tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/press-regulation-5477/articles press regulation – The Conversation2017-01-13T17:34:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/712262017-01-13T17:34:13Z2017-01-13T17:34:13ZDon’t believe what you read: section 40 will protect the local press, not kill it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152689/original/image-20170113-11831-15849v3.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">Tom Gowanlock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone interested in journalism who has been reading the UK’s national press over the past week or two could be forgiven for thinking press freedom is in serious jeopardy. It’s one of those rare occasions when Fleet Street seems to speak as one. </p>
<p>The government is consulting on whether <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/section/40">section 40</a> of the Crime and Courts Act – a law passed in 2013 – should come into effect. The provision effectively means that a news organisation defending a defamation or privacy case can be made to pay the costs of both sides, even if it wins the case.</p>
<p>The press is united in wanting it repealed and has painted a disturbing picture of the impact the provision would have on press freedom: anyone bringing an action against the press, however ill-conceived, will have their costs reimbursed – which would be a disaster, particularly for cash-strapped regional and local newspapers. </p>
<p>This interpretation of section 40’s effect is so dominant that it has become almost an accepted truth, leading <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/11/section-40-british-press-regulation-investigative-journalism">David Pegg</a>, in The Guardian, to conclude: “[it is] a law that forces publishers to pay punishment levies.” Several titles have claimed that various scandals, relating to <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2544579/the-disturbing-tweets-that-reveal-just-how-biased-those-who-want-to-regulate-the-british-press-impartially-really-are/">MP’s expenses, corruption at the highest levels of FIFA</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/11/section-40-british-press-regulation-investigative-journalism">the Panama papers </a> would not have been published had section 40 been in operation. Common to all these examples is that the claimants would have had no grounds on which to bring a legal action.</p>
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<h2>Watchdogs</h2>
<p>It is no wonder that the local and regional press should be fearful about its capacity to survive, let alone to pursue serious investigative journalism.</p>
<p>Local papers perform a vital public watchdog role for communities by, for example, monitoring the use of local authority power as well as reporting on rogue traders. This function is incredibly important to protect and <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Positive-Plurality-policy-paper-9-10-14.pdf">is under threat</a>, not least because resources are tight – whether the title is owned by a larger group or not. To further constrain them through the threat of costs in spurious claims would be disastrous. </p>
<p>But will the courts apply the law in the way that the press predicts? It seems unlikely for three reasons. First, it would undermine the purpose of press reform. <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/about/the-report/">Leveson’s report</a> clearly stated that the scheme for realising meaningful, independent press regulation must not jeopardise press freedom. He said that if legislation was implemented to secure independent press regulation, then it should “place an explicit duty on the Government to uphold and protect the freedom of the press” (that’s on page 1781 for anyone who has invested in a copy). Serious investigative journalism sits at the heart of this commitment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152695/original/image-20170113-11831-516qv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152695/original/image-20170113-11831-516qv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152695/original/image-20170113-11831-516qv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152695/original/image-20170113-11831-516qv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152695/original/image-20170113-11831-516qv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152695/original/image-20170113-11831-516qv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152695/original/image-20170113-11831-516qv1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Metro devoted its first-ever leader column to an argument against Section 40.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Secondly, it would, arguably, contravene the law. For as long as the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/contents">Human Rights Act 1998</a> remains in force, courts are required to interpret legislation compatibly with, in this case, the <a href="https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/what-are-human-rights/human-rights-act/article-10-freedom-expression">Article 10 right to freedom of expression</a>. Rewarding the claimant who exploits section 40 to stymie serious investigative journalism would breach Article 10. </p>
<p>Thirdly, it would be uncharacteristic of the judiciary – given its long history of jealously guarding the right to publish public interest expression. </p>
<h2>Rogue’s charter?</h2>
<p>So how would less restrictive interpretation be realised? The effect of section 40 depends upon the status of the defendant newspaper. If it is a member of a recognised regulator, then its costs are reimbursed even if it loses (section 40(2)). If the defendant is outside that scheme, then section 40(3) instructs the court to award costs against the defendant, even if it successfully defends the claim.</p>
<p>But the same clause provides the court with an important discretion. Costs should not be awarded against the successful defendant if it would be “just and equitable in all the circumstances” not to apply the rule. This is a crucial measure and one that has been ignored altogether in the mainstream debate.</p>
<p>In my view, section 40(3) would not protect the claimant initiating baseless claims. It has not been enacted to establish a rogue’s charter to undermine the important role of the press. </p>
<p>Leveson did not recommend these changes for the benefit of liars, cheats and scoundrels. It was enacted because the Leveson report proves that ordinary members of the public are also the victims of press malpractice and that unlawful damage to their reputation and private life has serious consequences. It was enacted because these victims often cannot afford legal advice. Cheap and efficient arbitration is the best means of securing their legitimate interests in an accountable press – and section 40 is designed to encourage both sides of a matter to seek arbitration before resorting to a costly court case.</p>
<p>The purpose of the legislation, therefore, is to ensure that victims of the press are not deprived of the opportunity to protect their interests. And if a claimant brings an unarguable case then it is entirely right that such a claimant should pay their costs and that of the newspapers. If Section 40(3)(b) did not protect the press in these circumstances, then the clause would be redundant. </p>
<h2>Fair and balanced</h2>
<p>It follows that the full force of section 40 should only be realised in cases where the court is satisfied, first, that the claimant had an arguable case, suitable for the court to decide, and secondly, that the claim could have been determined through arbitration. This will not be the case in every legal action. This also limits the power of the Section 40 litigation threat.</p>
<p>If section 40 is enforced then the local and regional press (and the nationals) should adopt a bullish approach to any threats to exploit Section 40. As all editors and journalists know, there is nothing to be done to prevent the threat of litigation from disgruntled subjects of press attention. Indeed, the threat of litigation is a fact of business life generally. But no one should feel cowed into silence because of Section 40 alone.</p>
<p>The court, though, is only in a position to confirm the security afforded by section 40(3)(b) once it is enforced. But the government can do that now – it can reassure the entire press, but especially the local and regional press, that the consequences of section 40 are not as draconian as the national press has predicted. If it did, it could confirm that Section 40 remains vital to the realisation of meaningful, independent press regulation where the press does not “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9719802/Leveson-sketch-Harriet-Harman-defines-insanity.html">mark its own homework</a>” and the protection of future victims of press malpractice – but not at the expense of serious investigative journalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71226/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Wragg sits on the code committee of Impress. The views expressed here are personal. </span></em></p>Fleet Street is up in arms against a law they say will kill investigative journalism. That simply isn’t true.Paul Wragg, Associate Professor, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/709242017-01-06T15:37:20Z2017-01-06T15:37:20ZScience loses out to uninformed opinion on climate change – yet again<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151848/original/image-20170105-18668-16dt0gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Ocean acidification is an inevitable consequence of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That’s a <a href="http://tos.org/oceanography/article/a-time-series-view-of-changing-ocean-chemistry-due-to-ocean-uptake-ofanthro">matter of fact</a>. We don’t know exactly what will happen to complex marine ecosystems when faced with the additional stress of falling pH, but we do know those changes are happening and that they won’t be good news.</p>
<p>The journalist James Delingpole disagrees. In an <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/ocean-acidification-yet-another-wobbly-pillar-of-climate-alarmism/">article for The Spectator</a> in April 2016, he took the sceptical position that all concerns over ocean acidification are unjustified “alarmism” and that the scientific study of this non-problem is a waste of money. He concluded that the only reason that the study of ocean acidification was ever funded at all was because there was insufficient (and decreasing) evidence for global warming and it acted as a “fallback position”.</p>
<p>Having had the role of science coordinator for the <a href="http://www.oceanacidification.org.uk/">UK Ocean Acidification research programme</a> and being involved in relevant national and international projects for around ten years previously, I know such claims – which Delingpole presented as facts – to be false. I also spotted a range of other errors and inaccuracies in his piece. </p>
<p>Having first gone to The Spectator with my concerns, in late August I submitted a formal complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). The key issues were whether or not due care had been taken to avoid publication of inaccurate information, and whether comment and conjecture had been clearly distinguished from fact. </p>
<p>At the end of a long and frustrating process <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/rulings-and-resolution-statements/ruling/?id=08168-16">IPSO’s final ruling</a> was published on January 5 and it doesn’t seem we are much further forward. My <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/05/james-delingpole-article-calling-ocean-acidification-alarmism-cleared-by-press-watchdog">complaint was rejected</a> on the basis that the article was “clearly a comment piece” and that it was not IPSO’s role to resolve conflicting evidence for contentious issues. </p>
<h2>Facts are sacred</h2>
<p>Freedom of speech, and of the press, is, of course, extremely precious. Yet that freedom also brings responsibility. The <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/">Editors’ Code of Practice</a> – which IPSO claims to uphold – requires the “highest professional standards”. Let’s remind ourselves of what this means when it comes to accuracy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>i) The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.</p>
<p>ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That would seem clear enough. So let’s look at just one of Delingpole’s paragraphs and judge for ourselves whether these standards were met:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ocean acidification theory appears to have been fatally flawed almost from the start. In 2004, two NOAA scientists, Richard Feely and Christopher Sabine, produced a chart showing a strong correlation between rising atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> levels and falling oceanic pH levels. But then, just over a year ago, Mike Wallace, a hydrologist with 30 years’ experience, noticed while researching his PhD that they had omitted some key information. Their chart only started in 1988 but, as Wallace knew, there were records dating back to at least 100 years before. So why had they ignored the real-world evidence in favour of computer-modelled projections? When Wallace plotted a chart of his own, incorporating all the available data, covering the period from 1910 to the present, his results were surprising: there has been no reduction in oceanic pH levels in the last century.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That might look like a plausible argument based on fact. But the Feely/Sabine chart which was of concern to Wallace was published in 2006, not 2004; the chart didn’t start in 1988, but covered the period 1850-2100; and no data had been omitted, since it showed an idealised, theory-based relationship between atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> and ocean pH. Meanwhile the “real-world evidence” was from extremely unreliable early measurements, uncorrected for natural variability, that when combined gave physically impossible year-on-year changes in global pH. And Wallace’s analyses have not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Delingpole did not contact any of the individuals mentioned to obtain first-hand accounts of the issues of concern.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151947/original/image-20170106-18647-pym28q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How ocean acidification works according to the experts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UK Ocean Acidification Programme</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To be fair, several of Delingpole’s inaccuracies, such as NERC (the Natural Environment Research Council) rather than Defra being the main funder of the UK Ocean Acidification research programme, were acknowledged by IPSO – but the regulator ruled that they were not “significantly” misleading, neither cumulatively nor individually. It didn’t seem to matter to IPSO that calling science’s approach to acidification “alarmism” – and implying that researchers have said that everything in the sea will die – is rather different from the well-established scientific knowledge that ocean acidification really does affect sensitive species, such as corals, and will therefore disrupt ecosystems. </p>
<h2>Fair comment?</h2>
<p>The Editor’s Code of Practice has this to say about opinion and comment:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So read this statement from Delingpole:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ocean acidification – the evidence increasingly suggests – is a trivial, misleadingly named, and not remotely worrying phenomenon which has been hyped up beyond all measure for political, ideological and financial reasons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is this just an honest opinion, a statement of fact, or wilfully misleading and clever rhetoric? That depends on what is meant by “evidence”. If it means quality research carried out by scientists with expertise in the field, the statement is factually incorrect. But if evidence includes anything said by non-experts, such as Delingpole, then that’s an increase, right?</p>
<p>All these issues may seem technical or unimportant to anyone but scientists or most of the public. But IPSO’s overall message is that ocean acidification is just a matter of opinion – not a hard-won, testable understanding of the likely effects of human-driven changes on the marine environment. This view of science is pernicious and has serious policy consequences. Why support any research if 250 peer-reviewed papers produced by the <a href="http://www.oceanacidification.org.uk/">UK Ocean Acidification research programme</a> can all be summarily dismissed as worthless? </p>
<h2>IPSO: a watchdog with few teeth?</h2>
<p>From a back of the envelope analysis of IPSO’s published statistics on its adjudications on complaints it appears that about 18% of those investigated are upheld. I can’t pretend to be an expert on the nature of complaints about the press and don’t know what proportion is vexatious or can be dismissed out of hand, but it’s important to note that the overwhelming majority of complaints received by IPSO – <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/media/1300/ipso-ar.pdf">at least 95% by my calculation</a> – are not investigated or taken further, since they come under the heading <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/media/1300/ipso-ar.pdf/">complaints IPSO could not deal with</a>. This might be good news for publishers, but seems a very depressing statistic for those who feel wronged by the press.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151944/original/image-20170106-18653-d5mo0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IPSO annual report 2015</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Does this really mean that anything goes if it is presented, however tenuously, as “comment” or “opinion”? Doesn’t “care taken” involve basic fact-checking and making a proper effort to contact quoted or maligned individuals before publication? Are political blogs, disputed newspaper coverage and think-tank reports reliable information sources, while properly peer-reviewed scientific literature can be disregarded?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=216&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151945/original/image-20170106-18665-1rtxvrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=271&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IPSO annual report 2015</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s a <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/press-regulation-5477">passionate debate going on in journalism at the moment</a> about regulation – and most journalists believe, probably correctly – that the industry should be its own watchdog. But these sorts of decisions make you wonder whether they are up to the task. All this is in my opinion, of course.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Phillip Williamson is an Associate Fellow at the University of East Anglia and employed by the Natural Environment Research Council. He was Science Coordinator for the UK Ocean Acidification research programme 2010-2016, co-funded by NERC, Defra and DECC. </span></em></p>IPSO’s latest ruling makes a mockery of journalism’s commitment to seeking the truth.Phil Williamson, NERC Science Coordinator, University of East AngliaLicensed 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>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"815507096116559873"}"></div></p>
<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/708122017-01-03T14:45:15Z2017-01-03T14:45:15ZWhere press regulation is concerned, we’re already being fed ‘post-truth’ journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151573/original/image-20170103-18641-3a1of5.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">SamJonah</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Times newspaper greeted the start of 2017 <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/leave-the-press-free-to-carry-on-telling-the-truth-f5sbjvzss">by warning</a>: “The freedom of the press is under direct and immediate threat.” Its Murdoch stablemate, The Sun, <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2499442/from-calling-sun-readers-mugs-to-wanting-to-ban-daily-mail-sinister-zealots-behind-regulators-want-to-destroy-the-popular-press/">went further</a> by identifying the “sinister zealots behind regulators [who] want to destroy the popular press”. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4067358/Don-t-let-politicians-destroy-Press-freedom-Act-want-help-defend-right-read-website-like-MailOnline.html">urged its readers</a> to: “Act NOW if you want to help defend the right to read a website like MailOnline.”</p>
<p>Free speech in Britain – which has been a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/feb/05/religion.news">beacon of human rights since 1689</a> – is clearly under threat. Or is it? It depends who you believe.</p>
<p>Anyone attempting to follow the progress of press regulation in the UK can be forgiven some bewilderment – and also some impatience. Matters generally thought to have been sorted out after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/leveson-inquiry-7469">Leveson Inquiry</a> seem suddenly to be surfacing again, and the public is being asked to take an urgent interest in something called <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/section/40">Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act</a>. This provides for costs in defamation cases and mandates that judges can direct newspapers to pay both sides’ costs even if they win a libel case.</p>
<p>Make no mistake: the bewilderment and impatience have been deliberately engineered by the corporate press – by which I mean the Murdoch, Mail, Mirror, Express and Telegraph papers – whose objective is to sabotage all change, including changes already passed into law by parliament. With this objective in mind, these newspapers have engaged in a rampage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/post-truth-32226">misinformation</a>.</p>
<p>“MPs are considering forcing newspapers to pay celebs and politicians who sue – even if cases are thrown out”, declared a <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2420600/the-government-must-act-now-to-protect-the-free-press-and-keep-our-important-investigative-journalism-alive/">recent editorial in The Sun</a>, beneath a headline about protecting the free press and keeping investigative journalism alive. Similar messages have even been rammed home to the employees of these companies in <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/daily-mail-staff-urged-to-counter-hacked-off-lobbying-by-contributing-to-section-40-libel-costs-penalties-consultation/">internal emails</a>.</p>
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<p>These publications are desperate to give a veneer of legitimacy to the work of their political allies who are trying to bury the Leveson reforms and with them the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/part-two-leveson-inquiry-has-been-quietly-shelved-government/">second part of the Leveson Inquiry</a> (which deals with criminality rather than regulation). Having <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-versus-public-interest-in-battle-over-press-regulation-50114">stalled both of these measures</a> at the behest of the press, ministers have <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-seeks-views-on-press-regulation-issues">launched a consultation about the next step</a> – the implementation of Section 40 – and the papers are going all out for the option of complete abandonment.</p>
<h2>Blurring the truth</h2>
<p>Despite The Sun’s rhetoric, MPs are not actually involved in implementing Section 40 for the good reason that the Crime and Courts Act was passed into law with the support of every party in 2013. Section 40 is not about celebrities and politicians – on the contrary, what it chiefly does is to give every citizen a historic new right of access to affordable justice in cases of libel and unjustified intrusion.</p>
<p>If the government will only put Section 40 into operation, we will see the end of the age-old British scandal by which only the very rich or the very lucky get to uphold their rights against libellers and those who violate our privacy rights.</p>
<p>But it is precisely because it gives us all that right that the corporate papers and their friends are fighting it. They are terrified by the idea that ordinary people might suddenly be able to sue them and get damages.</p>
<p>As with most post-truth news, there is a germ of truth in what The Sun claims and it is this: if someone wants to exercise the right to affordable justice through arbitration and a newspaper refuses to cooperate, so forcing them to take the far more expensive route of court proceedings, then the judge will have the option of making the newspaper pay both sides’ costs even if the paper wins.</p>
<p>Far from being outrageous, as The Sun and others suggest, this is absolutely fair. What would be unfair would be to leave editors with the power to pick and choose which claimants can use cheap arbitration. All experience tells us that they would push the rich into arbitration, thus saving money, and push the rest of us towards the courts knowing we can’t afford it and so would abandon our cases.</p>
<p>This has nothing to do with rich celebs – who have long been among the privileged few able to afford to sue. Instead it is about empowering people who, in the absence of Section 40, are left powerless.</p>
<h2>No state control</h2>
<p>The Sun’s comments are self-serving. By banging on about “state-backed regulation”, corporate papers aim to smear “recognised regulation” as set out under the <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-regulation-the-case-for-the-royal-charter-19741">Royal Charter of 2013</a> with the taint of censorship. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151602/original/image-20170103-18641-7g9y15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151602/original/image-20170103-18641-7g9y15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151602/original/image-20170103-18641-7g9y15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151602/original/image-20170103-18641-7g9y15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151602/original/image-20170103-18641-7g9y15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151602/original/image-20170103-18641-7g9y15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151602/original/image-20170103-18641-7g9y15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Powerful voices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lenscap Photography</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recognised regulation is regulation that meets the basic standards of independence and effectiveness set out in the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/about/the-report/">Leveson Report</a> as necessary to uphold standards and protect the public from abuse.</p>
<p>The test is applied by the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/">Press Recognition Panel</a>, which although a public body enjoys unprecedented and unique independence from ministerial or political influence – and one of the criteria it applies is that a regulator must have no power “to prevent the publication of any material, by anyone, at any time”.</p>
<p>So far from representing a step towards state control, the charter system has freedom of expression at its heart – and no one has been able to show any way in which it could inhibit public interest journalism. There are no rational grounds for any responsible news publisher to object to regulation under the charter. </p>
<p>Yet the propaganda continues. The papers that hold the megaphone of mass communication are all shouting the same words together and, at the same time, refusing even a hint of balance in their reporting.</p>
<p>Despite all of this, there is something you can do. Hacked Off is <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/latest-news/consultation-response-guide/">helping coordinate responses to the government consultation</a>, which closes on January 10. There at least you cannot be drowned out by the megaphone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Cathcart was a founder of Hacked Off and in 2012-14 was its paid director. He remains an (unpaid) member of its board. </span></em></p>The big guns of Fleet Street are pressing for the government to abandon the Leveson reform process. But there are other voices out there.Brian Cathcart, Professor of Journalism, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/686142016-12-14T15:15:16Z2016-12-14T15:15:16ZStop press! Here’s a ten-point plan for regulating the news industry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/150120/original/image-20161214-5901-1ymxrf4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Regulation for the nation.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-441724390.html">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Producing good journalism is not an easy task. Those who do it well are adept in communicating with clarity, precision, and understanding. But it seems as if nobody within the industry is able to apply these admirable attributes to a system of press regulation. As a result, a civil war is being waged within British journalism – and it risks becoming even more vicious.</p>
<p>The British culture secretary, Karen Bradley, is reviewing <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/contents/enacted">Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act</a>, which will decide whether newspapers pay the potentially huge costs of legal action brought against them, whether they win or lose. Meanwhile the current manifestation of self-regulation, <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk">IPSO</a>, is undermined because well-known publications including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk">the Guardian</a>, the <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/">Evening Standard</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/">Financial Times</a> refuse to take part. </p>
<p>The alternative, <a href="http://www.impress.press">IMPRESS</a>, has failed to live up to its name because it is state approved and has been created, funded and cheered on by the activists of campaign group <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/">Hacked Off</a>.</p>
<p>I think most professional journalists on the frontline of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7881792/Britains-draconian-libel-laws-to-be-reformed.html">oppressive media laws</a> and aggressive lobbying from politicians, government bodies and interest groups wish for something better.</p>
<p>They want effective and consensus leadership from editors, proprietors and trade unions – and consider their industry to be already over-regulated by one of the most oppressive media legal regimes in the western world.</p>
<p>We should all want an industry that manages to regulate itself against wrong-doing without interference from politicians – and which provides us with the news and information we deserve in a free and modern country.</p>
<p>Here are my ten steps towards a free and regulated press.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>All media groups involved in IPSO need to negotiate with those who refuse to join. They should reach consensus on establishing a self-regulatory body that they can all support and participate in. </p></li>
<li><p>The industry needs to take the initiative. It should outmanoeuvre politicians and aggressive lobbying groups by creating an organisation that is truly open and beyond reproach – and not viewed as in thrall to the industry, like the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14073718">ill-fated Press Complaints Commission</a>, which had the editor of the Daily Mail <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/12/alastair-campbell-attacks-dacre-and-murdoch_n_4264423.html">in charge of its Editors’ Code Committee</a> (it’s worth noting that Dacre was, until the beginning of December 2016, <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/news-press-releases/press-releases/editors-code-committee-announces-consultation/">the chair of IPSO’s Editors’ Code Committee</a>). </p></li>
<li><p>The new body should be a trust truly independent of the industry. It should investigate, resolve and soothe anger and hurt when journalists do wrong, whether ethically or legally. It should campaign for and assert the constitutional role of the media in a democratic society. It should advocate the holding of the powerful to account. It should carry out that function with courage, dignity and in good faith to win widespread public support.</p></li>
<li><p>The new trust should be well funded, so it is able to properly investigate and respond to public complaints of media abuses. At the same time it should investigate and protect the purposes of journalism in a free society – to prevent journalism itself turning instead into a social problem that leads to criminal prosecutions, closures or increased calls for legislative controls and government approval.</p></li>
<li><p>The trust should set up an ethical code committee that produces a charter of principles that inspires and invigorates journalism. It requires an antidote to the current <a href="http://www.editorscode.org.uk/the_code.php">IPSO</a> and <a href="http://impress.press/news/draft-standards-code.html">IMPRESS</a> proclamations which, depressingly, read like the rule books of young offenders’ institutions. Most of the IPSO and IMPRESS codes duplicate existing criminal and civil law and they lack relevance to the complex challenges facing the 21st-century multimedia journalist. Just look at the <a href="http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp">US ethical codes</a>, which are positive, confidence building and assertive about <a href="https://www.rtdna.org/content/rtdna_code_of_ethics">the good that journalism can do</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Since all UK media print and online publishers now communicate in the global sphere of cyberspace, the controlling trust body should be truly international. It should include representatives from <a href="https://rsf.org">Reporters Without Borders</a>, <a href="https://www.indexoncensorship.org">Index on Censorship</a> <a href="https://www.cpj.org">The Committee to Protect Journalists</a>, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk">Amnesty International</a>, <a href="http://www.pen-international.org">PEN</a> and <a href="https://www.article19.org">Article 19</a>. The biggest UK news publishers are courting US and international English-speaking audiences. They should embrace the traditions of American free speech and the common global values of journalism – independent of sovereign state and corrupt corporate interference. </p></li>
<li><p>The new trust should involve the journalists’ trade unions, such as the <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/home/">NUJ</a>, the <a href="http://cioj.org">Chartered Institute of Journalists</a> and <a href="http://bajunion.org.uk">BAJ</a>. Having the direct participation of members of the key professional journalism associations will enhance understanding. They are at the grassroots of what is going right and wrong. They can be vital allies and partners.</p></li>
<li><p>The new trust should invest generously and imaginatively into a complaints resolution process that is far superior to litigation or arbitration. It should offer a package of non-legal adjudicatory processes of conciliation, negotiation and restorative justice case conferencing. These kinds of encounter are all about achieving mutual consent and understanding. If this is cost-free to all parties there is a clear prospect of settlement and satisfaction. This will avoid the full thrust of adversarial and inquisitorial legal combat. If the parties are not happy with the package of dispute resolution on offer, they can be provided with an open arbitration process that is binding and cost free for all parties.</p></li>
<li><p>The new trust should turn the “moral obligation” to protect journalist sources into a legal one. <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/501/663/case.html">This is the law in the USA</a>. There should be compensation to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/feb/26/operation-elveden-a-sad-and-sorry-tale">Operation Elveden</a> sources surrendered by British news publishers to the Metropolitan Police after being promised confidentiality. The new trust should recharge the democratic necessity and protection of sources from corporate negligence, state surveillance and judicial indifference.</p></li>
<li><p>The new trust should be the catalyst for researching and finding solutions to the catastrophe of falling newspaper circulation and insufficient income from online publication. It should campaign to educate young people about the value of the printed form. It should also lobby for copyright licensing income from social media platforms, public advertising investment and tax relief for local and regional publishers.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In short, we need to agree on an independent system of press regulation which delivers justice to media victims and at the same time restores the reputation and role of journalism in society. To do so would be good news for everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Journalists as the chair of its Professional Practices Board.</span></em></p>The press needs a solution that works for everyone.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/679022016-11-03T09:42:51Z2016-11-03T09:42:51ZWhy the latest body of UK press regulation is less than impressive<p>The British press has suffered from some bad PR in recent years. It has been dragged through the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson Inquiry</a>, investigated at length <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35666520">by the police</a>, abandoned by <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sunday-times-ft-guardian-and-observer-were-best-performing-print-titles-in-september/">large numbers of readers</a>, and its future has been debated in parliament. </p>
<p>Throughout all of this, the question of how to regulate a free press continues. The Press Complaints Commission is no more, IPSO (the industry’s own body) is ignored by several major publications, and now we have IMPRESS, the latest organisation to offer to take on the job.</p>
<p>IMPRESS says it is “<a href="http://www.impress.press">the first truly independent press regulator</a> in the UK” and, despite having no national newspapers as members, claims to be legitimised by official recognition from the Press Recognition Panel (PRP). </p>
<p>A government funded quango <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk">created by the Royal Charter on the Press</a>, the PRP operates with the guarantee of £3m of taxpayer’s funding. But never has so much public money been channelled into a public body that has so little to do and is so unpopular with the industry it has been set up to serve. </p>
<p>This is because its operating Royal Charter has nothing to do with agreement or negotiation. It is a medieval constitutional instrument of executive power imposed by politicians upon the press industry without consent. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the industry itself has spent millions of pounds on its own self-regulator, <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk">IPSO</a>, which it argues is just as “Leveson compliant”.</p>
<p>Among the blunt weapons possessed by IMPRESS with which it can batter publishers of news, is the threat of “exemplary” or punitive damages in media law litigation and the burden of paying both sides’ legal costs whatever the outcome of the proceedings. </p>
<p>The risk of exemplary damages <a href="http://www.carter-ruck.com/blog/read/crime-courts-act-exemplary-damages-libel-privacy-in-force">went live from November 2015</a> and has been <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-freedom-groups-warn-un-that-investigatory-powers-bill-threatens-journalistic-sources/">described by freedom of expression bodies as a menacing threat</a> which will make the media wary of upsetting government and parliamentarians. </p>
<p>There is a strong argument that multiple human rights violations will result, including a lack of freedom of expression and right to fair trial. This is not democracy – particularly when these measures apply to any publisher that objects to its content being effectively licensed by a government body. </p>
<p>It is argued that forcing news publishers to comply with IMPRESS regulation is balanced by the alternative of low-cost arbitration. But the IMPRESS regime can still leave the publisher <a href="http://impress.press/regulation/arbitration.html">picking up the claimant’s costs of up to £3,000</a>. When this is combined with its own arbitration fee of up to £3,500, plus its own legal costs, one IMPRESS arbitration could easily mount up to £10,000 – before damages. The arbitrator’s decision is final – and the process takes place in secret.</p>
<p>Is this is a satisfactory method of resolving freedom of expression disputes? </p>
<p>IMPRESS is essentially the manifestation of a political movement determined to control mainstream media publishers that are largely condemned for being dominated by a right-wing capitalist agenda and dismissive of the rights of “media victims”.</p>
<p>They are also criticised for advancing a prurient culture dominated by what titillates the public in terms of prejudice, scandalous gossip, and tabloid “ruining of people’s lives”.</p>
<p>This is the doctrine that motivated and dominated Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry. It is the raison d'être of orgnisations such as <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/press-release-hacked-off-responds-to-anthony-france-appeal-decision/">Hacked Off</a>, the <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org">Media Standards Trust</a>, the <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk">Media Reform Coalition</a> and their cadre of cheer-leading politicians, lawyers, academics and celebrities bruised by popular media intrusion.</p>
<h2>Stop Press</h2>
<p>IMPRESS does not regulate any significant proportion of the press or its associated online websites. Those it does regulate include an eccentric <a href="http://impress.press/complaints/regulated-publishers.html">mishmash of independent online websites</a>, all of which appear to be unlikely to turn over £2m a year or have more than ten employees. Under the Crime and Courts Act 2013 this makes them exempt from regulation anyway and unlikely to be able to subsidise IMPRESS in the future.</p>
<p>Currently IMPRESS exists thanks largely to a series of donations, including from – among others – former F1 tycoon Max Mosley, via a family trust which has <a href="http://impress.press/about-us/funding.html">guaranteed it £3.8m over four years</a>. </p>
<p>Mr Mosley is well known for his views on the tabloid media and has argued for potential privacy victims to be notified before publication of any potential breaches of privacy. But this idea of linking prior notice to prior restraint has been <a href="http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2011/774.html">rejected by the European Court of Human Rights</a> because of its implications for political reporting and serious investigative journalism.</p>
<p>Why should mainstream news publishers be bullied through statutory discrimination in liability for punitive damages and legal costs to submit to state sponsored regulation that is effectively bankrolled by Max Mosley? </p>
<p>Mr Mosley has been campaigning on privacy issues ever since the now-defunct News of the World <a href="http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/1777.html">wrongly claimed</a> that his private participation in S&M activities had a public interest link to his fascist father, Sir Oswald.</p>
<p>There may well be an element of poetic justice in his family money being used to advance regulation of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. But the effects will be unsettling, and apply to all news publishers, whether they have offended Mr Mosley or not.</p>
<p>What we should all be offended by is the arrival and official recognition of a regulatory body that will have significant and damaging powers of interference in the content of our news media.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67902/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>News media publishers could face punitive sanctions from state approved regulation.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/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/649232016-10-20T18:01:06Z2016-10-20T18:01:06ZRuling on Fatima Manji is further proof that IPSO fails as a press regulator<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142566/original/image-20161020-8862-1be8neu.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some people might find this offensive. IPSO didn't think it was.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Shortly after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/nice-attack-29339">Nice terror attack in July</a>, Kelvin MacKenzie, a former editor of The Sun newspaper addressed the issue in his regular column in the tabloid newspaper: “Was it appropriate for [Fatima Manji] to be on camera when there had been <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1459893/why-did-channel-4-have-a-presenter-in-a-hijab-to-front-coverage-of-muslim-terror-in-nice/">yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim</a>?” he asked.</p>
<p>His comments related to Channel 4 News’ decision to field a “a young lady wearing a hijab” – as MacKenzie described her – to anchor its evening news bulletin the night after the attack.</p>
<p>In MacKenzie’s opinion, this decision was “massively provocative”. An alternative opinion is that it was a socially responsible attempt to challenge negative stereotypes of Muslims at a time of heightened fears. Yet another is that it was simply a decision to field the best news presenter that Channel 4 News had available on the day.</p>
<p>But as well as expressing an opinion, did MacKenzie’s column violate the Editors’ Code of Practice? The Code <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice/">is a set of rules</a> that newspapers and magazines can voluntarily pledge to accept. It is written by the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, made up of ten editors from the national, regional and magazine industry, as well as three lay members and the chairman of the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/">Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO)</a>, the organisation which handles complaints under the Code.</p>
<p>In July, Manji <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/official-complaint-lodged-over-offensive-kelvin-mackenzie-sun-column-a3302446.html">lodged a complaint with IPSO about MacKenzie’s column</a>, claiming that it breached Clause 12 which relates to discrimination: </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=133&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=133&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/142564/original/image-20161020-8845-1b8vkik.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clause 12 of IPSO’s Code of Practise.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IPSO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>IPSO has subsequently published its ruling on <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/rulings-and-resolution-statements/ruling/?id=05935-16">Manji v The Sun</a> (No. 05935-16, September 29, 2016), saying that MacKenzie: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>was entitled to express his view that, in the context of a terrorist act which had been carried out ostensibly in the name of Islam, it was inappropriate for a person wearing Islamic dress to present coverage of the story.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This ruling is perverse and incomprehensible: one is left wondering what IPSO thinks it would take to qualify as a violation of Clause 12. </p>
<h2>Mealy-mouthed and toothless</h2>
<p>Surely MacKenzie’s column qualifies as a “prejudicial” and “pejorative” – two of the terms that define IPSO’s Clause 12 – reference to Fatima Manji’s religion. The reference to her religion was unmistakably implied by the reference to her wearing a hijab, the fact that MacKenzie was questioning whether Manji should have been reporting on “another shocking slaughter by a Muslim”, and by his follow-up question: “Would the C4 editor have used a Hindu to report on the carnage at the Golden Temple of Amritsar?”</p>
<p>The Editors’ Code – and IPSO itself – are doubly toothless. The Code is voluntary and it is being applied by the regulator with a breathtakingly narrow interpretation of the key clauses.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yioeFusKghE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>What is more, the Code itself leaves untouched many other harmful forms of discriminatory language. Clause 12 defines discriminatory material in terms of whether it makes “prejudicial or pejorative” or “[ir]relevant” reference to “an individual’s” protected status identity. The problem is that many forms of hate speech – and indeed, many of the evils of hate speech, including a climate of hatred, feelings of insecurity, damage to people’s sense of civic dignity or equal status and the silencing effect – operate at the group level. </p>
<h2>IPSO’s record</h2>
<p>Previous IPSO cases show that it is unlikely to find in favour of a complainant if the speech in question makes no reference to an individual or individuals. Thus, in <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/rulings-and-resolution-statements/ruling/?id=02741-15">Greer v. The Sun</a> (No. 02741-15, July 20, 2015) involving a complaint against Katie Hopkins’ infamous article in The Sun published on April 17, 2015, in which she compared refugees to “cockroaches” and advocated the use of gunships to prevent their entering Europe, IPSO ruled that the article did not breach clause 12 because it mentioned an entire group or category of people. </p>
<p>In another case, IPSO tied itself up in knots trying to apply Clause 12 to a case involving a group of individuals. <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/rulings-and-resolution-statements/ruling/?id=02624-15">In Partnerships in Care v Ayrshire Post</a> in July 2015, IPSO ruled that Clause 12 could be engaged where a reference is made to “a distinct class of individuals”. In this case, the newspaper used the term “deranged criminals” to refer to residents of Ayr Clinic, a secure psychiatric unit. </p>
<p>Perhaps IPSO reasoned that a reader could, using information in the public domain, find out the identify of the “distinct group” of residents. But at the same time, IPSO inexplicably rejected the complaint under Clause 12 maintaining that the term “deranged” had been used “with reference to those individuals’ criminal behaviour; it was not therefore discriminatory in relation to their mental health specifically”.</p>
<p>It is interesting to consider how IPSO would handle a complaint made about the publication of negative stereotypes about people from Liverpool or from Scotland. What if a reader could, using the electoral roll, find out the identify of individuals living in these parts of the country? </p>
<h2>New protection needed</h2>
<p>I have written to the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee suggesting a better alternative. That they immediately bolster Clause 12 with the following additional sub-clause: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>iii) The press must also avoid publishing material that is comprised entirely and overwhelmingly of negative stereotypes or stigmatisation of a group identified on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or any physical or mental illness or disability.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I believe that the new sub-clause would both provide greater protection for groups against hate speech material that does not name specific individuals, but would at the same time be drawn narrowly enough to prevent excessive restriction of free speech on issues of public interest relating to groups. It would also bring the Code into line with similar regulations adopted by media organisations in other parts of the developed world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Brown 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>Why the Editors’ Code of Practice needs to be reformed.Alexander Brown, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Social and Political Theory, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/578232016-04-22T09:17:20Z2016-04-22T09:17:20ZWhittingdale affair shows UK press at its most craven and hypocritical<p>Having entirely ignored <a href="https://theconversation.com/whittingdale-story-is-not-about-sex-its-all-about-power-and-who-wields-it-57761">the Whittingdale story</a> since it first became known about late in 2013, sections of the press were remarkably swift in <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3538903/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Hacked-BBC-arrant-hypocrisy.html">lining up to denounce Hacked Off</a> as “conspiracy theorists” and as hypocrites for allegedly invading Whittingdale’s privacy. Neither claim is remotely valid.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear about this. The conspiracy exists only in the fevered brains of people such as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/john-whittingdale-bbc-neil-wallis_uk_570dfbdfe4b01711c612a321">former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis</a> and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3537386/BBC-Hacked-accused-rank-hypocrites-revealing-Culture-Secretary-John-Whittingdale-s-relationship-dominatrix-met-online-dating-site.html">journalists at the Mail</a>. Anyone reading <a href="https://www.byline.com/project/48/article/966">James Cusick’s exposé</a> of what has been happening over the past year or so (disclaimer: I helped to crowdfund this investigation) would realise that there is not the slightest suggestion of collusion between the four papers which at one time or another had the story. As Cusick explains, each had their own reasons for not running it.</p>
<p>When the story arrived at the Sunday People in November 2013, its parent company, the Mirror Group was still vehemently denying that the Mirror had engaged in phone hacking. Exposing Whittingdale at this point ran the risk of his retaliating by setting up a Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee enquiry into MGN activity. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17898029">He had chaired a similar enquiry in the case of News Group</a> – although it’s worth noting that in that case he <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17898029">voted against his own enquiry’s findings</a> that Rupert Murdoch was “unfit to run a major international company”.</p>
<p>Pictures of Whittingdale and Olivia King were next taken to the Sun. But, as DCMS chair, Whittingdale was already making <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1946b0d0-18a9-11e3-bdb6-00144feab7de,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F1946b0d0-18a9-11e3-bdb6-00144feab7de.html&_i_referer=&classification=conditional_standard&iab=barrier-app">extremely threatening noises about the BBC</a>. Why on earth would a Murdoch paper want to do the slightest thing that might endanger the position of what appeared to be an exceptionally valuable political ally?</p>
<p>According to Cusick, the editor of the Mail on Sunday, Geordie Greig, told his journalists that this was the type of political story that <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/james-cusick/real-whittingdale-scandal-cover-up-by-press">defined great newspapers</a>, and that if the MoS backed off, it had no right to call itself a newspaper. The story was delayed by journalists’ inability to secure a comment from King, which was felt to be legally necessary after Whittingdale had apparently told her to contact the Press Complaints Commission and to demand ahead of publication that the paper show her the material that it possessed. The story was then dropped. One can only wonder why.</p>
<p>In 2014, writes Cusick, the Independent began investigating why the story hadn’t been published – particularly as Whittingdale was now a member of the cabinet. The relationship with King had ended, but there was still the outstanding matter of why Whittingdale had not declared that he and King had visited Amsterdam courtesy of MTV in the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/registers-of-interests/">Register of Members’ Interests</a>. But the Independent is a tenant of Associated Newspapers and relies on its IT services, canteen facilities, security and so on. After initially appearing interested in the project the editor, Amol Rajan, pulled the plug, without explanation, on October 20, 2015. </p>
<p>The same day both Rajan and Whittingdale spoke at the <a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/soe-news/11-september-2015/Rusbridger-Whittingdale-Sorrell-Fairhead-Sands-MacGregor----and-a-host-of-other-top-speakers">Society of Editors’ conference</a>, at which the latter dropped the bombshell that <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/government-may-not-enforce-plan-make-publishers-pay-both-sides-libel-and-privacy-costs">he was not “persuaded”</a> by the section of the <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ldcomuni/135/13507.htm">Crime and Courts Act</a> which enshrines in law the Leveson recommendation that publishers who are not signed up to an officially-recognised press regulator will face the threat of exemplary damages in libel and privacy cases. Since the Independent was not signed up to such a regulator, you could argue that it would clearly benefit from such a measure not coming into operation.</p>
<h2>Time to come clean</h2>
<p>Of course, some bright spark is absolutely bound to pipe up that this is all simply conjecture. And this indeed has some truth to it, albeit only up to a point. But the conjectures can perfectly easily be disproved by those ultimately responsible for suppressing the story at the four newspapers concerned stepping forward and explaining the reasons for their actions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118701/original/image-20160414-2657-fjimht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mirror’s front page.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daily Mirror</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Accusations of privacy busting from the British press are so flagrantly hypocritical that they really are beneath contempt. Remember, these are the self-same papers <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3526916/American-publication-goes-UK-injunction-report-known-celebrity-extra-marital-threesome.html">straining at the leash</a> to reveal all about a <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/7030278/Three-in-a-bed-celebs-fear-names-will-be-leaked-on-net-after-judges-gag-Sun-on-Sunday.html">married celebrity’s private life</a>, which contain not a scintilla of public interest justification. </p>
<p>Had the British press applied its normal “standards” to Whittingdale he would have been plastered all over the front pages long ago. In particular, he is an easy target for charges of hypocrisy, which is one of the factors which make the story a matter of public interest: online dating of a dominatrix doesn’t sit exactly comfortably with membership of the Cornerstone group of Tory MPs (motto: “Faith, Flag and Family”) nor with <a href="http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?mpn=John_Whittingdale">consistently voting against the liberalisation of Britain’s sex laws</a>.</p>
<p>But the Whittingdale affair has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with privacy. At its heart is the fact that Whittingdale put himself in a position in which he could be pressured by newspapers into refusing to enact measures – Leveson 2 and the relevant section of the Crime and Courts Act – to which they were vehemently opposed. Whether he was actually pressured, or merely felt pressured, or indeed neither, is entirely irrelevant: there is the clearest possible appearance of conflict of interest – and, in a culture which (in large parts thanks to the press, appearance is all) that is all that matters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57823/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>There’s no ‘public interest’ in this story, say the newspapers. As if that’s stopped them before.Julian Petley, Professor of Screen Media, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/577612016-04-13T15:29:47Z2016-04-13T15:29:47ZWhittingdale story is not about sex – it’s all about power and who wields it<p>The words are those of weapons and power, whether real or metaphorical. Political opponents of culture secretary John Whittingdale have gone public to suggest that he may have had a “<a href="http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/13/who-is-john-whittingdale-and-why-does-this-story-matter-5812979/">sword of Damocles</a>” hanging over him.</p>
<p>The sword in question is the knowledge of a six-month relationship that Whittingdale has <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/john-whittingdale-culture-secretary-admits-having-relationship-with-prostitute-a6981671.html">now admitted to having had with a former sex-worker in 2013</a>. Those apparently holding on to the sword, we’re told, include The Independent, The People, The Mail on Sunday and The Sun. As culture secretary, Whittingdale has decision-making ability over the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-new-regulator-could-be-a-game-changing-moment-for-journalism-53465">powers of a new independent press regulator</a>. What those powers will be is still to be finalised.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"720155927509352449"}"></div></p>
<p>We’ve seen words of war and power time and again to describe the often fraught relationship between politicians and the press. In 2010, the then business secretary, Vince Cable, announced to undercover reporters that he had “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12053175">declared war</a>” on Rupert Murdoch. In the 1990s, the Conservative cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken promised to fight with “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/jun/06/newspapers-national-newspapers">the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play</a>” to “cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism” which had made allegations of impropriety against him. But it was he who was done down in the end. </p>
<p>Earlier in the last century, Stanley Baldwin – frustrated with the newspaper tycoons of his age – accused them of seeking “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1997/uk_politics/stanley_baldwin/40469.stm">power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot through the ages</a>”.</p>
<h2>Fighting dirty</h2>
<p>The common theme in this warlike talk is the battle between political power and the news media – in whatever form. As far back as the 15th century, the Tudors, coming to the throne with a questionable claim to the crown, made sure that they <a href="http://www.hartpub.co.uk/pdf/samples/9781849466684sample.pdf">controlled the chroniclers, and the printing press</a>, as closely as possible. These were the new media of their day – and the Tudors understood that they had to make the best possible use of them. </p>
<p>This meant, broadly speaking, two things: accept that the media had its uses, and also, that the successful exercise of power required a degree of control. </p>
<p>Tudor courtiers had far greater sanction at their disposal than modern ministers or their spin doctors. Even the most draconian contemporary advocate of press regulation would not argue for torture or mutilation (although the stocks might still find their supporters). </p>
<h2>Who holds the power?</h2>
<p>Our contemporary notions of the role of the press in political life tend to be based on the idea that it is a Fourth Estate – an integral part of a functioning democracy. Its role is to question and hold to account those in power – even to the extent of sometimes causing their downfall. The heroic determination, and ultimate success, of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/watergate/">Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward</a>, are often seen as an inspirational example of this kind of journalism. Watergate gave journalism the “gate” suffix without which no scandal is now complete. </p>
<p>The reality of the relationship between political power and press power is rarely so clear cut. As a former BBC journalist, I tried to imagine the discussions which might have gone on last year at the Corporation when Downing Street <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31742155">refused a one-to-one television debate</a> between David Cameron and Ed Miliband. </p>
<p>BBC <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/fairness/refusalstotakep.shtml">guidelines state that</a> “the refusal of an individual or an organisation to make a contribution should not be allowed to act as a veto on the appearance of other contributors holding different views, or on the programme itself”. So the BBC could have “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/05/pm-empty-chaired-broadcasters-set-to-go-ahead-debates">empty chaired</a>” the prime minister, as TV current affairs slang has it. This would have been radical – and extreme. It would have been a moment in TV history. It would also have been very unwise from a BBC which already expected few favours from a future Conservative government. </p>
<h2>Never ending conflict</h2>
<p>The case of the culture secretary’s relationship with a sex worker (he claims to have been unaware of her occupation at the time) raises anew many eternal issues. Has the story remained largely <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/media-blog/2016/apr/13/whittingdale-sex-worker-culture-secretary-minister">unreported for editorial reasons</a>, as the newspapers have claimed, or is it the <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/whittingdale-should-never-have-interfered-with-press-regulation/">latest weaponisation of politically sensitive information</a> – as press regulation lobby group Hacked Off has claimed?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"720150630392795136"}"></div></p>
<p>The question will continue to be discussed. Cable, after declaring war on the Murdoch empire, was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/dec/21/vince-cable-war-murdoch-gaffe">eventually withdrawn from the battlefield</a>, having his responsibility for the case taken away. </p>
<p>Alongside the continuity from previous ages of battle between power and the press, there is also change. Recent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13473070">cases concerning the private lives of celebrities</a> have shown that even the most strictly worded injunctions struggle today to keep scandals entirely out of the public domain. Social media have seen to that. That being the case, what is the real power of press regulation? And who, in the age of the MP’s expenses scandal, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/panama-papers">Panama Papers</a>, really trusts the political establishment? </p>
<p>Both the news media and the political establishment are subject to digital disruption – the latest factor in the battle between press and power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Rodgers 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 uneasy relationship between political power and the influence of the news media.James Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed 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/496212015-10-23T03:47:32Z2015-10-23T03:47:32ZIn a spin: why Seumas Milne is the wrong spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99384/original/image-20151022-8024-1rsrz9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New era of straight talking for Labour. And that's what worries the party's MPs.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">UK Media Watch</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When it was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/seumas-milne-guardian-journalist-appointed-as-labours-executive-director-of-communications-a6701901.html%20">announced</a> that Seumas Milne, the Guardian columnist and associate editor, had been appointed as Labour’s executive director of communications and strategy, sections of the press were vitriolic in their condemnation.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.sunnation.co.uk/new-labour-comms-chief-praised-armed-resistance-against-our-troops/">the Sun</a>, characteristically unembarrassed by any Andy Coulson associations, an unnamed Labour source said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Corbyn’s ‘straight talking, honest politics’ turns out to be apologising for genocide, wishing the Soviet Union hadn’t lost the Cold War and backing terrorists who planted roadside bombs to kill British soldiers. It is an appointment that is morally unacceptable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3282540/Labour-revolt-Team-Corbyn-New-spin-chief-defended-Lee-Rigby-terror-attack-policy-chief-celebrated-Tory-Ed-Balls-losing.html#ixzz3pIUAAjWB%C2%A0%20">Daily Mail</a>, meanwhile, Tom McTague wrote of the “fury” in the Parliamentary Labour Party and of the fact that Milne was a “journalist who has defended acts of terrorism and praised attacks on British troops”. In the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11945164/By-hiring-Seumas-Milne-Jeremy-Corbyn-shows-his-utter-contempt-for-real-Labour-voters.html%20">Telegraph</a>, former Labour MP Tom Harris was given space to write that with Milne’s appointment Corbyn had “stuck two fingers up” at Labour’s core electorate. </p>
<p>Not only that, Milne was “contemptuous of traditional working-class attitudes”. Voters would, readers were told, “recoil at Milne’s view that the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby ‘was not terrorism in the normal sense’”.</p>
<p>What neither McTague or Harris do, of course, is acknowledge that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/20/woolwich-attack-muslim-world-islamophobia">the article in which Milne wrote of Rigby</a> not being a victim of terrorism “in the normal sense” began with these words: “The videoed butchery of Fusilier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich barracks last May was a horrific act and his killers’ murder conviction a foregone conclusion.”</p>
<p>In both the Mail and Telegraph, Milne’s smiling profile is placed alongside or underneath the familiar photograph of Lee Rigby in his ceremonial uniform. Dignity and dishonour, patriotism and perfidy. The pattern of repeatedly portraying Corbyn and those closely associated with him as enemies of democracy and commonsense values continues daily. These authors are deliberately smearing Milne by omitting key sentences – they are inviting the readers of their columns to believe that Milne is an apologist for terrorism who cares not one jot for British lives.</p>
<p>And not just in the right wing press.</p>
<h2>Et tu Indy?</h2>
<p>On Wednesday, the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/so-jeremy-corbyn-what-made-you-appoint-seumas-milne-an-apologist-for-murderous-dictators-a6702391.html">Independent’s online edition</a> chose to reproduce an article from <a href="https://medium.com/@KateVotesLabour/so-mr-corbyn-what-made-you-appoint-facism-apologist-seumas-milne-a17699132dae#.ywlwx4ecp%20">medium.com</a> by writer and prospective Labour candidate Kate Godfrey, in which she called Milne a “Fascist apologist”. </p>
<p>In the article Godfrey affects a position of inconsolable rage. To Godfrey, Milne is a man who “never heard an opinion that he didn’t filter; a truth that he didn’t dismiss as an orthodoxy, or a story of pain on which he didn’t have superior information”. She dismisses Milne’s journalism and paints him as a Putin advocate who denies the use of chemical weapons in Syria. She seems to think that her proximity to the violence of conflict ensures objectivity and clarity. Milne is an armchair foreign correspondent and it’s Godfrey who has seen “a bit bloody more than Mr Winchester-and-Balliol Milne”.</p>
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<p>Of course, it is common in these days of instant online opinion for individuals to be vilified simply for espousing different viewpoints. One would expect The Independent, though, to at least check that the links provided by Godfrey to support her argument do just that and not contradict it – as pointed out in a rather more dispassionate analysis and dissection provided by <a href="https://medium.com/@gregdash/in-response-to-kate-godfrey-on-seumas-milne-72e8b482e35d#.1660x4fxs">Greg Dash</a> and <a href="https://richardhutton.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/is-seumas-milne-an-apologist-for-fascism-no/">Richard Hutton</a>.</p>
<h2>Self-inflicted catastrophe</h2>
<p>All this notwithstanding, Milne is clearly a controversial man with views many find objectionable and, for some in the Parliamentary Labour Party, his hiring is the latest in series of self-inflicted catastrophes which detracts from the job of opposition. John Woodcock tweeted that:</p>
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<p>And perhaps Simon Danczuk had it right when he told <a href="http://www.sunnation.co.uk/new-labour-comms-chief-praised-armed-resistance-against-our-troops/">the Sun</a>: “This is a totally bizarre appointment of a man more likely to become the story rather than control our party’s message.”</p>
<p>That’s the rub – even before he has begun in earnest, Milne has become the story and if these were normal political times, then his position would already be untenable. In 2003 Alastair Campbell resigned against the background of the Iraq war and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/28/uk.marketingandpr%20">coverage</a> from hostile press which was privileging reporting his behaviour over the policies of the Blair government. </p>
<p>Campbell knew as soon as this happened that it was time for him to go and the PM agreed. It took fully six years for this to come to pass, and yet here is Milne barely hours into his new role seeing his integrity shredded and the ability to do the job questioned by some of the MPs he’s been hired to represent.</p>
<h2>Two left feet</h2>
<p>So the pertinent question here is whether he can effectively operate as communications director in the face of such outright and widespread hostility. As far as the press is concerned, let’s remember that Milne is the enemy who works for a boss committed to <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk/blog/jeremy-corbyn-media-backs-media-reform">media reform</a>. </p>
<p>During the leadership contest Corbyn said: “A society in which 70% of UK newspaper circulation is controlled by three wealthy families is clearly unfair and undemocratic. The work being done by the Media Reform Coalition and others is vital in pushing for media plurality which this country is so desperately in need of.” In this sense the frustrations of Labour “moderates” can be understood.</p>
<p>If the opinions of <a href="http://leftfootforward.org/author/adam-barnett/">Adam Barnett of Left Foot Forward</a> are widespread among other journalists then Labour has an insurmountable problem. In a recent article Barnett wrote that Milne was an <a href="http://leftfootforward.org/2015/10/when-fanatics-kill-journalists-seumas-milne-blames-something-else/">apologist for the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre</a>.</p>
<p>Hacks might have hated Lynton Crosby and Alistair Campbell, <a href="https://leftfootforward.org/2015/10/when-fanatics-kill-journalists-seumas-milne-blames-something-else/">wrote Barnett</a>, but at least they could rely on them to be solid on the right of journalists not to be shot in their workplace. The same, he said, cannot be said for Campbell’s successor.</p>
<p>If Milne’s appointment heralds a new era of “spin-free” Labour politics, then I can only imagine he and Jeremy Corbyn – not to mention the Labour Party as a whole – will have to get used to being hung out to dry</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49621/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
When it was announced that Seumas Milne, the Guardian columnist and associate editor, had been appointed as Labour’s executive director of communications and strategy, sections of the press were vitriolic…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/493872015-10-20T05:18:00Z2015-10-20T05:18:00ZAs Leveson reforms become law, has press regulation made victims of us all?<p>When Sun journalists Chris Pyatt and Jamie Pharo <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/15/last-the-sun-journalists-prosecuted-operation-elveden-cleared">were acquitted recently</a> of aiding and abetting a Surrey police officer to commit misconduct in a public office, Pyatt’s lawyer Nigel Rumfitt QC told the court there had been a “monumental error of judgement in pursuing the case”. He was right. Four years, millions of pounds of public money, 29 cases brought – only one of which went to trial and ended in conviction: that of Sun crime reporter Anthony France.</p>
<p>I do wonder if the campaign for media victims has had more than its pound of flesh since <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">“Hackgate” and the Leveson Inquiry</a>. At least half a billion pounds has <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/news-corp-hacking-scandal-costs-rise-512m">been stripped out of the media industry</a> in compensation, legal fees and police and prosecution costs. That’s hundreds of jobs my students will not be able to get in journalism.</p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/apr/17/operation-elveden-was-flawed-the-cps-should-have-realised-that-sooner">34 journalists were arrested</a> in the Operation Elveden Met Police inquiry into paying public officials for stories. Many said they were terrorised with dawn raids and being put in police cells for a construction of crime that <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/they-call-it-crime-we-call-it-democracy-lawyers-condemn-unmitigated-disaster-journalist-prosecutions">some media lawyers say was and is simply democracy</a>. For many it was a nightmare that went on for years taking its toll on the wronged journalists’ careers, their personal lives and their health.</p>
<p>Not only that, but more than a score of <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/betrayal-newspaper-sources-jailed-under-operation-elveden-casts-shadow-over-our-industry">confidential sources have been jailed</a>. More lives ruined and careers destroyed. Now, any public official who dares give unauthorised information, let alone take money from a journalist, knows that instead of losing their job are more than likely to do porridge at her majesty’s pleasure.</p>
<p>Media relations with the police are at their worst for as long as anyone can remember. Can it really be democracy when police officers and soldiers have to <a href="http://awards.pressgazette.co.uk/2015/10/06/met-officers-told-register-relations-with-journalists-consider-motivation-of-drinks-and-avoid-off-the-record/">write up reports</a> on their dealings with journalists? Is it democracy that police forces have been able to <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sun-tells-tribunal-met-violated-journalists-rights-secret-grab-phone-records">secretly hack into</a> the communications meta-data of journalists to identify sources without judicial oversight? </p>
<p>I was disgusted by the horrors of phone hacking and sympathise with the victims. But I do not believe I would be betraying their right to justice and compensation by being opposed to state body approval for media regulation.</p>
<p>The press media landscape has changed catastrophically. We no longer have the country’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper, the News of the World. That imploded in shame and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8624421/News-of-the-World-shut-down-in-bid-to-end-phone-hacking-scandal.html">was snuffed out</a> by its own proprietor. </p>
<p>The Press Complaints Commission has also committed harakiri to be replaced by <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/aboutipso.html">a more expensive independent self-regulator, IPSO</a>. This takes third-party complaints and by contract with its members can impose huge fines, can initiate investigations and is also preparing to dip its toes into a <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/aboutus/consultationonarbitrationscheme.html">media law disputes arbitration service</a>. </p>
<h2>Chilling effect</h2>
<p>The only sensible recommendation arising from the Leveson Inquiry was that there should be a statutory declaration for media freedom (a kind of British First Amendment) though – like with the Human Rights Act – always balancing freedom of expression with other rights. </p>
<p>Nothing will be achieved for media victims by introducing a form of quasi state licensing of the regulation of content by newspaper and online publishers. I think it’s a breach of <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9">Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights</a>. </p>
<p>Regulation by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-report-cross-party-royal-charter">medieval constitutional instrument of Royal Charter</a> constitutes state interference. And surely we’ve moved on since the times of the Curia Regis, absolute power by Tudor monarch and arbitrary Star Chamber justice. In any case when the convention says this article: “shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises” by default this means: states must not be involved in the regulation of press content.</p>
<p>The Leveson Inquiry was set up to reach a solution that had the support of media victims, the public and the media industries. Sadly it failed to do this.</p>
<p>The biggest problem of unequal media laws in a democratic society is that journalists will be constrained from publishing truth to power because of the potential costs and penalties of libel and privacy litigation, and state prosecution for information crimes.</p>
<p>Libel and privacy are the only civil wrongs where <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcumeds/362/36206.htm">defendants have to prove their case</a> as <a href="http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/1997/366.html">McLibel campaigners</a> Helen Steel and Dave Morris found out over several tough years trying to fight the might of a major global corporation under Britain’s terrifying libel laws. And the chilling effect created by those laws is the big black hole in this debate. When media publishers don’t believe they have the money, time or resources to prove their publications the harm to democracy is incalculable, catastrophic and frighteningly unknown.</p>
<p>Brace yourselves: in early November the provisions of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/contents/enacted">Crime and Courts Act 2013</a> relating to press regulation will be coming into force, meaning that media publishers who do not join a Royal Charter-approved regulator <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/part/2/crossheading/publishers-of-newsrelated-material-damages-and-costs/enacted">face getting punitive damages</a> when losing libel and privacy actions. </p>
<p>The other Levesonian stick approved by parliament is that these publishers would also have to pay the costs of defending media law cases <a href="http://www.newsmediauk.org/write/MediaUploads/PDF%20Docs/Leveson's_Illiberal_Legacy.pdf">whether they win or lose</a>. This will turn the chilling effect into an arctic of defensive journalism and, as a result, there is bound to be a shrinking of investigative journalism by print media. </p>
<p>These silly laws and disproportionate measures will make media victims of us all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49387/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>State regulation and punitive libel laws are no way to ensure a fair and free press.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/428562015-06-04T17:07:04Z2015-06-04T17:07:04ZCoulson acquittal – beginning of the end game of Leveson?<p>The acquittal of former News of the World editor and Cameron spin doctor-in-chief Andy Coulson on perjury charges at the high court in Edinburgh appears to have hinged largely on a phrase uttered by the trial judge which will be pored over by legal experts on both sides of the border: “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/andy-coulson-prosecutors-face-questions-after-perjury-charges-against-former-news-of-the-world-editor-dropped-10295563.html?origin=internalSearch">Not every lie amounts to perjury”</a>.</p>
<p>On the direction of judge, Lord Burns, Coulson was cleared of committing perjury in the 2010 trial of Scottish politician Tommy Sheridan. Having been charged with “lying under oath” about his awareness of phone hacking at the NOTW at Sheridan’s own perjury trial, which he denied, Coulson was formally of acquitted of the charges because, the judge said, Coulson’s alleged lies were <a href="https://inforrm.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/news-andy-coulson-acquitted-of-perjury-on-judges-ruling/">“not relevant”</a> to the Sheridan case. </p>
<p>As the Guardian reported, Burns ruled that, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/03/andy-coulson-cleared-of-perjury-in-scottish-court%20">under Scottish law</a>, perjury can only be committed if the alleged lie had a material effect on the outcome of the previous trial. </p>
<p>According to the tireless court reporter James Doleman, who covered the original Sheridan trial and has recently reported on all of the recent phone hacking trials in admirable detail, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. For him this trial looked like an “open-and-shut case” of perjury where many of Coulson’s associates had advised him to plead guilty. However, instead of a process toward expected conviction Coulson had been part of <a href="http://www.byline.com/project/8/article/70">“one of the greatest escapes in legal history”</a> where the jury were not given the chance to consider the evidence.</p>
<p>The evidence heard against Coulson was compelling. Clive Goodman, the former royal editor at the News of the World jailed in January 2007 for intercepting mobile phone messages involving members of the Royal Household told the court that, in terms of phone hacking, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/andy-coulson-clive-goodman-phone-hacking-fall-guy-court%20">Coulson knew</a>: “exactly what I had been doing, telling me I had to take the blame for it and get it out of the way”. </p>
<p>The paper’s former chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, testified that Coulson knew that the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32874224">been accessed</a> while the former news editor James Weatherup said that intercepting voicemails had been part of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11631143/Phone-hacking-was-systematic-at-News-of-the-World-trial-told.html">“day-to-day”</a> life and was discussed at daily editorial conferences.</p>
<h2>Sinking the Rubicon</h2>
<p>That all this this proved to be irrelevant is down to the definition of perjury under Scottish law. As <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32931204%20">Phillip Sim</a> wrote, in terms of this trial, it didn’t matter what Coulson knew and when; it didn’t even matter whether he had really broken his oath to tell “the truth and nothing but the truth”. The prosecution had to successfully prove that Coulson’s original testimony at Sheridan’s trial had been pertinent to the verdict. </p>
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<p>In Sim’s words: “In order to constitute perjury, false testimony has to be relevant to the case at hand; in essence, the lies told have to matter to the jury.” In the event, the prosecution spent much time and energy trying to demonstrate that Coulson knew about phone hacking while the defence, ultimately successfully, argued to the judge that this didn’t matter one iota. That is why the trial collapsed.</p>
<p>And with the acquittal of Coulson comes the probable end of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/02/charges-dropped-two-former-executives-news-world-scotland-bob-bird-doug-wight">Operation Rubicon </a> – the Scottish police’s inquiry into alleged hacking and illegal accessing of confidential data under which he was arrested. </p>
<p>On June 2, the night before Coulson was acquitted of Lord Burns, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/02/charges-dropped-two-former-executives-news-world-scotland-bob-bird-doug-wight">prosecutors announced</a> that they were going to drop charges of perverting the course of justice and perjury against two former executives at the News of the World in Scotland. Bob Bird, formerly editor of the Scottish edition and former news editor, Doug Wight, will now face no charges. <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/06/not-every-lie-amounts-to-perjury/">According to Doleman</a>, this more than likely signals an end to the official investigation of phone hacking in Scotland.</p>
<h2>Poachers and gamekeepers</h2>
<p>South of the border, though, the prosecutions continue to result in trials and headlines. In May, Trinity-Mirror was ordered to pay £1.2m to eight celebrities whose phones were hacked over a ten-year period. The high court heard that the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/03/phone-hacking-widespread-mirror-titles-court-told%20%C2%A0">“industrial scale”</a> of phone hacking at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the People made the News of the World look like a “small cottage industry” by comparison.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83984/original/image-20150604-3390-1i2i1oc.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">What all the fuss was about: Tommy Sheridan in full flight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dominique Natanson CC BY 2.5</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Neither is there respite for News UK. Neil “The Wolfman” Wallis, the former deputy editor of the Sun and the News of the World, is due to go on trial at the <a href="https://www.byline.com/project/10">Old Bailey</a> charged, alongside six other journalists at the News of the World and private investigator <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/opinion/the-making-of-glenn-mulcaire-a-strong-character-and-an-excellent-organiser-who-commanded-respect-and-was-convicted-of-phone-hacking-9617580.html">Glenn Mulcaire</a>, with conspiring to intercept voicemail messages “of well-known people and those associated with them”.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, now that the tenancy of Number 10 Downing Street is settled for another five years, our thoughts turn to the future of press regulation. According to former Guardian editor, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/17/election-end-leveson-royal-charter-john-whittingdale">Peter Preston</a>, Leveson is over – we must let it go. Writing in the Observer he reasoned that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Press regulation, save for some further egregious error of a phone-hacking variety sometime during the next five years, is not on this government’s agenda. The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), chaired by Sir Alan Moses, is, more than ever, the only show in town.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not so writes, <a href="http://www.jomec.co.uk/blog/wp-admin/%20https:/inforrm.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/why-leveson-is-alive-and-well-despite-the-election-result-steven-barnett/">Steven Barnett</a>, an academic and <a href="https://theconversation.com/hold-the-front-page-uk-might-get-a-press-watchdog-with-teeth-37081">contributor to this website</a>. Barnett believes the Leveson “framework” is in place and IPSO can be challenged. The truly independent <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/word/">Press Regulation Panel (PRP)</a> has been created and will be operational by the Autumn. </p>
<p>It will have the ability to scrutinise IPSO and “any aspiring self-regulator which wants to take advantage of the incentives offered by recognition”. This is important for the <a href="http://impressproject.org/">Independent Monitor for the Press (Impress)</a> which is close to applying for status as regulator with many online, regional and hyperlocal publishers indicating a willingness to join. </p>
<p>Once Impress is functional, argues, Barnett: “things could start to get uncomfortable for the big newspaper companies as they become vulnerable to heavy court costs by staying outside the recognition system”.</p>
<p>All this remains to be seen of course, but Wallis’s trial we can expect to hear further allegations of tabloid malpractice and unlawful deeds. And while we digest what has now become familiar we should, I think, reflect on the scale of the operations that have brought us to this point. According to an <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/april-2011-today-64-uk-journalists-arrested-andor-charged-following-news-world-hacking">excellent report</a> by the Press Gazette, with the process of the investigations into British journalism nearing its end, the Metropolitan police has undertaken, since 2011, the “biggest investigation in criminal history”.</p>
<p>As of August 2014 more than 100 journalists have been questioned by police on suspicion of crimes and 63 have been arrested or charged. There have been 11 different task forces engaged in the investigations, calling on the skills of more than 100 officers at a cost of <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/metropolitan-police-has-spent-%C2%A3335m-excluding-legal-fees-investigating-journalists-new-figures-show">£33.5m</a>. </p>
<p>What is quite clear, irrespective of your views, is that no other area of public or private life has undergone the same level of open scrutiny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The acquittal of former News of the World editor and Cameron spin doctor-in-chief Andy Coulson on perjury charges at the high court in Edinburgh appears to have hinged largely on a phrase uttered by the…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/396522015-04-01T12:52:23Z2015-04-01T12:52:23ZThe public says: break big media monopolies and help new journalism projects<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76784/original/image-20150401-31302-1ipefkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Horse-race politics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ceridwen </span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>So far, any analysis of the role of the media in the forthcoming election has focused overwhelmingly on the <a href="http://theconversation.com/debate-success-for-miliband-yes-but-not-quite-hell-yes-39439">leaders’ debates</a> and on the <a href="http://theconversation.com/stunts-gaffes-and-horse-races-the-2015-election-is-business-as-usual-for-the-uk-media-38366">“horse-race”</a> coverage. But very little has been said about the crucial issue that underpins the agenda-setting power of news organisations: the domination of our media by a handful of giant corporations.</p>
<p>Now, a new <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk/get-involved/poll-shows-strong-support-for-action-on-media-ownership">poll</a> conducted by YouGov for the Media Reform Coalition has proved what campaigners have long been arguing: that there is strong public support for measures to tackle media concentration, to make proprietors more accountable to their audiences and their journalists and to secure funds for new forms of local and investigative journalism.</p>
<p>Nearly three-quarters – 74% – of those polled said they support controls on media ownership, while a substantial minority, some 41%, believe that existing rules should be strengthened by setting fixed limits on the amount of media any one proprietor or entity can own. Similarly, 74% believe that media owners should be required to have UK residency and pay full UK taxes while 61% would support compulsory rules or structures (such as genuinely independent editorial boards) in order to limit the influence of owners over editorial output.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph">Peter Oborne’s resignation</a> from The Daily Telegraph in protest at the title’s downplaying of HSBC’s involvement in tax avoidance schemes in order not to jeopardise its advertising with the bank seems also to have influenced public opinion. Some 64% of those polled would support an inquiry into the relationship between news organisations and advertisers. Only 7% said they were unconcerned about the rise of “branded content” and the breakdown of the distinction between editorial and commercial output.</p>
<p>When asked whether they would support a levy on the profits of social media and pay TV companies to support new providers of independent journalism, 51% agreed and only a tiny minority, 9% of those polled, rejected the idea. Given that Google has already <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/feb/01/google-52m-fund-help-french-publishers">agreed</a> to a £52m “contribution” to support a “digital publishing innovation fund”, this is not as controversial as it sounds. It’s high time that a British politician should make this demand of Google and other internet companies.</p>
<h2>Bottling it</h2>
<p>But which of our leading politicians will dare to challenge the power of organisations whose support they believe will be crucial to securing votes? Perhaps it is worth remembering that Ed Miliband’s popularity soared both when he <a href="rt-murdoch-ed-miliband-phone-hacking">threatened</a> to “break up” the Murdoch empire and when he <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/ed-miliband-embroiled-in-war-of-words-with-daily-mail-after-labour-leader-accuses-newspaper-of-smearing-his-late-father-8849455.html">accused</a> the Daily Mail of smearing his late father as a “man who hated Britain”.</p>
<p>Indeed, cracks have started to emerge in relation to media ownership. The Greens recently <a href="http://www.mediareform.org.uk/uncategorized/green-party-deputy-leader-promises-manifesto-commitment-on-media-ownership-reform">announced</a> that a commitment to limit ownership in any individual media market to a maximum of 20% would feature in their manifesto. Meanwhile the Lib Dems have now <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/31/lib-dems-to-propose-law-protecting-journalism-from-state-interference?CMP=ema_546">called</a> for an end to the ability of ministers to rule on media takeovers. This was a clear reference to News Corporation’s attempted acquisition of BSkyB, a deal that was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jun/30/news-corp-bskyb-bis-jeremy-hunt-approval">waved through</a> by then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt before it was withdrawn once the phone hacking scandal blew up. </p>
<p>Perhaps it is significant that the Labour peer, David Puttnam, used his recent speech to the Media Trust to criticise David Cameron for “bottling” his chance to force proprietors to accept a genuinely independent form of regulation and to condemn the complicity between politicians and the media, a situation that was made worse, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/31/new-press-regulation-regime-is-business-as-usual-says-labour-peer">according to The Guardian</a> by the “moral airlock that allows companies to prioritise profits over broader values”. </p>
<p>Lord Puttnam is right to focus on the underlying structures of media power that are at the heart of the unethical and ungratifying behaviour of too much of our media. Revelations of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/03/phone-hacking-widespread-mirror-titles-court-told">widespread phone hacking</a> at the Daily Mirror and allegations about what would appear to be a <a href="http://tktk.gawker.com/my-year-ripping-off-the-web-with-the-daily-mail-online-1689453286">degraded editorial policy</a> at the world’s most popular online title, DailyMail.com, are just some of the more recent manifestations of the abuse of this power.</p>
<p>The point is that influential media organisations in highly concentrated online and offline markets distort democratic debate. They routinely privilege issues and agendas that suit the interests of proprietors and advertisers. They foster questionable relationships between public officials and media barons. And they put (what appears to be) irresistible pressure on compliant politicians – who are increasingly nervous to upset such influential gatekeepers. </p>
<p>How can we expect fearless and robust coverage of climate change, financial scandals, austerity policies, policing, immigration and foreign affairs when so much of our established media are in hock to vested interests? And how can expect coverage of the election to go beyond both an obsession with personalities and the issues that party leaders want us to focus on without first challenging – and ultimately changing – the intimate relationships between the media and the political establishment it is supposed to hold to account?</p>
<p>Media power ought not to shape this election – instead it should be a central policy question that features in the election. Who will be brave enough to raise this the loudest?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39652/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Des Freedman is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and Chair of the Media Reform Coalition.</span></em></p>New research shows that a vast majority of people think media moguls are far too powerful.Des Freedman, Professor of Media and Communications , Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/370812015-02-03T06:04:29Z2015-02-03T06:04:29ZHold the front page – UK might get a press watchdog with teeth<p>As <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/subject/Journalists%20on%20trial">criminal trials proceed</a> against more journalists for alleged corrupt payments to public officials, and more evidence emerges about industrial-scale phone hacking at Mirror Group newspapers, The Sun appears to have ratcheted up its “save our press freedom” mantra with a <a href="http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/6293680/Prosecutors-seek-50m-after-blowing-money-on-luxuries.html">systematic attack on the Crown Prosecution Service</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, powerful newspaper proprietors and editors continue to bully, intimidate and abuse ordinary people (as well as sometimes their own journalists) in their search for exclusives.</p>
<p>Casual readers could therefore be forgiven for assuming that the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry - given effect through a Royal Charter after cross-party agreement in Parliament - had been quietly shelved, while the newspapers’ own creation IPSO <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/index.html">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a> represented the only alternative for effective, independent press regulation. </p>
<p>In fact, as a series of hearings in front of the House of Lords select committee on Communications over the past few weeks has shown, exactly the opposite is true. </p>
<h2>IPSO – a busted flush?</h2>
<p>IPSO is frequently described by its apologist newspapers as “the toughest regulator in the western world” with the power to levy “million-pound fines”. These same newspapers trumpeted the appointment of the highly respected and charismatic retired appeal court judge Sir Alan Moses as IPSO’s first chairman. Here, surely, was undisputed proof of their new regulator’s independence from the industry.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Moses is not master of his own house. IPSO’s paymaster is the <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/comment/the-regulatory-funding-company-further-proof-that-the-big-press-companies-learned-nothing-from-leveson/">Regulatory Funding Company</a> (RFC) – which brings together the same large and powerful press groups that controlled the discredited Press Complaints Commission.</p>
<p>As the Media Standards vividly demonstrated in its <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/11/MST-IPSO-Analysis-15-11-13.pdf">2013 report</a>, the RFC controls virtually every aspect of IPSO’s operation and can intervene in investigations at almost every step of the process – particularly if IPSO attempts to impose sanctions. So a £1m fine is about as likely as a Daily Mail editorial welcoming Romanian immigrants.</p>
<p>Since he started last September, Moses has committed himself to demanding changes from the RFC’s rulebook. He <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sir-alan-moses-urges-publishers-change-ipso-rules-and-make-regulator-leveson-compliant-summer">told the Lords select committee</a>: “many of the rules – this awful collection of rules and regulations – are opaque, sometimes self-contradictory, difficult to understand and sometimes difficult to find”. The rules on investigations, he said, “require a large amount of red pencil”.</p>
<p>It is now clear, however, that Moses will be getting short shrift from the RFC. When its chairman Paul Vickers <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/chair-ipsos-funding-body-blasts-new-press-regulator-failing-set-whistleblowers-hotline-four-months">appeared in front of the committee</a> a week later he was unequivocal, saying: “When Sir Alan says he’s going to put a red line through a whole load of things, he can’t.”</p>
<h2>Royal Charter framework</h2>
<p>Thankfully, the framework agreed by parliament is progressing and now offers a real chance of meaningful reform. Under the terms of the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/press-regulation-judge-for-yourself--the-royal-charter-in-full-8910572.html">Royal Charter</a>, a press recognition panel (PRP) was formally established in November last year. It is entirely independent of both politicians and the industry – and its job is to scrutinise any press self-regulator that puts itself forward for recognition and to ensure that it meets the Leveson criteria of independence and effectiveness enshrined in the Charter.</p>
<p>Its chairman, David Wolfe QC, <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/communications-committee/news/pr-press-recognition-impress-130115/">told the Lords committee</a> that this body is in the process of establishing detailed recognition criteria and would certainly be ready to process applications before its first anniversary – and earlier if a candidate self-regulator was ready to apply.</p>
<p>In fact, a Charter-compliant regulator is well on track to make such an application. The <a href="http://impressproject.org/">Independent Monitor for the Press </a>(Impress), instigated by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/free-speech-royal-charter-press-freedom">free speech campaigner Jonathan Heawood</a> with support from writers and journalists, went through a wholly independent appointments process and now has a board and chairman designate, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/nov/05/impress-ipso-press-monitor-walter-merricks-chair">Walter Merricks</a>.</p>
<p>Merricks told the Lords committee that they expect to have completed all necessary steps to be a Charter-compliant body within the next three months. And while no national publishers have yet been approached, there are several smaller online, regional and hyper-local publishers that have expressed a clear interest in accessing the kite-marking and protection benefits of being within a recognised self-regulator such as Impress.</p>
<p>Those benefits – for both journalists and members of the public – consist of new rules for legal costs contained within the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/interactive/2013/mar/22/press-regulation-leveson-inquiry-amendements">Crime and Courts Act</a> which are triggered as soon as a self-regulator is recognised by the PRP. Those who bring an arguable claim for privacy or defamation against a publisher which is not part of a recognised regulator will be protected from court costs even if they lose – on the perfectly rational basis that they have been denied the opportunity of low-cost resolution that a recognised regulator must provide.</p>
<p>Conversely, any wealthy or powerful individual or corporation who brings a similar claim against a publisher that is within a recognised regulator – if they insist on going to court rather than using arbitration – will have to pay their own costs, even if they win. Hence, publishers are protected from the chilling effects of a Robert Maxwell-type figure threatening to bankrupt them if they dare to publish unflattering information.</p>
<p>A separate provision – which provides immunity from exemplary damages in privacy and defamation cases for publishers inside a recognised regulator – comes into force automatically in November this year, the first anniversary of the PRP. It offers a further incentive for publishers to join a recognised self-regulator.</p>
<h2>The future</h2>
<p>At some point, the RFC will trumpet one or two minor concessions to IPSO as if Moses has forced it into wholesale submission. In fact, it will continue as an utterly compromised and toothless industry creature, just like its predecessors, wholly incapable of holding a powerful industry to account. The only protection – both for ordinary people whose lives are trashed to boost circulations, and for journalists who want to pursue hard-hitting, watchdog journalism – will come from the Leveson mechanisms rooted in the Royal Charter, which could well be up and running by the summer. </p>
<p>That, of course, assumes that a majority Conservative government does not reward its newspaper allies, renege on David Cameron’s personal pledge to victims, and sweep away the whole cross-party consensus.</p>
<p>Assuming common sense and the public interest prevail, we should at that point have a better idea of whether the new regime for press self-regulation is effective. If not, legislators will no doubt start contemplating <a href="https://inforrm.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/leveson-one-last-chance-for-press-self-regulation-a-summary-of-the-proposals-edward-craven/">Leveson’s backstop or “failsafe” option</a>: a statutory regime, which obliges major publishers to join a regulator. No doubt at that point, press hysteria about North Korea and Zimbabwe will reach deafening proportions.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of an article that is published today on Democratic Audit: http://www.democraticaudit.com/</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37081/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett is on the editorial and management boards of the British Journalism Review and is a board member of Hacked Off.</span></em></p>As criminal trials proceed against more journalists for alleged corrupt payments to public officials, and more evidence emerges about industrial-scale phone hacking at Mirror Group newspapers, The Sun…Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/351142014-12-08T06:00:52Z2014-12-08T06:00:52ZPress needs a regulator to protect itself – and the rest of us<p>When the News of the World newspaper closed in 2011, in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, its editor, Colin Myler, said: “I know we produce a paper to be proud of.” To prove the point, the paper’s final edition was covered with front page exclusives, many of them the work of <a href="https://theconversation.com/panorama-and-the-fake-sheikh-trawling-tabloid-excesses-34258">Mazher Mahmood: the Fake Sheik</a>. Mahmood’s undercover work in exposing crime was always offered as evidence that the paper operated “in the public interest”.</p>
<p>Now that last shred of respectability lies in tatters after <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/dec/04/fake-sheik-mazher-mahmood-cases-reviewed-cps">the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced</a> that 25 convictions based on evidence collected by Mahmood are to be re-examined. Those cases that were yet to come to court have been dropped. </p>
<p>The turning point for Mahmood was the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/jul/21/tulisa-contostavlos-trial-collapses-sun-mazher-mahmood">Tulisa Contostavlos story</a>. Caught up in an elaborate tabloid sting, the singer and former X Factor judge found herself in court on drugs charges. The case was dismissed because the judge, Alistair McCreath, said there were “strong grounds for believing Mr Mahmood told me lies”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/21/mazher-mahmood-ukcrime">McCreath went on</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It should not be forgotten that Mr Mahmood is the sole progenitor of this case; the sole investigator; the sole prosecution witness; a man who has exercised his journalistic privilege to create a situation in which the identities of others involved in the investigation are unknown to the defence (or the prosecution or even to me); someone who appears to have gone to considerable lengths to get Ms Contostavlos to agree to involve herself in criminal conduct, certainly to far greater lengths than would have been regarded as appropriate had he been a police investigator.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66422/original/image-20141205-8661-qt9awx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mazher Mahmood: 25 cases to be re-examined.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Panorama</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At this point there is no suggestion that Mahmood will himself be the subject of police attention, though a CPS <a href="http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/latest_news/action_on_cases_involving_mazher_mahmood/">press statement warned</a>: “Care should be taken when reporting matters relating to Mr Mahmood to ensure it does not affect the fairness of future proceedings as a police investigation remains ongoing.”</p>
<h2>Pressing need for regulation</h2>
<p>There are, however, <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/april-2011-today-64-uk-journalists-arrested-andor-charged-following-news-world-hacking">63 other UK journalists</a> who have been arrested or charged since the start of the phone-hacking scandal. Three have been imprisoned. Not all of those who came to the attention of the police were employed by the News of the World but the vast majority worked for newspapers that vociferously opposed the establishment of new forms of press regulation recommended by Lord Justice Leveson, after a two-year inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press.</p>
<p>There is a connection here. The most powerful news organisations in the UK (barring the BBC) own the big tabloid newspapers and it is these newspapers that are most often accused of unethical behaviour and subject to the largest number of complaints. They were also the most powerful members of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which until September, was charged with the self-regulation of the press. Paul Dacre, for example, the editor of the Daily Mail, was also the chair of the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee of PressBoF, the press standards board of finance which oversaw the funding of the PCC.</p>
<p>It was those who dominated the PCC that also campaigned most vociferously against the implementation of the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson recommendations</a>, which sought to replace the PCC with an independent organisation capable of balancing the needs of a free press, with the protection of individuals from tabloid bullying. </p>
<p>It was these same organisations that then set up their own “regulator” – <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/index.html">IPSO</a> – which is no more independent than its predecessor and refuses to sign up to the Leveson recommendations. Tim Luckhurst, one of the few media academics who lines up with the tabloid proprietors, argued on the <a href="http://freespeechnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/pamphlet_garamond_cmyk-08c.pdf">Free Speech Network</a> website in 2012 that breaches of the law should simply be left to the police.</p>
<h2>Unsafe conduct</h2>
<p>Ironically, we are now discovering just what it looks like when the regulation of the “free press” is left to the police. There is nothing at all edifying about the spectacle of British journalists trying to defend themselves in court, against accusations that they have bribed the police, hacked into phones, listened to private messages and then tried to cover their tracks when they found they had been rumbled. And now the CPS investigations might be throwing the Fake Sheik cases into the mix.</p>
<p>Mark Lewis, the lawyer who represented many of those with phone-hacking claims against journalists, told The Guardian that he was representing 16 possible victims of Mahmood stings. He said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What we are talking about here is, in financial terms, bigger than phone hacking ever was because people have lost their livelihoods, their homes and their incomes over a period of time. It would not be appropriate to comment on the specifics of these cases, but there are a lot of people whose convictions are unsafe and they will be pursuing the appropriate appeals against those convictions, which might have been many years ago.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Given the existence of a code of conduct to which they were all signed up, and an ethics organisation that their newspaper purported to support, how did all these journalists get away with behaviour that subsequently landed them in court and in some cases in jail? </p>
<p>Mahmood told the Leveson inquiry:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everything was discussed with the legal team. I couldn’t go off-piste and do what I wanted. I had to take legal advice and throughout the investigation I remained in constant touch with our lawyers. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So why were none of these journalists stopped?</p>
<p>While the major newspapers were crying out about Leveson breaching their freedoms they arguably were looking in the wrong direction. The press needs a genuinely independent and respected body not only to save it from itself, but also to protect it from a continually growing threat – the police. </p>
<p>One of the few moments in recent years in which editors across the spectrum have stood together was when they discovered that the police <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-attack-on-journalists-sources-undermines-democracy-and-must-be-stopped-32537">were using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act</a> to examine journalists’ phone records. This really was a breach of press freedom and there was no relevant body, independent and yet respected by the public, that could act act on its behalf when the state interfered. </p>
<p>British journalism needs independent regulation to keep the state off its back as well as to define the boundaries of journalistic intrusion. The last thing it needs is to be undefended when the police come to call.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35114/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angela Phillips is affiliated with Media Reform Coalition. She is the author of Journalism in Context, Routledge, published 2014.</span></em></p>When the News of the World newspaper closed in 2011, in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, its editor, Colin Myler, said: “I know we produce a paper to be proud of.” To prove the point, the paper’s…Angela Phillips, Professor, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342582014-11-14T13:33:30Z2014-11-14T13:33:30ZPanorama and the Fake Sheikh: trawling tabloid excesses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64584/original/cj5mfrp7-1415968748.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The picture Mazher Mahmood's lawyers didn't want you to see.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Panorama.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">Panorama</a> has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for Monday November 10, but – just one and a half hours before it was due to go out – the BBC decided<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/11/bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh-expose-james-harding-mazher-mahmood"> not to air</a>.</p>
<p>Mahmood’s lawyers had wanted to protect his anonymity – seeking to prevent any images of him post 2006 being broadcast, but this was rejected by the High Court and leave to appeal was refused by the Court of Appeal. It seemed that it was all systems go until Mahmood’s legal team expressed <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fake-sheikh-bbc-panorama-show-not-shown-after-legal-challenge-1474174">eleventh hour concerns </a>about the content of a section in the documentary involving one of Mahmood’s high-profile stings.</p>
<p>But this was a delaying tactic and on Thursday the BBC went ahead and transmitted what turned out to be a damning indictment of the journalistic practices of the man responsible for, in his own words to the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/leveson-inquiry-fake-sheikh-mazher-mahmood-exposed-wrongdoing-6275958.html">Leveson enquiry</a>, more than 500 tabloid revelations leading to 260 criminal convictions.</p>
<p>There is some poetic justice, I suppose, in a man who has gained such success from pretending to be someone he is not, being revealed for who he really is. And let’s not forget how Mahmood made his name.</p>
<p>In a vastly successful career, including 20 years at the News of the World where he rose to be investigations editor, Mahmood exposed the follies and greed of the rich, famous and, to be sure, the downright criminal. His investigations led to the imprisonment of actors for the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2707306/Former-London-s-Burning-star-reveals-Fake-Sheikh-destroyed-Tulisa-style-cocaine-sting-left-without-job-benefits.html">purchase of cocaine</a>, the exposure of corruption in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15573463">Pakistani cricket</a> and the tricking of then England manager <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jan/16/pressandpublishing.football">Sven Goran Erikson</a> into saying he would quit his England role if the team won the World Cup and was prepared to become the £5m-a-year manager of Aston Villa.</p>
<p>It was at the News of the World where the “fake sheikh” persona was cultivated. Mahmood would dress as an Arab noble and appeal to the vanities of his targets. In one of his most famous stories, Sophie Wessex was enticed to the Dorchester hotel by the prospect of handling the £20,000 a month PR account for a Saudi Prince. Once there, Prince Edward’s wife described “President Blair” (this was 2001) the “frightening” tax rises and “pap budget” presided over by Gordon Brown. The News of the World of gleefully reported all the details.</p>
<p>No expense was spared on creating the façade, as the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-fake-sheikh-and-his-greatest-hits-310570.html">Independent</a>reported in 2005:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sheikh routine is well rehearsed. The white jalabia is accompanied by a flowing robe and the agal, or headdress. Then there is a special black and gold robe, only worn by members of the 25,000-strong House of Saud. Expensive shoes and a Rolex watch complete the routine, along with a Ferrari or a helicopter. He also likes to puff away on a hubble-bubble pipe as he coaxes the story out of his victim.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is these techniques that led to previous accusations that Mahmood is an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">agent provocateur</a> who preys on the foibles of the otherwise innocent, tempting them to commit acts in any other circumstances they would not. In 2006, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/why-i-am-out-to-nail-mazher-mahmood-474264.htm">Roy Greenslade</a>, who was once boss of Mahmood at The Sunday Times, wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to put an end to his regular use of subterfuge, the most controversial weapon in journalism’s armoury. I want him to mothball the fake sheikh’s robes. And I want his paper, the News of the World, to take a long, hard look at its journalistic ethics and to reconsider its editorial agenda.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mahmood told Panorama that he had spent his career investigating crime and wrongdoing and had used legitimate methods that brought individuals to justice. He said any criticism of him usually came from those with “an axe to grind”.</p>
<h2>Only way is ethics</h2>
<p>Panorama certainly examined journalistic ethics – that and much more. John Sweeney’s 30-minute programme heard from many of Mahmood’s alleged victims and his former colleague, Steve Grayson, who candidly admitted to setting up model Emma Morgan as a cocaine dealer. Grayson <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p1zlb">told Sweeney</a>: “He [Mahmood] is a drug dealer, we’re drug dealers, we have paid this guy to supply the drugs to give to her.”</p>
<p>More importantly, perhaps, the programme referred to the alleged relationship between Mahmood and the Metropolitan police. It was stated that he had links with corrupt police officers and a private detective firm called Southern Investigations. One document highlighted by Panorama said: “Source met Maz, a News of the World reporter … on this occasion Maz was with a plainclothes officer … The officer was selling a story to Maz.”</p>
<h2>Perjury investigation</h2>
<p>All this is complicated by the fact that Mahmood is now under investigation by the Met for perjury and suspended from the Sun on Sunday following the collapse of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28403821">Tulisa Contostavlos trial in July</a>. X Factor star Tulisa, who also appeared on the Panorama programme, faced charges of intent to supply cocaine after being filmed by Mahmood who was posing as a Hollywood movie executive. Appearing as a prosecution witness the judge threw the case out saying that the trial could not go any further because, said Justice Alistair McCreath, there were “strong grounds to believe” that Mahmood had “lied” at a hearing before the trial started.</p>
<p>For former attorney-general Lord Goldsmith this means that convictions which occurred as a result of Mahmood’s evidence in previous cases now need examination. He told Panorama:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fact that somebody who has been accused by a judge of apparently of not telling the truth may be instrumental in those convictions would certainly be a reason to look at those convictions again and to examine them to see whether they are safe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>John Alford, an actor jailed following a Mahmood sting in 1997, would certainly welcome any investigation at all. He appeared at the end of Panorama, on the verge of tears, to exclaim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No one can give me the 18 years I’ve lost, no one can give me that back. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.superlawyers.com/london/article/One-Rogue-Solicitor/2320f264-f989-4888-9cbb-bd3d43703ba9.html%20i">Mark Lewis</a>, a media law, libel and privacy lawyer who filed the first phone-hacking civil case against News of the World is in no doubt about the severity of Mahmood’s alleged actions he said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The damage that’s caused, the damage for people’s livelihoods, the amount of people sent to prison, it’s a far more serious thing than phone hacking ever was.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, the phone hacking scandal hasn’t gone away, either. On November 7 the former editor of the News of the World, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/07/ian-edmondson-jailed-eight-months-phone-hacking-news-of-the-world">Ian Edmondson</a> was sentenced to 8 months in prison whilst Operation Elveden, the investigation by the Metropolitan Police into alleged payments to public officials for information by journalists, currently has three trials in the criminal courts. </p>
<p>On trial in in Kingston Crown Court are journalists and senior newspaper executives comprising the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/trial-six-sun-journalists-accused-paying-public-officials-set-start-kingston-crown-court">“Sun Six”</a>. These are still dark days for tabloid news journalism and there’s more to come. With more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/nov/13/mazher-mahmood-potential-victims-bbc-panorama-fake-sheikh">potential victims</a> of Mahmood’s set to come forward in the wake of Panorama, it may be a long time before we see the light.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34258/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Well, there was a lot of mucking about, but Panorama has finally broadcast its exposé of Sun on Sunday journalist Mazher Mahmood, widely known as the “Fake Sheikh”. The programme had been scheduled for…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/332172014-10-21T05:29:15Z2014-10-21T05:29:15ZEbola in the media: Leveson has failed to find a cure for health journalism<p>All too predictably, the Ebola crisis has been accompanied by any number of breathless headlines – not all of them sensible. “Experts fear ISIS jihadists may infect themselves to spread virus in West,” <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786433/Could-Ebola-used-weapon-ISIS-Terror-experts-raise-prospect-jihadists-infecting-spreading-virus-Western-countries.html#ixzz3GhcjfJ2e">appeared in the Daily Mail</a> a few days ago, following up on various reports in other countries. Not so, according to senior security people in the US. Jeh Johnson, the homeland security secretary, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/defense/220684-dhs-chief-no-evidence-of-isis-ebola-threat">made clear</a> a few days later that, “we’ve seen no specific credible evidence” to support anything of the sort. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62278/original/8cpqs28r-1413824691.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">God love the Mail.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the more general substance of the Ebola threat, the Daily Mail was also on form. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2781667/Ebola-hit-UK-three-weeks-Scientists-warn-50-chance-virus-spread-here.html">It reported</a>: “Global threat of Ebola: From the US to China, scientists plot spread of deadly disease across the world from its West African hotbed.” Readers were told that the disease could reach UK shores in as little as three weeks – and this several weeks ago. The Independent <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ebola-crisis-virus-could-reach-the-uk-and-france-by-the-end-of-october-scientists-claim-9775693.html">meanwhile ran with</a>, “Ebola outbreak: virus could reach UK and France by the end of the month, scientists claim.” </p>
<p>The research these two articles referenced was by a team from three US institutions. Using a modelling study similar to those carried out by meteorologists to predict the weather, the team stressed it was using assumptions and approximations that would need modified as more information became available. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.mobs-lab.org/ebola.html">It concluded</a>, “the risk of international spread of the Ebola virus is still moderate for most countries”. The real message was that it is not time to be bulk-buying protective masks and hazard suits just yet. We simply need to be aware that the disease could reach the UK, and the government needs to take protective measures to minimise the risk. </p>
<h2>MMR and all that</h2>
<p>When it comes to sensationalist newspaper headlines, the most memorable might be the supposed link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism. Research later showed the media <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/16/whenjournalismkills">created the false impression</a> that the medical research community was divided over the plausibility of the link. In actual fact, scientists all thought the research claiming the link was severely flawed and its conclusion invalid. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62279/original/h4rfr4r2-1413825113.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">MMR shock reporting led to fewer vaccines and more measles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-144787315/stock-photo-a-doctor-giving-a-child-an-injection.html?src=7cH1657KecQ1vBC6fCapeQ-1-10">yang na</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the University of Aberdeen, my research team has reached similar conclusions from <a href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/ims/research/neuroscience/mood-disorders.php">research into</a> UK newspapers’ portrayal of antidepressants. With headlines like “Antidepressant Drugs Don’t Work - Official Study” (<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/antidepressant-drugs-udontu-work-ndash-official-study-787264.html">The Independent</a>), we found that the UK press paints a fairly negative and occasionally incorrect picture of antidepressants, which might be affecting the public’s perception of them. We are now conducting a follow-up project exploring the impact on the public in detail, as well as on lawmakers and people suffering from depression.</p>
<h2>So much for Leveson</h2>
<p>Health and science journalism came up during the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Leveson inquiry</a>. As part of her evidence to the inquiry, Fiona Fox, head of the <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/about-us/staff/">Science Media Centre</a>, made several mentions of the MMR controversy and other inaccuracies in science reporting. Cardiff University School of Psychology meanwhile <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Submission-by-Cardiff-University-school-of-Psychology.pdf">submitted</a> a report questioning how to ensure a future of quality science reporting in the UK. </p>
<p>As a result, the inquiry recommended that a new regulatory body should “consider encouraging the press to be as transparent as possible in relation to the sources used for stories.” It said that this should include providing any information that would help readers to assess the reliability of a source, plus providing web links to: “publicly available sources of information such as scientific studies or poll results.”</p>
<p>In May 2012 the Science Media Centre followed this up with a <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/10-best-practice-guidelines-for-science-and-health-reporting.pdf">set of guidelines</a> on science and health reporting. Yet IPSO, the new UK press regulator, makes no mention of these guidelines or the Leveson recommendations either in its <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/cop.html">code of practice</a> or on <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/">its website</a>. </p>
<p>The latest coverage of the Ebola crisis suggests that the regulator’s failure to follow either the Leveson recommendations or the Science Media Centre’s guidelines is a serious omission. Without meaning to minimise the seriousness of Ebola, don’t be surprised if we are told further down the line that the UK public was misled about the risks. It is one more reminder that, despite Leveson and despite everything that has happened to the press in recent years, nothing much in health and science journalism appears to have changed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nooreen Akhtar receives funding from the Chief Scientist Office.</span></em></p>All too predictably, the Ebola crisis has been accompanied by any number of breathless headlines – not all of them sensible. “Experts fear ISIS jihadists may infect themselves to spread virus in West…Nooreen Akhtar, Research Training Fellow in the Psychiatry Research Group, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/322872014-09-29T13:21:44Z2014-09-29T13:21:44ZBrooks Newmark honey trap story to give IPSO its first serious test<p>They are calling it the Brooks Newmark Sex Scandal. The ethics of the Sunday Mirror’s virtual online honey trap farrago would appear to be the first high profile complaint that the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/">Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO)</a> will have to deal with. Hardly Watergate is it? The matter is a giggle for some, toe-curlingly embarrassing or sheer theatre of the absurd for others and heart-breaking – and distressing for Newmark and his family. </p>
<p>David Aaronovitch analysed the matter in The Times and came to the conclusion that Newmark’s fall is <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4220629.ece">“from online to the ridiculous”.</a> It’s a classic tabloid story offered to and taken by the Mirror from a freelance journalist. It is not something the “quality” broadsheets and the BBC would be initiating as “investigative journalism”, but if all the ingredients were not in the frame of some “public interest” they would have ignored the story, would they not?</p>
<h2>Nice and sleazy does it</h2>
<p>When the raucous British popular press start ruffling the feathers of the establishment and nipping the back-sides of the sensitive behind of powerful elites with “sleazy journalism” that “ruins people’s lives” it is fascinating how the rest of the media takes great sport in picking over the leftovers and frothing in the methane stream.</p>
<p>But hypocrisy in British politics and media history is an under-rated and neglected cultural shibboleth. There’s an art to it. The dividing line in journalistic respectability is like trying to compare the aesthetic legitimacy of a Sandro Botticelli nude and a Page Three representation of contemporary mammary glands. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60306/original/4w693g2b-1411994804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is this what’s called a ‘pubic interest story’?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sunday Mirror</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nearly every aspect of this affair is fantasy and imagination. There is no victim except an anticipated foreboding of what might have been. The Mirror in a justifying editorial by Julia Hartley-Brewer said: “When a minister, paid by taxpayers, sends explicit photos to a complete stranger (who turns out to be not a young woman Tory party worker but a man working undercover for a newspaper) <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brooks-newmark-lied-wife---4342177">then he has chosen to make his privates a public matter.”</a></p>
<p>She continued: “If Brooks Newmark was dumb enough to text his post-watershed selfie, how can we trust his judgment in his working life? And how open is he to blackmail? And once he has lied to his wife, what stops him from lying to us, the voters he has not met?”</p>
<p>Sophie Wittams was effectively a texting Whatsapp, Twitter avatar, a concoction in the virtual world constructed by “borrowing” the images of real people and manipulated in Twitter-speak by journalistic subterfuge. Sophie endeavoured to establish liaison with Conservative Party politicians and Newmark succumbed to the allure of imaginative intimacy and shared written confidences and imagery of what of old would be termed “of a lewd nature”. </p>
<p>Have you noticed how a lot of the media has made something of fetish out of the rather classy brand of pyjamas the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2772489/I-complete-fool-admits-Tory-minister-Brooks-Newmark-forced-quit-sending-explicit-photos-Paisley-pyjamas.html">now ex- minister for civil society was wearing</a> while baring his anatomy? Yet as I write, the issue has generated only <a href="http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2195961-Brooks-Newmarks-paisley-pyjamas">four comments on Mumsnet.</a></p>
<h2>Only way is ethics</h2>
<p>What are the media legal and ethical issues engaged here? There’s speculation that Sophie’s portrait may have been that of a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/swedish-model-did-not-permit-sunday-mirror-use-photo-brooks-newmark">Swedish model</a>. It would assist the Sunday Mirror if it had obtained the permission of both the subject and copyright holder of the image to be used in this way. </p>
<p>The Telegraph investigates and reports in the true tradition of the Fleet Street diaspora dog-eating-dog that a “sun-bathing selfie” of Sophie had been <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11126797/Brooks-Newmark-scandal-Woman-whose-photo-was-hijacked-by-tabloid-says-MP-did-nothing-wrong.html">hijacked from the real 26-year-old Charlene Taylor.</a> Charlene says the image was used without her permission and has expressed the maturity and compassion of a generation familiar with the burlesque and mischief of smart-phone photography and social media: “I think grown adults can do whatever they like as long as both of them are over the age of consent. I don’t think it’s something to resign over.”</p>
<p>In theory, using imagery and personality rights without permission in a way that damages reputation, dignity, honour or identity could trigger consideration of potential breaches of defamation, privacy, as well as copyright and intellectual property.</p>
<h2>Ipso facto</h2>
<p>IPSO has the kind of bite the old PCC never had. It can impose fines of up to £1m on contracted members for serious breaches of the editors’ code. The Sunday Mirror is signed up. Ironically had the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Evening Standard or Financial Times been playing “entrapment” games with Tory politicians, they would only be dealing with the potential flack of litigation. These newspapers have been standing off IPSO.</p>
<p>Media commentators of rival papers and “media victim” lawyers have expended much angst striking the questions that Trinity Mirror may have to address. Will they be able to <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/cop.html">satisfy 10(ii) of the editors’ code of practice</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be obtained by other means. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Will the story reach the necessary threshold of “public interest” in terms of “preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation,” or there being “a public interest in freedom of expression itself”?</p>
<p>A deciding factor will be whether the story was the result of a speculative fishing expedition. But it’s <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mirror-editor-lloyd-embley-said-public-interest-was-nailed-undercover-sexting-sting-tory-mp">reported by Press Gazette</a> that a freelance journalist had been investigating inappropriate use of social media by MPs and specific sources had briefed him on how they were using social media networks to meet women. Sunday Mirror editor-in-chief Lloyd Embley says there was a “nailed-on public interest” to the story. </p>
<p>That’s as may be. In this case, as in so many Fleet Street cases of old, the public interest is in the eye of the editor. But a familiar refrain from academia and the tabloid loathing sphere post-Leveson might be that in 2014 the public interest needs to be more than what entertains the scandal mongers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32287/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>They are calling it the Brooks Newmark Sex Scandal. The ethics of the Sunday Mirror’s virtual online honey trap farrago would appear to be the first high profile complaint that the Independent Press Standards…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/316072014-09-12T05:28:01Z2014-09-12T05:28:01ZWorld War II began 75 years ago with censorship chaos that echoes down the decades<p>At approximately 1.30 am in the night of September 11 1939 two police officers walked into the offices of the Daily Mail with instructions to seize all of its early editions. This action was repeated at newspaper offices and wholesale newsagents across the United Kingdom. A road block was set up in Fleet Street, trains from London were stopped, and members of the public had newspapers confiscated.</p>
<p>The war had begun eight days earlier. And this chaotic situation 12 hours earlier. At midday on 11 September, an official radio broadcast in Paris had wrongly announced that British troops were engaged in offensive action against Nazi forces. The whereabouts of British troops had been kept strictly secret since the beginning of the war. So the announcement led to serious discussions within the British government.</p>
<p>The Ministry of Information believed that there was little point suppressing a story which had already broken. The fact that reports of the broadcast had been picked up in the United States suggested that they would also have made their way into enemy hands. </p>
<p>It was eventually agreed that the government should confirm the arrival of British troops in France. But the War Office remained wary that more important information might be accidentally disclosed. It became even more worried when government censors began to receive colourful stories about troops being welcomed with flowers and partaking in bayonet charges. </p>
<p>The War Office responded by instructing the Ministry of Information’s censorship division to recall the news. When this attempt at retrospective censorship failed, an unnamed civil servant in the Home Office instructed the police to take “all possible steps” to protect “the national interest”. <a href="https://history.blog.gov.uk/2014/09/12/chaos-and-censorship/">The resulting blockade led to scenes of “complete chaos”</a>. </p>
<p>The events of 11-12 September 1939 became a defining moment for British censorship during World War II. They led to intense criticism. Newspaper editors accused the Ministry of Information of acting in a “true Gestapo manner” while opposition politicians spoke of a “muddle of the worst possible kind”. An opinion poll undertaken on behalf of the government also found that more than half of the public believed censorship was too tightly applied. </p>
<p>The fact that the Ministry of Information was responsible for both the issue and censorship of news exacerbated the criticism. Newspapers simply could not understand why the ministry had ended up censoring itself. It had been designed to act as the government’s mouthpiece and its press releases were supposedly vetted in advance. The very fact that one of these stories had been repressed suggested that the system did not work. This led to the ministry being stripped of its responsibility for censorship on October 9 1939.</p>
<p>This episode demonstrates the challenges caused by censorship in an otherwise “open” society. It also resonates with more contemporary concerns. Recent debates about press regulation – reignited by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2014/sep/07/press-regulation-ipso-alan-moses">Sir Alan Moses’s statement</a> that the industry-funded Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) is not “a joke” – show that the perception of any regulatory body remains crucial to its success. </p>
<p>It’s not yet clear how IPSO will work in practice. And it’s unlikely that it will ever be embroiled in events as dramatic as those outlined here. But if there’s a lesson to be learned from the experience of the Second World War, it’s that the system linking the production and regulation of news must be made clear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31607/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Irving receives funding from AHRC. He works for the School of Advanced Study and is affiliated with The National Archives. The Ministry of Information is the subject of a series of free events being held in November as part of the Being Human festival of the humanities.</span></em></p>At approximately 1.30 am in the night of September 11 1939 two police officers walked into the offices of the Daily Mail with instructions to seize all of its early editions. This action was repeated at…Henry Irving, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed 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/281712014-07-04T11:12:35Z2014-07-04T11:12:35ZSo Andy Coulson goes to jail, but we must ensure that the press becomes accountable<p>On the day that Andy Coulson was sentenced to 18 months for his part in the industrial-scale phone hacking that went on at the News of the World, we will no doubt hear from the industry that this is proof the system has worked: wrongdoing has been detected, wrongdoers identified and punished.</p>
<p>But before we sit back and say: “job done” we should pause to reflect on the wider malaise afflicting journalism in this country.</p>
<p>It was the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24526934">McCann case</a> that convinced me something was seriously wrong with British journalism. Day after day, week after week in 2007-8, a stricken couple were monstered on the front pages of national newspapers and though a few people complained nobody would do anything about it. </p>
<p>It is easy to forget, but that began less than four months after the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6301243.stm">first phone-hacking convictions</a> – the time we were first asked to believe it was the work of just one rogue reporter. You might think newspapers would have been on their best behaviour.</p>
<p>Eventually and reluctantly the McCanns sued – they had been desperate not to make things worse because they needed the media in the hunt for their daughter. They won, of course, and it slowed down the libels, but it didn’t stop them. And the papers learned nothing, going on to monster Bristol teacher <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25625572">Christopher Jefferies</a> in just the same way. </p>
<p>But hacking and libelling are not the problem in journalism, as <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/about/the-report/">Lord Justice Leveson found</a>. They are merely two of the symptoms. The problem is one of power run amok, of unaccountability and of a loss of ethical standards. </p>
<p>Harsh? Well it is true that British journalism can be brilliant, and is mostly good. But no one, least of all journalists, judges any institution, industry or profession by its best or even its average performance. Like it or not they – we – tend to be measured by the worst that we do, and by how much effort we make to improve.</p>
<p>When a plane crashes we do not shrug, point to a million safe landings and say: “It was just one rogue plane.” Life is not like that. Nor do we simply say: “Let’s leave it to the airlines to see if there’s a problem.” </p>
<p>British journalism has crashed badly a dozen times in this century alone, and it has proved beyond all doubt that it is not capable of finding the problem, let alone fixing it. </p>
<p>After the disaster that was the McCann coverage, what did journalism do to put its house in order? Nothing. Astonishingly, even after something like a thousand front-page libels, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) never once considered the case. (I sometimes wonder how those people live with themselves.)</p>
<h2>Bully pulpit</h2>
<p>When newspapers were caught spending millions hiring private investigators who stole people’s personal data, what did the industry do? It lobbied the prime minister to make sure that the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/apr/04/pressandpublishing.freedomofinformation">penalties for data theft</a> remained ridiculously low. </p>
<p>As for the phone-hacking scandal, the big newspaper companies that account for 90% of national daily circulation didn’t expose it. They didn’t investigate it. They didn’t even condemn it. Instead they made excuses for it, lied about it and pretended that it was the fault of the police, the politicians, the private eyes – anyone but themselves. </p>
<p>Dragged into the Leveson Inquiry, their editors and proprietors behaved like sulky children, while outside the courtroom their reporters did everything in their power to smear, mock and denigrate the proceedings. </p>
<p>And when the judge told them what action was necessary to protect the public from further outrages in the future, what did they do? They raised two fingers and said get lost. </p>
<h2>Accountability is not control</h2>
<p>They have no evidence-based, rational argument against the Leveson recommendations. It is not “state control” or anything like it. It does not impinge on freedom of expression, indeed it offers unprecedented safeguards against political interference. It will not reduce the diversity or liveliness of our media. </p>
<p>What it might do, however, is oblige the worst journalists we have to start checking their facts. It might make them accountable when they treat people unfairly. And it would give ordinary people cheap access to justice when papers breach their legal rights. </p>
<p>Plainly this does not suit the people behind such outrages as <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16108643">industrial-scale data theft</a>, the serial libelling of the McCanns and the hacking of thousands of phones. Those people have simply refused to have anything to do with a Leveson scheme designed to protect the public through independent, effective press self-regulation. </p>
<h2>IPSO-facto</h2>
<p>Instead, with astounding chutzpah, the big newspaper groups have created <a href="http://www.ipso.co.uk/">IPSO</a>, a cosmetically-altered PCC that will continue to act as a buffer for public complaint and as a blanket to cover up systemic wrongdoing. And, just as they did with the PCC for two decades, they are deploying all their propaganda power to convince the public that IPSO is the eighth wonder of the world. </p>
<p>British journalism has crashed, and the hacking verdicts are further proof of that. The press itself cannot and will not fix the problem, but Leveson showed how it could be done. Rupert Murdoch and his friends must now be shamed into abandoning IPSO and doing what the judge said. If they don’t, it will crash again, and again, and the victims, again and again, will be the blameless, the powerless and the vulnerable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian Cathcart is the founder of Hacked Off, which campaigns for media reform (<a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/">http://hackinginquiry.org/</a>)</span></em></p>On the day that Andy Coulson was sentenced to 18 months for his part in the industrial-scale phone hacking that went on at the News of the World, we will no doubt hear from the industry that this is proof…Brian Cathcart, Professor of Journalism, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203292013-11-14T20:51:59Z2013-11-14T20:51:59ZPin your hopes on the next generation to fix news media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35323/original/txgkk8yh-1384461907.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jeff Bezos: can he save journalism?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stephen Brashear/AP/Press Association Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When representatives of the British newspaper industry were defending their freedoms from the modest changes to press regulation proposed by Lord Justice Leveson, they compared the UK with Zimbabwe, Iran, China, North Korea and not just Putin’s Russia, but Stalin’s.</p>
<p>It was the kind of absurd self-serving bilge that would not have survived a moment’s analysis had any other industry put something like it forward.</p>
<p>The press has rightly campaigned for regulation of banks, pension funds, MPs, doctors, lawyers – only newspapers, it seems, despite trust ratings lower than any of those, should be considered exempt. Only newspapers should be allowed to design their own regulation, despite so much evidence of their failure and untrustworthiness to do so.</p>
<p>Newspapers have consistently lied about regulation. As Harry Evans <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sir-harold-evans-2013-hugh-cudlipp-lecture-full-written-version">said in his Cudlipp Lecture</a>: “The misrepresentation of Leveson’s core report is staggering. To portray his careful construct for statutory underpinning as state control is a gross distortion.” As far as my searches have found, Evans, a journalistic giant, was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jan/29/harold-evans-accuses-press-cynicism-leveson">reported in just one paper</a>. Hacks, or politicians opposed to Leveson, on the other hand, have free rein.</p>
<h2>Damned lies</h2>
<p>According to the industry, press freedom is over. A lie. They insist politicians will decide what you read. Another lie. Investigations into stories like MPs’ expenses could not happen. A lie. There will be pre-publication censorship. A lie. Editors will go to jail if they don’t sign up. A lie.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35308/original/rf5tgmbp-1384443758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Just ignore it. It;ll go away.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA Archive</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Perhaps the biggest lie is that Leveson’s recommendations are about protecting politicians and celebrities. Not so. They are about protecting people without power or wealth or fame who can have their lives destroyed by inhumane and illegal journalistic activity.</p>
<p>What Leveson proposed, and what the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21797513">Royal Charter now says</a>, does not even come close to establishing regulation of the press: it proposes a body to certify that any new self-regulator is independent. That is underpinning, not “state control”. The body would be independent of press – so they cannot control or water it down; and independent of politicians so that a future government cannot randomly make it more draconian.</p>
<p>There are other advantages. The new body would have investigative powers to deal with papers which keep breaching the code of practice; and an arbitration procedure, which would be cheaper for both people and publishers to use, rather than going to law.</p>
<p>It will have a new code but it will surely retain much of the current editors’ code of practice, which promises accuracy and respect for privacy. That code was a good piece of work. It has just never been adhered to, never been implemented, and that was always the Murdoch-Dacre plan. The PCC has been a body of the press, by the press, for the press.</p>
<p>Just ask yourself what those same owners and editors would have to say if any other walk of life had been exposed for so much wrongdoing, given rise to so much public disgust, and then still made a claim to be capable of a self-regulatory system. They would be insulted, hounded, vilified.</p>
<p>The press have thrown every false argument in the book and still – though <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/mst-news/media-standards-trust-poll-shows-public-have-little-confidence-in-press-self-regulator-set-up-without-external-review/">this poll</a> got even less coverage than Harry Evans’ lecture – more than seven out of ten readers want Leveson-style independence for a new regulator. The papers want nothing that gets in the way of business as usual. The good news is that despite their attempts to grind the politicians down, they are not getting their way. </p>
<p>The even better news is that when finally this new system happens, none of their big lies will come true. Both press and public will gain. That is why I am optimistic, despite the publishers trying to ignore the Royal Charter at the moment, hoping their alternative – the Independent Press Standards Organisation – will be deemed acceptable. It won’t, as anyone who has read Leveson will see.</p>
<h2>IPSO facto failure</h2>
<p>Indeed on Friday the Media Standards Trust is publishing an external analysis of IPSO, which establishes that of Leveson’s 38 recommendations for a self-regulator, only 12 are met by the Dacre-Black proposal.</p>
<p>It fails on the very first test in the very first word of its misleading title. It is not independent. It is almost entirely dependent on the industry which influences virtually every aspect of what it does, and in many cases has a veto. Through the funding body, it institutionalises the power of the big publishers, just as its predecessor used money to grip and control the PCC, and will control budgets, rules, code, investigations, sanctions for breaches. It is not independent of politics either, with a provision for peers and MEPs to be on the regulator.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35314/original/ty8277d6-1384448038.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=933&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Setting standards: Paul Dacre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>It also fails the central Leveson test, since it does not provide access to justice for ordinary members of the public via low-cost arbitration. The complaints system is virtually the same as the utterly discredited PCC. Leveson called for a “simple and credible” investigations process. The architects of IPSO have gone for complicated and incredible instead, allowing for up to six interventions by the publisher, and none by the victim</p>
<p>It makes a complete mockery of the claims they made in adverts in their own papers that IPSO “will deliver all of the key elements Lord Justice Leveson called for in his report”. More lies. It leaves me thinking: either they are incredibly stupid, or they think that everyone else is. And one thing of which I am certain: you will read very little about this report in the papers. Another planned news blackout: because it doesn’t support their lies and their bogus arguments.</p>
<p>They claim of course to speak for the public, hence another news blackout on the <a href="http://www.transparency.org.uk/our-work/publications/93-corruption-in-the-uk--part-three---nis-study">recent Transparency International report</a> which showed British people viewed the media as the most corrupt of 12 institutions surveyed – 69% felt so, up from 39% three years ago.</p>
<p>I am pleased the politicians have thus far held reasonably firm – with a few wobbles, a bit of opportunism by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, and confused statements by culture secretary Maria Miller. It is almost a year since Leveson reported. Time to get it done.</p>
<h2>Reasons to be cheerful</h2>
<p>Here is what I think will eventually happen, and another reason for optimism. IPSO’s backers will push their luck and overplay their hand. It will be clear to anyone who can read that it is not Leveson-compliant. As politicians, public and the victims of media abuse lose patience, so will sections of the press less wrapped up in the lie machine. </p>
<p>Some will then set up a self-regulator to meet Royal Charter standards. Other newspapers will join because the costs of staying out -– for example, paying both sides of a libel case –- will be so high. The system will settle down and we will all look back with utter bemusement at their warnings of an end to civilisation as we know it, and contempt at their machinations.</p>
<p>Yet still the lie machine cranks on. Repressive Britain, I read recently. So let’s <a href="http://www.cpj.org/reports/2012/12/imprisoned-journalists-world-record.php">talk about repression</a>. Turkey had 49 journalists imprisoned last year, followed by Iran on 45, China 32, Eritrea 28, Syria 15. Britain is well down the table, on zero.</p>
<p>There is only one big point put forward with which I have sympathy. The suggestion that countries which do repress the media will say Britain is doing so, therefore why shouldn’t we? But they can only pose the question because of the lies told by our press. And for further evidence of lies and hypocrisy, go to Ireland, where UK titles <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/john-prescott-column-irish-example-2714787">have signed up</a> to a similar system without any skin falling from their Pinnochio noses.</p>
<p>The threat to journalism comes not from politicians, but from within. From arrogant and overweening industry leaders who love editorials saying “wake up and smell the coffee”, but cannot smell it for themselves. People who cannot see that falling sales are about more than technology – they are about falling credibility, and rising public awareness about their methods, and abuse of power.</p>
<p>Once this debate is settled, journalism can start to look at how it rebuilds its reputation – but it can only be done by the next generation, which is better at reading the rhythms of change.</p>
<h2>Exceptional people</h2>
<p>Mark Zuckerberg is 29; Google’s Larry Page a veteran at 40; the founders of Twitter 30-somethings. Of course these are exceptional people. But it is exceptional people who become leaders, and it is in these who have made their millions, and more so those of the same age being driven as much by idealism as by profits, who give me hope there will be change. </p>
<p>How remarkable to pick up last Friday’s FT and read the Business Life profile of online magazine editor, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd67e4b6-46db-11e3-9c1b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2kdQ0mQqH">Tavi Gevinshon</a>, aged 17.</p>
<p>It could be, of course, that the new media will simply create new oligarchs, less interested in good journalism – which costs money – than in the financial power the platforms and advertising give them. Let’s be very wary of billionaire techies thinking algorithms and blogs are all you need for journalism. Let’s see how Amazon founder Jeff Bezos handles the Washington Post. Let’s see if the sense develops that the Facebook/Twitter revolution is really only about the flotations, not a more democratic media. Let’s keep an eye on so-called “Demand Media” - aka advertorials - gaining hold. </p>
<p>Let’s be wary too of the danger of a new rich-poor divide which further weakens journalism as a pillar of democracy – on the one side free news in short blasts, on the other “proper” journalism, reserved for those willing to pay for it. But for now let’s be optimistic and try to ensure that social media is a counterweight to oligarchism, not a modern, sexier version.</p>
<p>This is an edited extract of a speech delivered to Cambridge University’s <a href="http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/">Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities</a>. Read the full lecture <a href="http://www.alastaircampbell.org/blog/2013/11/14/cambridge-lecture-2-optimistic-despite-press-lies-re-leveson-new-social-media-oligarchs-snowdenwikileaks-and-why-merkel-is-best/">here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alastair Campbell 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>When representatives of the British newspaper industry were defending their freedoms from the modest changes to press regulation proposed by Lord Justice Leveson, they compared the UK with Zimbabwe, Iran…Alastair Campbell, Visiting Professor of Journalism, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.