth a quick recap. In the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/phone-hacking-trial">phone-hacking scandal</a> and other unsavoury Fleet Street practices which came to light, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/leveson-inquiry">Lord Justice Leveson</a> recommended a new framework for press self-regulation. </p>
<p>The industry, he said, should set up its own self-regulator, but within strict rules to ensure that it was wholly independent of both politicians and the industry. Among other things, it should incorporate a low-cost arbitration scheme, an easy and effective complaints mechanism, a whistleblowing service for journalists, and the ability to demand apologies and corrections from offending publications.</p>
<p>These criteria were incorporated into a Royal Charter which established the PRP, and will be used by the panel to assess any application for recognition. Publishers who belong to a recognised self-regulator will, under certain circumstances, be entitled to protection from heavy court costs or damages. IMPRESS is the first such self-regulator to apply for recognition.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the country’s main newspaper publishers – with the exception of the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times – have set up their <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/index.html">own regulator IPSO</a> (Independent Press Standards Organisation), in defiance of both Leveson and parliament. But IPSO has made it clear that it has <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sir-alan-moses-says-ipso-not-leveson-compliant-insists-it-will-be-independent">no intention of applying for recognition</a> under the Royal Charter.</p>
<h2>IMPRESS: Leveson-compliant</h2>
<p>The brainchild of free-speech campaigner <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/press-regulation-the-impress-way/">Jonathan Heawood</a>, IMPRESS was designed to be Leveson-compliant. Its chairman, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/nov/05/impress-ipso-press-monitor-walter-merricks-chair">Walter Merricks</a> – a former finance sector ombudsman – was appointed by an independent appointments board with no links to any political party after an open recruitment process.</p>
<p>He was keen to emphasise that IMPRESS will handle complaints in a “fair, impartial, authoritative and transparent” manner. It will provide an affordable arbitration scheme in partnership with the <a href="http://www.ciarb.org/">Chartered Institute of Arbitrators</a>, allowing both publishers and ordinary members of the public to resolve disputes without the cost and stress of going to court. And it has established a confidential whistleblowing advice hotline, run by the whistleblowing charity <a href="http://www.pcaw.org.uk/">Public Concern at Work</a>, which guarantees that names will not be passed on to employers.</p>
<p>Its initial funding comes through the charitable <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-press-regulation-trust-iprt">Independent Press Regulation Trust</a>, which in turn has received a substantial donation from the <a href="http://opencharities.org/charities/1142898">Mosley Charitable Trust</a>, set up by former F1 motor racing boss Max Mosley in memory of his late son. The charitable nature of both organisations ensures that Mosley himself can have no influence over how IMPRESS operates.</p>
<p>While none of the named publishers are well known, the principle has now been established of a press regulator which is demonstrably free from industry control and political influence. The raison d’etre for IMPRESS is trusted journalism, which every <a href="http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/iggcymaqch/YG-Archives-Pol-Trackers%20-%20Trust.pdf">survey of public opinion tells us</a> – certainly for the printed press – is in very short supply. But it’s also about supporting great journalism, in particular providing protection for the kind of watchdog reporting which is increasingly vulnerable to the chilling effect of wealthy litigants threatening bankruptcy through the courts.</p>
<p>For that reason, IMPRESS is supported not only by one of Britain’s greatest newspaper editors, Sir Harry Evans, but by the National Union of Journalists and free speech campaigners <a href="https://www.article19.org/">Article 19</a>.</p>
<h2>IPSO: watchdog? Or industry lapdog</h2>
<p>By contrast, IPSO is the newspaper industry’s creature. It is funded by the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/most-national-and-regional-newspaper-publishers-sign-contracts-ipso-regulator-defiance-royal-charter">same combination of powerful publishers</a> which bankrolled and controlled its predecessor, the discredited <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/08/press-complaints-commission-close-phone-hacking">Press Complaints Commission</a>. As the Media Standards Trust revealed two years ago, these publishers – through a shadowy body called the <a href="http://www.regulatoryfunding.co.uk/">Regulatory Funding Company (RFC)</a> – control IPSO’s rules, code, investigations and sanctions. <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/mst-news/ipso-an-assessment-by-the-media-standards-trust/">IPSO’s independence is an illusion</a>.</p>
<p>Certainly IPSO’s chairman Sir Alan Moses and its chief executive Matt Tee believe that they run an independent operation and point to a streamlined complaints process as well as a few (small print) corrections in newspapers as <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/rulings/IPSOrulings.html">indicators of success</a>. There is plenty of evidence, however, to demonstrate that <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/the-failure-of-ipso/">little has changed</a>, and their cri de coeur is identical to that of their predecessors. Meanwhile ordinary journalists, then as now, had nowhere confidential to go when they were being bullied or harassed into acting unethically.</p>
<h2>Finally, a game-changer</h2>
<p>Those newspapers which fund IPSO will do their best to undermine IMPRESS and derail the whole system. But there is no question that the framework recommended by Leveson, endorsed by parliament and supported by a great majority of the public, finally has momentum. It’s hardly a radical framework, following well-established principles for upholding standards in many other industries: self-regulation, but with an oversight body recognised in law.</p>
<p>It is likely to be several months before the PRP makes a final decision on recognition and the whole process has taken far longer than anyone – no doubt including Sir Brian Leveson – thought. In addition, under huge pressure from the powerful battalions of Fleet Street, culture secretary John Whittingdale is <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-versus-public-interest-in-battle-over-press-regulation-50114">dragging his feet</a> on implementing the court cost incentives which are an integral element of the benefits of recognition.</p>
<p>But it looks increasingly likely that the last bastion of unaccountable power in Britain, our national press, might finally face some genuine competition from a body committed to the kind of independent scrutiny which our newspapers routinely advocate for others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It looks as if Leveson’s proposals might finally bear fruit. But will the government have the courage to make it happen?Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/501142015-11-05T19:18:52Z2015-11-05T19:18:52ZPolitics versus public interest in battle over press regulation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100779/original/image-20151104-29060-cj7g6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rui Vieira / PA Archive/PA Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For anyone who cares about journalism in Britain, this November is hugely significant. It could mark a new era of genuinely effective press self-regulation which will both shore up vital public interest and watchdog journalism and protect ordinary people from mistreatment by powerful news publishers.</p>
<p>But it could also be the beginning of something altogether more sinister: an abject capitulation by a craven government to the unelected power of press barons. This requires explanation, because the truth has become mangled by deliberate and self-interested misreporting in the press.</p>
<h2>Cause for celebration?</h2>
<p>First, the optimistic scenario. In March 2013, parliament endorsed a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/mar/18/press-regulation-deal-agreed-talks">historic cross-party agreement</a> to implement the core recommendations of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/leveson-inquiry">Leveson Inquiry</a> through a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-report-cross-party-royal-charter">Royal Charter</a>. They were moderate proposals, following principles which had already been established for upholding standards in the legal profession: self-regulation – but with a backstop body recognised in law to monitor the self-regulators and ensure that they were effective and genuinely independent.</p>
<p>The concept was simple: the public should have faith that any self-regulator set up by news publishers would actually do what it said on the tin – unlike the discredited and now retired <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/07/press-complaints-commission-ed-miliband">Press Complaints Commission</a>.</p>
<p>This approach has been interpreted by some as state censorship. Recently on this site, Tim Crook <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-leveson-reforms-become-law-has-press-regulation-made-victims-of-us-all-49387">called</a> the new framework “a form of quasi state licensing of the regulation of content by newspaper and online publishers”. He is mistaken – this kind of pre-publication interference is expressly forbidden under the charter. Clause 17 of the Recognition Criteria <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254116/Final_Royal_Charter_25_October_2013_clean__Final_.pdf">explicitly states</a>: “The Board [of the self-regulator] should not have the power to prevent publication of any material, by anyone, at any time”. It could not be any clearer.</p>
<p>It’s now a year since that backstop body, the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/">Press Recognition Panel (PRP)</a> was established – and on September 10, the PRP declared it was <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/post/we-are-now-open-for-applications/">open to receive applications</a> for recognition from self-regulators. </p>
<p>This one-year anniversary is significant because it triggers one of two key incentives. As of November 3, any news publisher which belongs to a recognised self-regulator is protected from the risk of exemplary (and potentially large) damages in libel and privacy cases. </p>
<p>Again, this has been misinterpreted as <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NMA-PRP-Response.pdf">imposing a “chilling” penalty</a> on those who choose to stay outside the recognition system. But the threshold for exemplary damages is almost impossibly high: a publisher must have shown “a deliberate or reckless disregard of an outrageous nature for the claimant’s rights”. So while the new framework may have been activated, its effectiveness will so far be muted.</p>
<h2>Access to justice</h2>
<p>Far more important is the second incentive, which lies at the heart of the new structure. For decades, powerful news publishers threatened ordinary people seeking legal redress with potentially ruinous court costs. But now a recognised self-regulator must offer a system of low-cost arbitration for anyone who believes they have a libel or privacy claim against a publisher. If the publisher is not part of a recognised self-regulator and therefore forces those claimants to court, it must bear both sides’ court costs itself even if it wins the case. It is a very simple principle: access to justice for ordinary people who do not have deep pockets.</p>
<p>But equally importantly, it is a principle that protects ambitious watchdog journalism too. Small publishers, such as new investigative start-ups or hyperlocal sites, which join a recognised self-regulator are protected from the threat of <a href="http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/">potentially ruinous court costs</a> by wealthy and powerful individuals (or corporations) trying to prevent publication of awkward stories. </p>
<p>So anyone trying to frighten publishers off will have to take their case to low-cost arbitration once the story is published. If they insist on going to court – as they are entitled to do – the court can order them to pay both sides’ costs even if they win. Far from chilling investigative journalism, this incentive does precisely the opposite: it actually safeguards journalism that holds power to account.</p>
<h2>A craven government</h2>
<p>And now, the sinister part. The court costs incentive only comes into force when it is “commenced” by the secretary of state. And in an astonishing act of apparent political sabotage, the culture secretary, John Whittingdale, announced at the Society of Editors conference two weeks ago that <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/government-may-not-enforce-plan-make-publishers-pay-both-sides-libel-and-privacy-costs">he might delay it</a>. As he well knows, without the court costs incentive, the whole recognition process becomes virtually pointless.</p>
<p>A cabinet minister, it appears, can unilaterally overturn a historic cross-party agreement ratified by parliament as well as the prime minister’s solemn pledge to the victims of press abuse that he would implement Leveson’s recommendations <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/oct/07/david-cameron-denies-mind-leveson">unless they were “bonkers”</a>. </p>
<p>Cameron – and indeed Whittingdale – supported the Charter and associated legal framework in parliament. But that was before their friends in the press launched a ferocious assault on their political opponents in the run-up to an election which few expected the Conservatives to win. This looks increasingly like a grubby and opportunistic payday for the media barons who they believe won them the election.</p>
<p>If that turns out to be true, it is not only the victims of press abuse who have been shamelessly betrayed. So has the watchdog journalism which our press laughably purports to defend.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It looks as if the proposals laid down by the Leveson Inquiry will come to nothing.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/304912014-08-14T13:34:00Z2014-08-14T13:34:00ZHack Attack: brickbats and bouquets for reporter who broke hacking scandal<p>Nick Davies is a hero for my generation of journalists and <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-gazettes-top-ten-investigative-journalists-brave-and-unstoppable-nick-davies-tops-list">many generations of younger reporters</a>. He can be fairly characterised as <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/woodstein/">a Woodward or Bernstein</a> of British “quality” journalism. </p>
<p>Davies decided to turn on his own tribe in recent years and has taken a lot of flak for it. Fortunately the vitriol has been metaphorical sticks and stones. Perhaps the worst he’s had to deal with is a sense that <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/nick-davies-bad-guys-hate-me-most-journalists-are-decent-people-and-are-glad-i-exposed-phone-hacking">the “bad guys” hate him</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.flatearthnews.net/">Flat Earth News</a>, and now <a href="http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/hack-attack/9781448114344">Hack Attack</a> are blockbuster 400-page-plus denunciations of journalistic corruption, abuse of power, criminality and immorality.</p>
<p>Sources for Hack Attack include a large number of former News of the World journalists willing to help because of their shame and anger at what was going on.</p>
<p>It is written with novelistic characterisation and the language of a potential screenplay. He says of former managing editor Stuart Kuttner: “He had served half a dozen editors in a role like that of the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction – he cleaned up the mess.” </p>
<p>He talks of another senior editorial figure as somebody known as the “the rasping fuckwit” who was, he writes, “the kind of cynic who gives cynics a bad name”.</p>
<p>The News of the World is depicted as a cauldron of tabloid raptors. Davies unpacks the legend of this story with Vladimir Propp’s grasp of the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Morphology-Folktale-Publications-American-Folklore/dp/0292783760">Morphology of the Folk Tale</a> and <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/aris-poe/">Aristotle’s Poetics</a>. </p>
<h2>Opening Pandora’s box</h2>
<p>The story has all the elements of an unfolding Greek tragedy. He casts as his Watergate Deep Throat equivalent a man called “Mr Apollo”. This is code for the source holding the key to Pandora’s box. Open the box and the true extent of Glenn Mulcaire’s phone hacking targeting thousands over many years would burst open.</p>
<p>The person or persons leaking here could well have been breaking the law. Davies received documents at the heart of a confidentially settled breach of privacy action brought against News International by the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jul/08/murdoch-papers-phone-hacking">Gordon Taylor</a>. </p>
<p>The damages and legal costs deal of nearly £750,000 have been described as <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8705902/Phone-hacking-James-Murdoch-admits-hush-money-payout.html">News of the World hush money</a>.</p>
<p>Hack Attack is also a narrative of struggle. The Guardian’s assertion that News of the World phone hacking was rife was trashed and ignored by rival papers, the Metropolitan Police and <a href="http://pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NjAyOA==">Press Complaints Commission.</a></p>
<p>Davies says the Guardian’s editor since 1995, Alan Rusbridger, is a man of backbone who stood by him in the eye of a storm of derision and castigation. </p>
<p>Rusbridger’s befuddled Erik Satie of Hampstead appearance is beguiling. He has been mocked as <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/books/non_fiction/article1199570.ece">an aging Harry Potter adult look-alike and lapsed amateur pianist</a>. But his appearances <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/nov/16/alan-rusbridger-statement-leveson-inquiry">before Leveson</a> and House of Commons <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/dec/03/keith-vaz-alan-rusbridger-love-country-nsa">select committees</a> have been steely. </p>
<p>The book and its associated promotion do provide some clues as to why Davies and the Guardian may indeed be “hated” not necessarily by just “the bad guys” of tabloid land. </p>
<p>The book seeks to rationalise the wretched damage, destruction and mess ignited by the scandal. Davies is defensive and sanitising about <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2650205/News-World-journalists-did-not-delete-Milly-Dowlers-voicemails-parents-false-hope-alive-hacking-trial-told.html">the blood libel</a> that News of the World hacks had deleted Milly Dowler’s messages giving false hope to her parents that she was still alive. </p>
<p>It is argued this was “an honest mistake” and that any examination of media coverage at the time shows it is the phone hacking of a murdered teenager’s phone that focused public outrage. </p>
<p>Davies says he and the Guardian were not responsible for the loss of hundreds of jobs through the News of the World’s closure. This was a cynical move by Murdoch to bring forward a plan for the Sunday Sun and offer up a sacrificial lamb to save the bid for BSkyB. </p>
<h2>Political agenda</h2>
<p>I suspect the ambiguity and paradox of deserved admiration and undeserved loathing derive from his political agenda. </p>
<p>There is a very strange ranting epilogue against neo-liberalism at the end. Speaking as an orthodox broadcast journalist who believes politics and attitudes need to be locked at home, I find Davies editorialises as much as he reports. He comes across as the veritable Oliver Cromwell of media ethics reform. He put his name, along with John Pilger, to the demand from “200 leading cultural figures” for the press to <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/declarationmarch18/">surrender to Royal Charter approved regulation</a>. </p>
<p>He aims to eradicate cruel tabloid journalism that ruins people’s lives yet the unintended irony is that Davies’ greatest story has led to the ruin of many journalists’ lives, their sources and police media relations. The families of journalists and sources going to jail may not appreciate the tone of his speech at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEG1elQ311Q">Hack Attack’s book launch</a>. </p>
<p>This is the story that not only led to the Leveson Inquiry, criticised by some as <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/12004">a political show-trial</a>, but panicked News International into handing over computer hard-disks that may turn out to be the most <a href="http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4824/commentary-why-i-gave-evidence-in-trial-of-senior-police-officer">catastrophic betrayal of reporters’ sources in journalism history</a>. </p>
<p>No other country in the western world has been criminally <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2100664/Scotland-Yard-Stasi-sinister-assault-free-Press.html">investigating and prosecuting so many journalists</a>. An industry shedding circulation, titles and jobs has lost up to £1 billion <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/former-news-int-chief-exec-tom-mockridge-said-news-world-hacking-scandal-costs-could-rise-%C2%A31bn">compensating privacy claimants and paying lawyers’ fees</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9">Article 10 of the Human Rights Act</a> states that freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas must exist without interference by public authority. Existing criminal and civil law already cover the necessary exceptions. This is something the News of the World’s former chief reporter and newly released jailbird Neville Thurlbeck explained with some insight <a href="http://www.nevillethurlbeck.com/2014/08/oxford-union-debate.html">at the Oxford Union</a> prior to his Old Bailey sentencing. </p>
<p>Davies was indeed only the messenger who sowed the wind – and, as such, he should not be held responsible for reaping the whirlwind that has devastated some tabloid careers. But if there are people out there – other than what he calls “the bad guys” who regard him as a traitor to journalism, it may have more to do with his support for a form of press regulation which I and many others think may devastate the craft as a whole.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is a member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists and serves on its Professional Practices Board.</span></em></p>Nick Davies is a hero for my generation of journalists and many generations of younger reporters. He can be fairly characterised as a Woodward or Bernstein of British “quality” journalism. Davies decided…Tim Crook, Reader in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197412013-10-31T21:29:04Z2013-10-31T21:29:04ZPress regulation: the case for the Royal Charter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34187/original/9yshmrqt-1383238699.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does the future hold?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">cobalt123</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain’s press has been accustomed to a particular form of self-regulation, which I would call self-interested regulation. The bodies we have had, the <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/">Press Complaints Commission (PCC)</a> and its predecessors, have been demonstrably ineffective. I don’t say this because there were criminal acts – there was (by definition) legislation against those acts – but because those bodies lacked capacity to sanction their members, to prevent such action, or to provide redress for victims.</p>
<p>The PCC established a narrow gateway for what could come in as a complaint and then did what it called “reconciliation” – basically it was nice to people until they went away – and hardly ever required the media to print substantive corrections or apologies: even that most elementary function wasn’t being handled well.</p>
<p>It might be ideal to have a competent, self-regulating body, but it’s pretty clear that this is not available. A lot of people in the media today <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/10/31/royal-charter-press-regulation-reaction-times-daily-telegraph-daily-mail-sun-daily">are writing about the new proposals</a> as if they would shackle press freedom and warning that what has been proposed is a state-controlled body that could censor content. Nobody has proposed that. The new framework will not permit censorship of content.</p>
<h2>Running scared</h2>
<p>There is quite a complicated set of reasons why the debate has become so essentially trivial within the media. One reason is that it’s obviously quite difficult, even for editors who are very worried about what’s happened, to side with Lord Justice Leveson. It’s also been very difficult for politicians to take a stand.</p>
<p>After the phone-hacking scandal broke in 2011, the prime minister David Cameron, rightly, seeing that things had got out of hand, set up an inquiry that was to be both <a href="http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/about/terms-of-reference/">retrospective and prospective</a>. Much of the retrospective task could not be done by Leveson because it was <em>sub judice</em> – the trials are only beginning in some cases. On the prospective task he was criticised before he’d said a word, and a very typical comment was that there should be no press regulation; the press should be free to say what they want within the law.</p>
<p>That is, in my view, a completely question-begging intervention in a debate about policy because the point is to work out what the law should be. We all agree that action has to be “within the law”. The question is what those laws should be. And Leveson obviously takes to heart the classical arguments since the 17th century about censorship and prior restraint and has looked for a way in which you take those arguments seriously, but don’t have Mickey Mouse regulation that suits the media but creates risks for others.</p>
<h2>Press Freedom</h2>
<p>When I started writing about press freedom in 2001 it seemed to be a curiously old-fashioned topic, as though all that was done and dusted: “We don’t need to think about it: of course we want a free press and it’s obvious what it is”. And it was only when I started looking more carefully at the classical arguments that I began to see that we in fact have some radically different arguments for press freedom jostling out there.</p>
<p>My perception through all of this is that politicians are frightened. Why do we have a cross-party agreement and not a parliamentary vote? I think it’s like having three small children on a diving board, where jumping into the deep water is quite frightening. So they hold hands. When I first heard of the proposal to use the Privy Council I thought: “That’s really odd.” I’ve come to think that doing so has a certain merit, in that it puts a super-majority in the way of subsequent parliamentary tampering with the system once it’s established. So while I wouldn’t generally think we should do things through the Privy Council, there may be a point here.</p>
<h2>Standards on the slide</h2>
<p>I think for some time a lot of people thought that press standards had been on the slide in the UK, and more on the slide than in some other countries. I think of serious journalists such as <a href="http://en.idi.org.il/media/1429207/ByThePeople_LLOYD.pdf">John Lloyd</a> and <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/journalism-is-in-terrible-trouble-a-large-amount-of-it-is-repetitive-garbage-broadcaster-andrew-marr-tells-ian-fraser-and-edinburgh-book-festival-how-to-restore-standards-in-journalism-1.44702">Andrew Marr</a> writing about it, and you can see that they have long been extremely worried at the increasing dominance in the media of scandal and innuendo; the loss of any distinction between news and comment had become more commonplace. These routine worries have been growing for some years.</p>
<p>What’s interesting is that those worries preceded the widespread use of the internet. They were worries about the print media, and in this country about the contrast between the print media and the broadcast media – where we do have <a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/">forms of process regulation</a> that have generally produced more reliable standards of journalism. Now these standards are never going to be 100% effective, but the trend in the print media had got a lot of serious journalists and other people worried.</p>
<p>The nub of the newspaper industry’s argument is that any regulation of the press is going to have an adverse impact on investigative journalism. I disagree with this - but I also think it’s worth noting that very little of what the media does is genuine investigative journalism. So this was not a very good argument for leaving the media as it is. It’s quite common for people to claim that what they’re doing is investigative journalism, but when you look at the standards they are bringing to it you doubt whether they are really in the business of investigating. What investigative journalism most needs is to regain its honourable reputation as serious inquiry into what has happened, that uses adequate methods and standards of investigation.</p>
<p>There was also one other political event that affected the news media in the UK: the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/contents">2003 Communications Act</a> altered the threshold for anti-monopoly provisions so it was possible to concentrate ownership more. Now, the Leveson Inquiry, and what’s gone on since, has not addressed this question. But I think it’s a <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2013/03/08/breaking-the-silence-the-case-for-media-ownership-reform/">very serious issue</a>, perhaps as serious as regulation. We already have print media ownership that is highly concentrated and very largely consists of rich individual proprietors who in many cases are not citizens and not taxpayers, and I think this is probably an unhealthy situation. We may have thought that the domination of press barons 80 years ago was an unhealthy situation, but I worry about where we’ve got to now.</p>
<p><em>This article by Baroness Onora O’Neill is based on an interview with Josh Booth that originally appeared in [King’s Review](http://kingsreview.co.uk/magazine/blog/2013/10/28/power-and-publication-an-interview-with-onora-oneill/](http://kingsreview.co.uk/magazine/blog/2013/10/28/power-and-publication-an-interview-with-onora-oneill/)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Onora O'Neill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Britain’s press has been accustomed to a particular form of self-regulation, which I would call self-interested regulation. The bodies we have had, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and its predecessors…Onora O'Neill, Emeritus Professor of Philosopy, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190152013-10-09T05:08:47Z2013-10-09T05:08:47ZTime for government to stand firm on press regulation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32667/original/hwbyvd9d-1381258960.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this the moment of truth for the British press?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rui Vieira/PA Wire</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Monday evening, the BBC’s Newsnight programme <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24439588">revealed</a> that a sub-committee of the privy council had rejected the Royal Charter on press self-regulation put forward by the Press Standards Board of Finance (PressBof). By the following morning, rumours were rife that consideration of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-report-draft-royal-charter-for-proposed-body-to-recognise-press-industry-self-regulator">Royal Charter</a> on press self-regulation agreed by the three main political parties on March 18 would be delayed until October 30, immediately sparking fears that, in the interim, the newspapers would do their utmost to pressure the Tories into watering down the agreed Charter. </p>
<p>Given the extremely close relationship between the Tories and most of the press – as exemplified by the quite remarkable similarities between the Charter <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-owners-welcome-tory-plan-independent-regulator-underpinned-royal-charter">published by the Tories alone on February 12</a> and that <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/05/Analysis-25-April-PressBoF-Charter-PDF.pdf">put forward by PressBof on April 25</a> – such fears were entirely understandable. </p>
<p>However, when yesterday afternoon the culture secretary, Maria Miller, appeared before the House of Commons <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24452108">to confirm</a> that the PressBof Charter had indeed been rejected by the privy council, she also revealed that during the coming week the three main parties would work on revisions to the agreed Charter in order to make it more “workable and effective”. She added that that the revised version would be put before MPs on Friday, thus leaving the press little time to have their wicked way with the Tories or anyone else. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32668/original/tdvhnn2c-1381259258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32668/original/tdvhnn2c-1381259258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32668/original/tdvhnn2c-1381259258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32668/original/tdvhnn2c-1381259258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32668/original/tdvhnn2c-1381259258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32668/original/tdvhnn2c-1381259258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32668/original/tdvhnn2c-1381259258.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tough talk: Maria Miller yesterday.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The areas for revision appear to be pretty minor and reasonably uncontentious, having to do with the Editors’ Code Committee and the costs of any arbitration involving the local press. Local newspaper organisations have been considerably less guilty than the national press of the practices condemned by the Leveson Inquiry, but have been frightened and cajoled by the main offenders into standing shoulder to shoulder with them in the anti-Leveson campaign.</p>
<h2>Delays, delays</h2>
<p>So, maybe the worst fears of the agreed Charter’s champions haven’t been realised. But nonetheless, this is yet another delay to a <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/mst-news/the-story-of-six-charters/">lamentably long-drawn out process</a>. No wonder the Labour MP Chris Bryant complained of it being like Groundhog Day, and even Sir Gerald Kaufman, no friend of the Leveson Inquiry, stated firmly that: “We cannot go on like this”. </p>
<p>Of course, this isn’t all down to Tory complicity with the press. Many Tories actually support Leveson’s proposals. Much of it has, in fact, to do with pure and simple fear of what an aggrieved press might do to them. In the course of their endless jeremiads against what they entirely inaccurately refer to as “statutory control of the press”, the papers have made it abundantly clear that they will not hesitate to take legal action if any form of self-regulation with which they don’t agree is brought into being. Indeed, they’ve even invoked the <a href="http://hub.coe.int/web/coe-portal/article-10?dynLink=true&layoutId=681&dlgroupId=10226&fromArticleId=">European Convention on Human Rights</a> – over the matter of exemplary damages, for example – which, even by the standards of the British press, is quite astonishingly hypocritical, given the column inches which many papers devote every day to inveighing against it.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32670/original/q29f3n2h-1381259428.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Press delaying tactics: Hacked Off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yui Mok/PA Wire</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The government is actually quite correct to try to make the agreed Charter as safe as possible against legal challenge. But the events of the past couple of days have served only to delay what for the government, or at least for the Tory front bench, must be the evil hour when the Privy Council considers and then, almost certainly, accepts the agreed Charter. At this point the bulk of the press will undoubtedly refuse to engage with the system of self-regulation which the Charter establishes, and insist on pressing on with the establishment of the so-called <a href="http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk/08/jul/13/independent-press-standards-organisation">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a> (IPSO). </p>
<p>This is anything but independent, wholly non-compliant with the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry, and even less complainant-friendly than the utterly futile and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/07/press-complaints-commission-ed-miliband">comprehensively discredited</a> Press Complaints Commission. </p>
<h2>Time for a firm hand</h2>
<p>The unfortunate Maria Miller, herself the victim of considerable monstering by the press in an attempt to dissuade her from implementing Leveson’s recommendations, said on several occasions on Tuesday afternoon that she wanted to arrive at a Charter that was acceptable both to the press and to the public. But this is simply cloud cuckoo land. </p>
<p>Just as there is a vast gulf between the PressBof Charter and the agreed Charter (far greater than is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/07/ministers-seek-compromise-over-press-regulation">suggested by proponents</a>, in both the press and parliament, of a rapprochement between the two sides) so there is a yawning chasm between what most of the public and the majority of the press wants to see from a system of self-regulation. </p>
<p>Indeed, there is a strand of public opinion which would like to see the press curtailed in ways which defenders of press freedom (in the true sense of the phrase, as opposed to the debased notion trotted out daily by most papers) would actually find quite unacceptable. </p>
<p>Thus at some point the government will simply have to insist that the will of parliament, as expressed on March 18, is actually put into effect. In other words, they’re going to have actually to govern, whether or not the press likes the result. Some of the papers they are up against are the self-same ones which, in the 1970s, were constantly asking “Who governs Britain?” when members of trade unions flexed their industrial muscles. Those who want an effectively self-regulated press need to be posing that question right now. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Petley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On Monday evening, the BBC’s Newsnight programme revealed that a sub-committee of the privy council had rejected the Royal Charter on press self-regulation put forward by the Press Standards Board of Finance…Julian Petley, Professor of Screen Media, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.