tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/british-press-11167/articlesBritish press – The Conversation2024-02-07T12:03:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2218272024-02-07T12:03:09Z2024-02-07T12:03:09ZWhat recent Netflix shows – including The Crown and Beckham – get wrong about the British press<p>Twelve years after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hacking-affair-is-not-over-but-what-would-a-second-leveson-inquiry-achieve-29715">Leveson inquiry</a> and the closure of News of the World, the British press are having a reckoning on Netflix. Recent celebrity documentaries Beckham and Robbie Williams, and the final season of TV drama The Crown, have painted a portrait of the UK tabloids as cruel, sadistic and predatory of its homegrown celebrities.</p>
<p>While criticism of the British tabloids – particularly the ethics and methods of the News of the World – is often justified, the specifics offered by all three shows fall flat. Focusing on the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Princess Diana, Robbie Williams and David Beckham were each at the height of their fame, they prioritise individual stories over the big picture. </p>
<p>In doing so, these Netflix releases paint specific paps and a broad, amorphous “press” as demons, but ignore the broader socio-political forces, corruptions and collusions uncovered by Leveson in 2012 and the #MeToo movement in 2017.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571232093-retromania/">music journalist Simon Reynolds</a>, mass-market pop culture operates by a “20-year-rule” which sees trends and preoccupations return every two decades. This makes the turn of the millennium ripe for nostalgic and critical reflection in the 2020s. </p>
<p>The Crown explores the death of Princess Diana 25 years after her death. Robbie Williams tells the story of the singer, 25 years after the release of his biggest song, Angels. And Beckham explores the aftermath of the footballer’s infamous World Cup red card, 25 years on. </p>
<p>While these shows all try to claim part of the noughties nostalgia trend, they feel politically and contextually vacant. They each miss the opportunity to rigorously critique constructions of celebrity in the 1990s and 2000s.</p>
<h2>The millennium press</h2>
<p>Something all three shows miss is how textured and transitional the media landscape of the period was. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13183222.1998.11008685">By 1998</a>, only 8% of editorial in The Sun and The Mirror could be classed as “public affairs” – the rest focused on gossip, sports, or both. </p>
<p>Inevitably, as celebrity culture became news, news also became gossip and both categories <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0163443711411005">disintegrated</a> into what we now call “clickbait”. </p>
<p>In the 2000s, internet publishing and blogging also changed the way news was circulated and reported. As literary critic <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-the-essay/essay-online/BD8747CA96D6E6FF398B2392223A6E0D">Jane Hu</a> argues: “The commercial internet generated an economy of attention that rewarded stories that were at once sensationalist and relatable – personal and universal – in a drive for content that would go viral among the broadest range of readers.”</p>
<p>This changed not only the way stories were reported, but how subjects of those stories were treated. As The Crown dolefully shows, one picture of Princess Diana could sell for millions to print newspapers in 1997. A decade later, the economy of attention cultivated by internet journalism would <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/claudiarosenbaum/downfall-of-the-paparazzi">drive the price of those pictures down</a>, even as the demand for content rose. Photos were now readily available online for free, and regular people could upload favourite “spotted” photos of their favourite celebrity for anyone to see, making the work of the paparazzi less valuable. </p>
<h2>The Crown</h2>
<p>The final season of The Crown covers the last eight months of Princess Diana’s life. The late princess’s treatment at the hands of her husband, the royal family and the British press had previously been covered in <a href="https://www.buzzsprout.com/1112270">eight hour podcasting</a> deep dives, various documentaries, and the Oscar nominated film, Spencer (2021). </p>
<p>These works largely stressed how sexist cultural responses to Diana were both before and after her death, when she was depicted as <a href="https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/81f2c07a-ece0-4bb7-841f-08baeab9e0c3">“bitter”</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/princess-diana-bbc-interview-martin-bashir">“unbalanced”</a> and “<a href="https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/share/81f2c07a-ece0-4bb7-841f-08baeab9e0c3">silly</a>” by the British media.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from The Crown shows Diana speaking with the paparazzi.</span></figcaption>
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<p>For a drama once well regarded for the breadth – if not the accuracy – of its historical storytelling, The Crown’s monomaniacal fixation with the final weeks of Diana’s life marked a season one critic called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/nov/16/the-crown-season-6-review-so-bad-its-like-an-out-of-body-experience-netflix">“so bad it’s basically an out-of-body experience”</a>. </p>
<p>Through fictionalised monologues from actors playing real photographers and journalists, the press compare themselves to “hunters” and “killers”. It’s as if the show – which was once semi-critical and adamantly contextual of the Royal family – wanted to reframe them as powerless innocents, exploited by the dastardly press. </p>
<h2>Beckham and Robbie Williams</h2>
<p>Unlike The Crown, the main characters in the documentaries Beckham and Robbie Williams are not only living subjects but also active participants in the programmes. This means they must balance the egos of their subjects, justified critique of the press intrusions they experienced, and appeals for audience sympathy, which often minimises the role of the celebrity in their own media dramas. </p>
<p>Beckham consults a litany of talking heads – former managers, teammates, Spice Girls and two suitably shame-filled paparazzi – to build a portrait of the footballer and his union with wife Victoria. </p>
<p>Produced by Beckham’s own company, the programme is a portrait of how the couple <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/beckham-shows-us-how-david-and-victoria-beckham-see-themselves">“see themselves”</a>. This is reinforced by the <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/10/david-beckham-netflix-doc-doctored-truth-spin-narrative-say-fact-checkers-1235586518/">errors journalists have found</a> in the narrative Netflix presents. These include exaggerations of the level of hostility Beckham experienced at Manchester United and cuts in footage which imply he was fouled at times he wasn’t. </p>
<p>When it’s done right, and particularly with the benefit of hindsight, critiques of the tabloids adhere with wider critique of other institutions – like the royal family, music industry, or Premier League football. In doing this, they can show how hostile to difference or dissension our dominant systems really are.</p>
<p>Two things can be true. The Beckhams can both manufacture tabloid interest to engender lucrative brand deals, and be unfairly stalked by predatory photographers and highly sexist critiques of their family, relationship, and parenting. As Williams notes: “When you become famous you want to give away the privacy you want to give away. You don’t wanna have your privacy taken from you.”</p>
<p>With their hyperfocus on sympathy for the celebrity, and lack of wider context, all three Netflix shows fall short of offering larger analysis of the British press.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Sykes 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>While these shows all try to claim part of the noughties nostalgia trend, they feel politically and contextually vacant.Rachel Sykes, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1725632021-12-14T12:59:10Z2021-12-14T12:59:10ZWe analysed a decade of media coverage of obesity – this is what we found<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437558/original/file-20211214-19-aqi8v3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C61%2C6780%2C4476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cropped-image-woman-feet-standing-on-604196735">VGstockstudio / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the new year on the way, no doubt many headlines will be urging readers to set resolutions to lose the weight they may have put on over the holidays. However, the way the British press talks about weight, obesity and health has fluctuated markedly in recent years.</p>
<p>To learn more about these changes, we <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/obesity-in-the-news/9616CE5DD0440AC76C4CA41EED1D8B25">conducted a linguistic analysis</a> of thousands of stories in UK newspapers about obesity, diets and nutrition from 2008 to 2017.</p>
<p>Between these years, the national British press collectively published 43,878 articles that mentioned the words “obese” or “obesity”, amounting to 36 million words. The number of these stories in 2016 was double that in 2011. There were also notable rises in terms like “obesity epidemic” over time, indicating increasing concern about the issue.</p>
<p>To learn more about the coverage itself, we classified words into thematic categories. These included nutrition (for example, chocolate, pies, diet), biology (genes, brain, cells), activity (exercise, PE, swimming), politics (MPs, government, budget) and social issues (discrimination, inequality, unemployment). We then tracked the collective frequencies of words in these categories over time to identify which concepts were increasing or decreasing.</p>
<h2>Personal responsibility</h2>
<p>The key trend we observed is that, over the years, the press increasingly framed obesity as something that is down to the individual -– either because you are born with a body that tends to gain weight, or because you make choices that result in weight gain. The frequency of words that framed obesity in terms of personal responsibility, having to do with lifestyle choices (what you <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/it-s-too-late-to-take-the-soft-approach-with-fat-people-it-s-a-choice-and-it-costs-the-nhs-millions-9729807.html">ate</a> and how much <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1258085/Schools-send-letters-parents-rating-childrens-fitness-using-bleep-test.html">exercise</a> you did), increased over time. </p>
<p>For example, in articles from 2008, the word “snacks” occurred 57 times per million words. In 2017, this number jumped to 143. The set of terms related to biological factors (such as your <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/dec/15/nutrition?fb=native">genes</a>, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3216579/Obese-people-t-help-brains-hard-wired-eat-way-drug-addicts-crave-fix-scientists-say.html">brain activity</a> or <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/western-surge-in-obesity-may-have-been-caused-by-a-virus-2084737.html">viruses</a>) also went up over time.</p>
<p>We know now from health research that societal factors play a role in obesity. For example, adults in the most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods in England are almost <a href="https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/health-survey-for-england/2018/summary">twice as likely</a> to have obesity.</p>
<p>But over time, these social factors have played a smaller role in the press coverage about obesity. The frequency of words linked to social factors (government and town planning policies, practices of food manufacturers and advertisers and social inequality) have collectively decreased. </p>
<p>For example, in 2008, the word “government” occurred 904 times per million words, but only 418 times per million words in 2017. Even liberal newspapers like the Guardian, which tended to mention social factors the most, discussed them less over the decade.</p>
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<img alt="A young man in the blurred background eats a croissant while reading the newspaper. A cup of coffee and croissant are on the table in focus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434437/original/file-20211129-59855-1k2tz09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&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">Newspaper coverage about obesity has become more focused on personal responsibility over the years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/blurred-young-man-eats-his-breakfast-269555000">Tatyana Aksenova / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Changing calendar</h2>
<p>We also found that the focus on causes of obesity shifts from month to month. During Christmas and new year, there is more coverage around personal choice, like not indulging in <a href="https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/people/leading-gp-warns-santa-claus-lay-off-mince-pies-sherry-112941">mince pies</a>, along with new year resolutions to start a new diet.</p>
<p>But during the budget announcement in the spring and party conferences in the autumn, <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/budget-2016-what-sugar-tax-7569240">government policy</a> relating to obesity tends to receive more media attention. </p>
<p>The time of year even affects the weight-loss advice printed in newspapers. In January, the focus is on joining a gym. But by February, the “new you” rhetoric tends to fizzle out and is replaced with stories reminding us to get enough <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1250992/Sleep-skinny-Its-leaving-shattered-ill-Experts-say-little-shut-eye-making-fat.html">sleep</a> as that will reduce our risk of obesity. </p>
<p>Around April, readers are urged to engage in outdoor activities like <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/170247/Why-gardening-is-good-for-you">gardening</a> to lose weight. In August, sports like swimming and cycling are encouraged, but the bar is lowered in November, when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/14/walking-paths-in-england-and-wales-are-a-pattern-of-feast-and-famine">walking</a> is promoted as the weight-loss activity of choice.</p>
<p>Anxiety around obesity also tends to be seasonal. The start of the good weather in May brings an increase in the number of articles about obesity, along with stories about how to look good in swimwear. While newspapers are not to blame for the climate or the timing of political events, such factors lead to inconsistent messaging around the causes of and solutions to obesity from month to month.</p>
<p>We only examined a decade of articles, and it is not wise to extrapolate beyond this point, for example, by predicting that the current direction of travel is irreversible. However, for the period we looked at, there is a clear shift in the press towards situating obesity as mostly personal rather than political. </p>
<p>This period was one of government austerity and policies aimed at reducing spending on welfare payments, housing subsidies and social services. The message that “if something bad happens, it is your own fault” in stories about obesity fits with the dominant political ideology of the time.</p>
<p>If personal factors do play a role in people developing obesity, they are only part of the story. The British press appears less keen to highlight the role that powerful social factors have played in contributing to the country’s high obesity rates. Perhaps this could help to explain why, despite the increased focus on obesity in the news, rates of obesity and overweight have stubbornly remained at <a href="http://healthsurvey.hscic.gov.uk/data-visualisation/data-visualisation/explore-the-trends/weight.aspx">61-64%</a> for the last 20 years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Brookes receives funding from ESRC. Gavin Brookes has published research with members of the registered charity Obesity UK.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Baker receives funding from ESRC.
Paul Baker has published research with members of the registered charity Obesity UK. </span></em></p>The way the press talks about obesity has changed over time.Gavin Brookes, UKRI Future Leader Fellow, Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster UniversityPaul Baker, Professor of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1140582019-03-26T09:49:56Z2019-03-26T09:49:56ZThe myth of British good-humour and resilience was born during World War II and is about to die a Brexit death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265643/original/file-20190325-36264-48cntw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C5%2C989%2C660&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Winston Churchill projected British 'qualities' to Europeans during World War II.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gimas via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the 2016 EU referendum, Britain’s reputation in European centres of power has undoubtedly suffered. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/brexit-negotiations-29088">painful progress of Brexit negotiations</a> and the inability of the British government to marshal support for the withdrawal agreement in the febrile and fractious House of Commons has baffled many senior European politicians. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/20/pathetic-incoherent-chaotic-europes-verdict-on-brexit-shambles">“Pathetic”, “distressing” and “unrealistic”</a> are some of the kinder terms that have been used. One German MP remarked on March 20 that where once Britain had been held up as “a model of good diplomacy, of pragmatism and of self-restraint”, now: “No one would sign up to that view.” </p>
<p>These impressions of practicality, resilience and good humour which appear to have been attached to the British character may or may not be accurate – but where did they originate, and how did these now-threatened perceptions take hold in other European countries?</p>
<p>One possible source can be found during World War II, when British government propagandists sought to promote such national characteristics over the airwaves and in print, through leaflets, magazines and newspapers dropped by air. As the literary critic <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8295.html">Mark Wollaeger has written</a>, “effective propaganda tends to rely on the deployment of stereotypes, not on their overturning”. </p>
<p>In the early years of the war, much propaganda to enemy and occupied Europe sought to foment resistance to the Axis forces or to undermine their authority. Following the battle of El Alamein in November 1942, when eventual Allied victory in Europe appeared almost certain, preparations were made for the post-war reconstruction of the continent. Now propaganda was directed instead to help secure an influential role for Britain in this new era – <a href="https://sites.durham.ac.uk/writersandpropaganda/">as a new project at Durham University is discovering</a>.</p>
<h2>British exceptionalism</h2>
<p>A report produced at the end of 1942 by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1964/05/26/archives/sir-ivone-kirkpatrick-dies-at-67-briton-was-expert-on-germany.html">Ivone Kirkpatrick</a>, wartime controller of the BBC’s European Services, makes startling reading in 2019. Kirkpatrick’s report – held in the National Archives – begins by assessing current European perceptions of Britain. The average European, he writes in an accompanying note, has a “rough and ready perception of the Englishman” who is – among other things – “inclined to lecture other people for not doing things as Englishmen would do them, although quite ignorant of the reasons why others act differently from us”. Europeans also perceive a country that cannot be depended on “because we won’t say what we really want or what we are going to do”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265598/original/file-20190325-36252-yhydzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265598/original/file-20190325-36252-yhydzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265598/original/file-20190325-36252-yhydzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265598/original/file-20190325-36252-yhydzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265598/original/file-20190325-36252-yhydzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265598/original/file-20190325-36252-yhydzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265598/original/file-20190325-36252-yhydzn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1109&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">Embodiment of resilience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Douglas Burdett via Pinterest</span></span>
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<p>Against this Anglocentric background (he makes no distinction between Britishness and Englishness), Kirkpatrick proposes a new course of political warfare. The plan was to convince the European audience that “Britain has a big part to play” in shaping the post-war European social and political order. With its title: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/people-nation-empire/projection-of-britain">The Projection of Britain</a>, the report advocates a campaign of indirect propaganda which articulated the British national character and national achievements in the fields of science and culture. </p>
<p>One trait to be emphasised was “progress by agreement” – described as “the most essential characteristic of British civilisation” – which allows political institutions to be “modified to suit changed conditions with amazing speed and smoothness”. Kirkpatrick’s note added that Britain could be distinguished from other countries by its faithfulness to “practical methods”.</p>
<p>Significantly, this exceptionalism was tempered by the proposal that propaganda should stress Britain’s status “as a European civilization”. Here Kirkpatrick argues that historical oddities – he cites “Ann Hathaway’s Cottage, Newton and the apple, the Old Curiosity Shop” – must be put to one side. Instead, he says: “We must show British intellectual life as a matter of free and equal interchange with the intellectual life of Europe, and the British tradition as one aspect of the European tradition.”</p>
<h2>Soft power</h2>
<p>The campaign began immediately, and involved the production of postcards, cartoons, pamphlets, news and special feature broadcasts, books, newsreels, feature films and documentaries, which as historian <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781349205813">Robert Cole has observed</a> “emphasised Britain as the moral and cultural bulwark of European civilisation”. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265599/original/file-20190325-36248-18dotn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265599/original/file-20190325-36248-18dotn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265599/original/file-20190325-36248-18dotn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265599/original/file-20190325-36248-18dotn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265599/original/file-20190325-36248-18dotn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265599/original/file-20190325-36248-18dotn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265599/original/file-20190325-36248-18dotn5.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Allies against the Nazi scourge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archive</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some material was esoteric or highbrow: British and American propagandists sought to dispel a cultural and intellectual continental blackout by producing miniature literary periodicals featuring translations of writings by prominent writers including T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Rebecca West and Virginia Woolf. Other publications directly promoted the stability of British political institutions – one booklet produced for distribution after D-Day described the workings of the Houses of Parliament in wartime.</p>
<p>The efficacy of the vast exercise in soft power which followed Kirkpatrick’s report was questioned by many at the time – the Royal Air Force was consistently and understandably reluctant to risk service personnel and aeroplanes on missions to drop propaganda material – but echoes of his proposals for promoting the British character can be heard in some of the stereotypes currently being hastily revised across Europe.</p>
<p>Kirkpatrick’s diagnosis of continental perceptions of Britain raises a spectre painfully familiar from current Brexit-era European political discourse – that of an untrustworthy and indecisive entity, nevertheless intent on lecturing others. </p>
<p>His prescription is less familiar – of course, the notion of fostering a favourable image of Britain through government production of large quantities of printed and broadcast propaganda is neither practical nor desirable today. But Kirkpatrick’s plans – and his ability to place himself in the position of a European audience – present a stark contrast with today’s post-referendum vacillation and insecurity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114058/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guy Woodward receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p>Many positive “qualities” associated with the British character and institutions can be traced to wartime propaganda.Guy Woodward, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of English Studies, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1090212019-01-09T14:38:24Z2019-01-09T14:38:24ZHow Victorian newspapers changed the look of British towns and cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251507/original/file-20181219-45388-19fldt6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At the heart of Edinburgh.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/edinburgh-scotland-uk-may-3-2018-1084055570?src=UdftKRCQvKpg2Ix-8PSSMg-1-5">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the game of rock, paper, scissors, paper is more powerful than rock. And so it was in the second half of the 19th century, when influential local newspapers shifted stones, bricks and mortar to build the townscapes that endure to this day.</p>
<p>Around the British Isles, and across the world, purpose built newspaper offices towered over main streets and market squares – at the heart of of the towns and cities they served. In the UK they became an increasingly common sight from the 1860s onwards, when <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-dawn-of-the-cheap-press-in-victorian-britain-9781474243322/">the end of newspaper taxation led to a boom in local publishing</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time, they had an effect on the construction of other public buildings. The act of reading newspapers was considered so important that the biggest room in new public libraries was designed and built specifically for this purpose.</p>
<p>Today, as print circulation and profits fall, local papers are abandoning town centres. Many are selling their landmark buildings and moving to cheaper premises in the suburbs, while some reporters do their work from cafes.</p>
<p>In November 2018, the Bath Chronicle gave up its shopfront home and moved into offices inside a local college. Earlier in the year, the Swindon Advertiser moved more than two miles to a building out of town. </p>
<p>Like redundant churches, these empty or converted buildings are a sign of social change. The Scotsman’s landmark building on North Bridge, Edinburgh, is now a hotel. What was once the home of the Blackburn Times is now a pub. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251502/original/file-20181219-45403-yn9ziq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251502/original/file-20181219-45403-yn9ziq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251502/original/file-20181219-45403-yn9ziq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251502/original/file-20181219-45403-yn9ziq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251502/original/file-20181219-45403-yn9ziq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251502/original/file-20181219-45403-yn9ziq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251502/original/file-20181219-45403-yn9ziq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Blackburn Times they are a changing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the mid-19th century, local newspapers were a far more popular product than they are today. When the gentlemen of Preston, in the north of England, decided to build their own club premises in a Georgian square in 1846, they made sure that the largest room in the building was the one for reading the news. </p>
<p>Working class men were equally keen. In 1851, a group of Carlisle newspaper readers attracted national attention when they opened a purpose-built news room. By 1861, Carlisle had six working-class reading rooms, with around 1,000 members. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251504/original/file-20181219-45394-hpzp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251504/original/file-20181219-45394-hpzp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251504/original/file-20181219-45394-hpzp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251504/original/file-20181219-45394-hpzp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251504/original/file-20181219-45394-hpzp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251504/original/file-20181219-45394-hpzp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251504/original/file-20181219-45394-hpzp36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carlisle reading room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UCLAN</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The design and use of pubs was also influenced by the Victorian newspaper. A sign in the “news room” of Liverpool’s Lion Tavern is still there today, demonstrating how pubs saw the availability of newspapers as an attraction worth advertising. </p>
<p>Landlords even paid skilled public readers to bring the newspaper alive in crowded pubs with readings. One Liverpool licensee, John McArdle, “performed” the paper himself, with Irish nationalists coming to his pub in Crosbie Street every Sunday night to hear him read from The Nation. </p>
<h2>Building an industry</h2>
<p>From the 1850s, when taxes on newspapers were abolished, local papers overtook London papers in sales and readership, as my <a href="https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/835">new book</a> recounts. It was then that booming provincial newspapers began to carve their names in stone, literally, with purpose built offices, proclaiming their importance to the local economy and culture.</p>
<p>One of the first was built by the Hereford Times in 1858. It was in an Italian style with elaborate scrollwork, roof line statues and an ornate cupola, engraved with the newspaper’s title. Such pretentious classical elements were also used by The Times in London. As media historian Carole O’Reilly <a href="https://www.academia.edu/38001395/The_Architecture_of_Newspaper_Buildings">wrote</a>, this was the architectural language of “power, wealth, authority and taste”. Statues of the pioneering printers Gutenberg and Caxton were common, as were town crests, proclaiming local identity.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251505/original/file-20181219-45413-mj15ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251505/original/file-20181219-45413-mj15ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251505/original/file-20181219-45413-mj15ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251505/original/file-20181219-45413-mj15ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251505/original/file-20181219-45413-mj15ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251505/original/file-20181219-45413-mj15ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251505/original/file-20181219-45413-mj15ow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=674&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1858 home of the Hereford Times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Newspapers’ place at the centre of the town symbolised their place in readers’ lives. In the front office, people queued to announce rites of passage in the local paper – births, marriages and deaths – or to consult the fullest archive of local life, the bound back copies of the newspaper.</p>
<p>Another type of landmark building, the public library, would have been much smaller if Victorian newspapers had not been so popular. News rooms were specifically mentioned in the 1850 Public Libraries Act which started the growth of public libraries. Magazines and newspapers were more popular than books, and so were given more space by architects and early librarians. <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015033882336">The manual</a> on how to run these new institutions suggested giving half of the public area to newspapers.</p>
<p>Newspaper popularity also meant a place was needed where you could buy them, and the newsagent shop arrived in the 1860s, adding a messy but popular new look to the streets, with shocking front-page images in the windows and jumbles of billboards on the shop front outside.</p>
<p>Today, those newsagents, libraries, pubs, and of course the newspapers themselves, are all in decline. But the legacy of their boom time in the Victorian era remains – in the architecture and buildings of the towns and cities whose inhabitants once placed enormous value on their local news.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Hobbs is a member of the National Union of Journalists</span></em></p>Buildings built for writing and reading the news altered the urban fabric.Andrew Hobbs, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Central LancashireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/865532017-10-31T11:41:46Z2017-10-31T11:41:46ZThen they came for the experts: how the Daily Mail is threatening how you think<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192615/original/file-20171031-18686-1eh6tsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How the Mail launched its attack.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Liz Gerrard via Twitter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In “Our Remainer Universities”, a belligerent front-page article published recently, the Daily Mail attempted to portray academics working in British universities as hopelessly biased and hyperbolic bullies, ideologically and financially beholden to the EU – and hellbent on imposing their alarming groupthink on innocent students and their concerned parents at every opportunity.</p>
<p>Let me put my cards on the table up front. I am an EU migrant from Ireland and I think that Brexit is an atrocious idea. There are lots of reasons for this – but my go-to line at snooty cocktail parties with my liberal elite friends is this: whatever the value of the fraction of additional sovereignty that individual British voters, or the citizen body as a whole, will “take back” by repatriating some powers from Europe, it is decisively outweighed by the harm of jeopardising the peace process and thereby increasing the risk that people will start killing each other again in Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>But that’s a subject for another article. Right now, I want to discuss two distinct reasons to be concerned about the Mail’s new campaign – which, it is worth noting, echoes their “<a href="https://theconversation.com/enemies-of-the-people-mps-and-press-gang-up-on-the-constitution-over-high-court-brexit-ruling-68241">Enemies of the People</a>” attack on the judiciary almost exactly one year ago. </p>
<p>The first is that on the level of interpersonal morality, the behaviour of the Mail is just plain wrong. A powerful group of people, led by the outspoken editor-in-chief Paul Dacre, are attempting to use their position and reach to intimidate another group of people with whom they disagree. Individual academics <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5022387/Our-Remainer-Universities-two.html">were singled out</a> for criticism and readers were invited to send in stories of “anti-Brexit bias”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"923416370859200512"}"></div></p>
<p>The implication is clear. Should you wish to discuss Brexit with your students, in or out of class, and give it anything less than your full-throated support, then expect to find your picture appearing prominently in a national newspaper, and soon. Bullying should not be allowed to pass unchallenged.</p>
<h2>Enough of experts</h2>
<p>The second is that campaigns such as this impoverish our public discourse. This may happen directly, by undermining the ability of academics to conduct and disseminate research into illuminating, but controversial topics without fear of personal, political, or economic reprisals. Academics might censor themselves, understandably wanting to avoid being made a target for online and real-world abuse. Or universities might decide that it is safer to avoid the taint of partiality and impose strict guidelines on the kinds of opinions that lecturers can and cannot express – and the circumstances in which they can and cannot express them.</p>
<p>This is bad enough, but a more indirect and insidious threat comes from the way that these kinds of character attacks accelerate a general erosion of faith in the idea that expertise has a place in the public sphere.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192613/original/file-20171031-18693-96ry77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Enough of learned judges, too.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daily Mail</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If someone knows more than you do about a particular topic, then an effective shortcut to having sound beliefs on that topic is to adopt the beliefs they recommend, or at least to assign extra weight to them in your deliberations. Imagine how much more difficult life would be if you didn’t privilege your doctor’s opinion about what medicine to take when you are sick, or your mechanic’s opinion about the parts that need replacing on your car. </p>
<p>As a strategy, however, this only makes sense if we think that we are warranted in trusting that the experts are disposed to give us good advice. If readers believe that academics are rabid ideologues, or that they are bought and paid for, then they are not trying to help anyone to form good beliefs, but rather to promulgate beliefs that serve their own grubby interests. Trust not only appears unwarranted, but positively foolish. The strategy is blocked, even if it would, in fact, have led to better beliefs and, ultimately, better decisions.</p>
<h2>Mail hypocrisy</h2>
<p>Note that the Mail’s method is to accuse its targets of precisely the faults that it is perceived to have. The Mail exhibits a political bias, is often guilty of sensationalism and deliberately drives a jingoistic agenda in order to be a rallying point for disaffected Leavers. By dragging everyone down to its level, the Mail turns what should be an important debate into a glorified shouting match – and with its access to an industrial-scale printing press and a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2017/jan/19/popular-newspapers-suffer-greater-circulation-falls-than-qualities">circulation of 1.5m</a> (not to mention the millions more online), the Mail shouts much louder than most.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192614/original/file-20171031-18720-1uazo7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192614/original/file-20171031-18720-1uazo7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192614/original/file-20171031-18720-1uazo7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192614/original/file-20171031-18720-1uazo7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192614/original/file-20171031-18720-1uazo7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192614/original/file-20171031-18720-1uazo7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192614/original/file-20171031-18720-1uazo7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">First they came for the lecturers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daily Mail</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Experts, of course, are not always right. And democracy is not rule by the experts – it is rule by the people. It is right that experts be challenged and that people try to make up their own minds. But political debate must be on the merits of the arguments. Otherwise, the day will come when it will not be possible to gain credibility on a controversial subject by becoming learned about it. </p>
<p>The only source of credibility that will matter is how totally you commit to your position and how vociferously you expound it. In the absence of a more complex set of rules and norms for determining who is worth listening to and to what degree, sheer power will win out. Which is what the Daily Mail really wants.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86553/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carl Fox is affiliated with the Labour Party. </span></em></p>The paper’s attack on academics who take a pro-Brexit line should be seen for what it is:hypocritical bullying.Carl Fox, Lecturer in Applied and Inter-Disciplinary Ethics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708742017-01-06T14:05:35Z2017-01-06T14:05:35ZWhy Fleet Street is right to fight government-backed regulation of the press<p>It is rare for an issue to prompt all sectors of the British press into being “on the same page”, so to speak. But from the local <a href="http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/cannot-give-up-200-years-12319910">Birmingham Mail</a>, to tabloids including <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2529359/join-our-fight-to-keep-investigative-journalism-alive-and-kicking/">The Sun</a>, to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/27/press-freedom-danger-if-mps-vote-in-section-40-by-the-back-door">the Guardian</a> and the Sunday Times broadsheets – and almost every other British newspaper on the shelf – the view is clear: dark times lie ahead if the government brings the legislation known as Section 40 into force.</p>
<p>Section 40 forms part of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/section/40">Crime and Courts Act 2013</a>. It governs the allocation of costs in libel cases. What its implementation effectively means is that any publisher not signed up to a “recognised” regulator (of which <a href="http://impress.press">IMPRESS</a> is the sole example at present) risks enormous expense if it is taken to court, where the judge can direct it to pay both sides’ costs – win or lose.</p>
<p>The Sunday Times says such rules would have prevented it from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/23830777">exposing cyclist Lance Armstrong</a> as a drug user. Other scandals, such as <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/">MPs’ expenses</a> or the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28934963">sex abuse cases in Rotherham</a>, may never have come to light if Section 40 had been in force at the time because the risk of court costs would have been too high.</p>
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<p>That it might be in force soon is a result of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24746137">Royal Charter on self-regulation of the press</a>, which is clearly a contradiction in terms. If approved by the Privy Council-created Royal Charter, the press cannot be engaged in “self-regulation”. It was never recommended by the Leveson Inquiry into press culture and ethics – it was created by the government.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, legislation was passed to penalise news media publishers who refuse to be subject to state-approved regulation. Sections <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/part/2/crossheading/publishers-of-newsrelated-material-damages-and-costs">34 to 42 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013</a> set out harsh sanctions on publishers who do not conform. </p>
<p>The state-funded quango, the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk">Press Recognition Panel</a>, then approved <a href="http://impress.press/">IMPRESS</a> to be the regulator. But IMPRESS is largely bankrolled by a family trust connected to <a href="http://impress.press/about-us/funding.html">media victim and Hacked Off campaigner Max Mosley</a>, and not one significant national, regional or local news publisher wants anything to do with it. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.private-eye.co.uk/about">Private Eye</a>, the UK’s number one best-selling news and current affairs magazine, has long performed a courageous role in pursuing investigative journalism that other news publishers were too terrified of publishing. It has always eschewed having any truck with press regulation and taken its chances in the casino chamber of litigation. And when the dice in most UK media law cases are loaded in favour of claimants with the burden of proof on media defendants (a position that does not exist in criminal law or any other form of civil negligence) Private Eye has always known that the stakes are high. </p>
<p>The magazine lost when former police superintendent <a href="http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/media-firms-forced-pay-gordon-12062900">Gordon Anglesea sued the magazine</a> and three other publishers over child abuse allegations in 1994. Anglesea picked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/04/ex-police-chief-gordon-anglesea-jailed-child-sexual-abuse-north-wales">up £375,000 in damages</a> which he was free to spend until he was last year finally convicted of sexual offences against children. </p>
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<p>The double jeopardy in media law that faces Private Eye and other news publishers includes a legal costs system of conditional fee arrangements condemned as <a href="http://pcmlp.socleg.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/defamationreport.pdf">the highest in Europe</a> and ruled as a <a href="http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2011/66.html">breach of Article 10</a>, the right to freedom of expression by the European Court of Human Rights. </p>
<p>But this has not been reformed. Instead the Crime and Courts Act has given the green light for courts to award exemplary damages to punish recalcitrant news publishers such as Private Eye.</p>
<p>To discriminate and create such outrageous legal prejudice for any news publisher that refuses the heel of state approved press regulation is a gross breach of natural justice. It is a breach of English common law, the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and indeed, the United Nations Charter on Human Rights. Indeed, media freedom NGOs including <a href="https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/12/section-40-jeopardises-press-freedom/">Index on Censorship</a>, <a href="https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/38529/en/article-19%E2%80%99s-response-to-recognition-of-impress">Charter 19</a>, <a href="https://www.englishpen.org/campaigns/press-regulation-royal-charter-and-legal-framework-are-not-how-to-curb-excess/">PEN</a>, and <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/snoopers-charter-and-section-40-costs-threat-set-to-push-uk-yet-further-down-reporters-without-borders-press-freedom-index/">Reporters without Borders</a> are opposed to, or critical of Section 40. </p>
<h2>Pressed freedom</h2>
<p>There is no pressing social need to implement it. It is not necessary in a democratic society. It will generate a genuine and disturbing chilling effect on British journalism.</p>
<p>Serial rapist and paedophile Jimmy Savile enjoyed the immunity that establishment approval and gongs gave him, safe in the knowledge that newspaper publishers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/oct/10/jimmy-savile-bbc">had no chance of defending any libel action he would have launched</a>. He knew the newspapers had to prove their case, while he did not have to prove his.
The credibility of his vulnerable victims with their troubled backgrounds would have been annihilated in court by expensive QCs. And Section 40 would have given Savile the pleasure of knowing the defending newspaper had to pay for his legal costs had any libel verdict gone against him.</p>
<p>The history of British media law is littered with scenarios of successful libel actions that turned out to be stories <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/covered-up-50-years-how-6686843">that were substantially true</a>, and secret privacy actions where the truth was regarded as a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sir-fred-goodwin-super-injunction-lifted-2286385.html">matter of public interest</a>.</p>
<p>News media publishers rightly regard the Section 40 sanction for not signing up to regulation by IMPRESS as oppressive, bullying and anti-democratic. And the press industry already has its own substantially reformed independent self-regulator, IPSO, with a low-cost arbitration route. It has been externally reviewed as <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/external-review-of-ipso-finds-press-regulator-is-independent-effective-and-largely-compliant-with-leveson/">largely “Leveson compliant”</a>.</p>
<p>Enacting Section 40 will mean news publishers will have no choice but to avoid <em>any</em> publication that risks <em>any</em> kind of media legal action. It would be the death of critical and investigative journalism. If news is what somebody wants to keep out of the newspapers, then Section 40 will achieve just that. In its place will remain the advertising, publicity and propaganda somebody always wants to keep in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is Chair of the Professional Practices Board of the Chartered Institute of Journalists.</span></em></p>Beware the death of investigative journalism in UK newspapers.Tim Crook, Professor in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Chair of Professional Standards Board, CIoJ., Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/279062014-06-25T13:58:08Z2014-06-25T13:58:08ZPhone hacking trial laid bare the dark arts of unethical journalism<p>The unethical journalism practices laid bare by the phone hacking trial and the Leveson Inquiry have been both astounding and sensational. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/29/leveson-inquiry-list-victims-phone-hacking">parade of celebrities and politicians</a> whose most intimate secrets were revealed through illicit access to their phones was startling, ranging from Hugh Grant, David Blunkett, and Charlotte Church to members of the royal family. </p>
<p>In the trial, Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World who went on to become David Cameron’s head of communications, was been found guilty of conspiracy to hack mobile phones. His former colleague, Rebekah Brooks, was cleared of all charges. The jury failed to reach verdicts on two further charges faced by Coulson and one charge faced by former royal editor Clive Goodman of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.</p>
<p>The scandal around phone hacking has been unfolding since the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6301243.stm">arrest</a> of News of the World private investigator Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006. But perhaps the most shocking revelations surrounded <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14017661">the hacking of murdered school girl Milly Dowler’s phone</a>, giving rise to widespread denunciations of a culture of ruthless, unethical and lawless journalism in the UK. These concerns were further fuelled by the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson Inquiry</a> into the culture, practices and ethics of the press in the UK, which published its recommendations in November 2012, calling for a profound overhaul of press regulation in the UK.</p>
<p>Though the drama of the trial and the Leveson Inquiry have placed debates over journalism ethics in the limelight, there is nothing new about either the shocking behaviour of tabloid journalists, or about the debates over how it should be curbed. To anyone familiar with the history of journalism ethics and regulation in the UK, the phone hacking scandal is the logical outcome of the unfortunate union of a highly competitive tabloid industry, and a toothless system of press regulation.</p>
<p>Tabloid newspapers have long used illicit means to gather information. In 1981, newspapers including the Daily Express, the Sun, the Daily Star, the People, the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail were found guilty of gross misconduct for <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1983/jul/20/mr-peter-sutcliffe-press-council-report-1">making payments to family members of Peter Sutcliffe</a>, the Yorkshire Ripper. Just short of ten years later, tabloid newspapers bought audiotapes of an erotic phone conversation between <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-522508/Charles-Camillas-lovenest-bugged-Diana-inquest-told.html">Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles</a>, as well as recorded calls between <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-507163/Queens-fury-Squidgygate-tape-Palace-ordered-inquiry-leaked-Diana-lover.html">Princess Diana and her lover James Gilbert</a>.</p>
<p>Research by John Henningham and Anthony Delano (detailed in The News Breed: British Journalism, not available online) shows that compared to their US and Australian counterparts, British journalists are far more likely to believe that paying people for information, using confidential documents without permission, using hidden microphones or personal documents, and badgering sources for stories may be justified.</p>
<p>Writing about this in 1998, Henningham and Delano argued: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The strongly competitive newsgathering environment in the UK … may result in a culture in which ethical constraints are somewhat blurred. The relative recency of professional education in journalism may be another factor, together with a lack of a tradition of associations of journalists organised on purely professional (as opposed to union) lines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the same time, newspapers in the UK have <a href="http://www.editorsweblog.org/2012/12/05/reactions-to-leveson-lord-black">fought</a> tooth and nail against a stronger regulatory body with a statutory underpinning, as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20543133">recommended by Lord Justice Leveson</a>. Such resistance to regulation not unique to the UK. It is central to the self-understanding of journalists around the world, <a href="http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/3023/en/international-standards:-regulation-of-the-print-media.">which relies centrally on the idea of press freedom and independence</a>. The fight against regulation has been crucial in many national contexts where governments have tried to control media and curb their reporting.</p>
<h2>Failure of self-regulation</h2>
<p>In the UK, broadcasting is regulated by <a href="http://www.ofcom.org.uk/">OFCOM</a>, which has the power to revoke licences and impose major fines. The BBC, as the standard bearer for public service broadcasting, has strict <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/">editorial guidelines</a>. However, there is no similar regulatory framework in place for print media. Members of the National Union of Journalists must sign up to its <a href="http://www.nuj.org.uk/about/nuj-code/">code of ethics</a>, but union membership is not a requirement for practitioners, and <a href="http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-commentary/is-the-nuj-still-relevant-to-new-generation-of-journalists/s6/a553385/">figures</a> suggest that union membership has declined by 18% over the past five years, with young journalists reluctant to join. </p>
<p>A succession of voluntary <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/nov/28/leveson-inquiry-report-essential-guide">self-regulatory bodies</a> has been charged with overseeing the print media, starting with the General Council in 1953, followed by the Press Council in 1962 and finally the <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/about/index.html">Press Complaints Commission</a> since 1991. </p>
<p>Their history is one of persistent failure in the face of the blatantly irresponsible behaviour of a small but powerful minority of journalists who have shown what it means to have “power without responsibility”.</p>
<p>This autumn, the PCC will be abolished and replaced by the <a href="http://www.ipso.co.uk/">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a>, which describes itself as a “new, tough, independent organisation”. This new body will have <a href="http://www.newspapersoc.org.uk/08/jul/13/independent-press-standards-organisation">far greater powers</a> than its predecessors. It will be able to levy fines up to £1m for serious or systemic wrong-doing, and will have a “standards and compliance arm with investigative powers to call editors to account”.</p>
<p>It is doubtful that the latest incarnation of press regulation will magically transform the culture of the tabloid press. But the public ritual of shaming those responsible, through the phone-hacking trial and the Leveson Inquiry, has brought these issues to the forefront and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/nov/14/phone-hacking-public-trust">undermined the public’s trust in the press</a>. News organisations are desperate to regain this trust, and this can only be done by exercising their power with responsibility.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karin Wahl-Jorgensen 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>The unethical journalism practices laid bare by the phone hacking trial and the Leveson Inquiry have been both astounding and sensational. The parade of celebrities and politicians whose most intimate…Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Director of Research Development and Environment, School of Journalism, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.