tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/leveson-inquiry-7469/articlesLeveson Inquiry – The Conversation2023-12-22T12:16:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2200102023-12-22T12:16:12Z2023-12-22T12:16:12ZPhone hacking in the British press: three key moments in the scandal – and what happens next<p>Prince Harry has emerged as the victor in his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67332563">civil case</a> against Mirror Group Newspapers. The judge, Mr Justice Fanning, ruled that on the balance of probabilities a sample of 15 out of 33 articles examined by his court were written as result of phone hacking and other illegal measures. In an exhaustive report <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Duke-of-Sussex-v-MGN-Judgment.pdf">weighing in at 386 pages</a>, Fanning stated that there was evidence of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67332563">“widespread and habitual”</a> use of phone hacking at the Mirror newspapers.</p>
<p>Harry was awarded damages of £140,600 and said in a <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2023-12-15/prince-harry-judge-finds-extensive-phone-hacking-by-mirror-group-newspapers">subsequent statement</a>: “Today is a great day for truth, as well as accountability. This case is not just about hacking – it is about a systemic practice of unlawful and appalling behaviour, followed by cover-ups and destruction of evidence, the shocking scale of which can only be revealed through these proceedings.”</p>
<p>That Harry was in a bullish mood was entirely understandable. But his case is only the latest development in a series of events which has rocked the tabloid press in the UK over the past decade or so.</p>
<h2>1. The closure of the News of the World</h2>
<p>In July 2011, the Guardian claimed that journalists on the News of the World had hacked into the phone messages of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Not only this, but messages were also removed to make room for more, giving her parents the impression she was still alive and picking up her messages. </p>
<p>The facts of the case have never been satisfactorily concluded, but the reporting on this and other allegations of phone hacking, as well as the strength of the public reaction, were enough to prompt the closure of the News of the World that same month. The paper had been one of the most widely read in the UK. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/07/news-of-the-world">statement at the time</a>, James Murdoch, son of Rupert, said: “The News of the World and News International failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose.”</p>
<h2>2. The Leveson Inquiry</h2>
<p>Seemingly moved by the widespread vitriol attracted by the News of the World, David Cameron, the prime minister at the time, commissioned the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">Leveson Inquiry</a> into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press.</p>
<p>The inquiry was asked to make recommendations on how more ethical and professional standards could be achieved. The <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_law/leveson-inquiry-qa-so-why-was-the-inquiry-set-up-in-the-first-place/">aim</a> was to find a “new, more effective policy and regulatory regime for the press”.</p>
<p>When the inquiry’s report <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">was published</a> in 2012, the tabloid press was singled out for criticism. Its conduct over the years, said the report, could “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20543133">only be described as outrageous</a>”.</p>
<p>Leveson recommended a new organisation be created to regulate the press. This should be entirely <a href="https://fullfact.org/news/leveson-report-basics/">independent</a> in composition and free from all political and commercial involvement.</p>
<p>The body that did ultimately emerge from the inquiry was the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/what-we-do/">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a> (Ipso), which has regulated the press ever since but does not fit with the Leveson <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldselect/ldcomuni/135/13503.htm">vision of independence</a>.</p>
<p>The second part of the Leveson inquiry was meant to consider the relationship between the police and journalists, but never actually took place. It was shelved in 2018. The government’s reasoning for this decision was that it considered the exercise “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/01/leveson-inquiry-part-2-cancellation-condemned-by-labour-as-breach-of-trust">costly and time consuming</a>”.</p>
<h2>3. Journalism in the dock: phone-hacking trials</h2>
<p>In 2014 key journalists who had worked for the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World were charged with <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-in-the-dock-first-month-of-phone-hacking-trial-20737">conspiring to hack voicemails</a>. Among those involved were former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, who had subsequently gone on to become David Cameron’s director of communications at Number 10.</p>
<p>In the event, Brooks was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing while Coulson was jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones.</p>
<h2>The trials ahead</h2>
<p>If Harry <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-wins-round-one-of-tabloid-battle-but-hes-far-from-finished-13031024">sounded confident</a> in his victory over the Mirror, it’s maybe because he sees this battle as evidence that he is destined to prevail in a much longer war against the press.</p>
<p>The ruling that there “<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-hacking-case-latest-piers-morgan-breaks-silence-after-judge-in-harry-case-said-it-was-convincing-he-knew-about-phone-hacking-13030737">can be no doubt</a>” that Piers Morgan knew about phone hacking while he was editor at the Mirror (which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/video/2023/dec/15/piers-morgan-denies-knowing-of-phone-hacking-after-judge-rules-he-did-video">Morgan denies</a>) has probably emboldened the Prince for the next two contests against <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/prince-harrys-legal-battles-press-121154671.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADtxV4grVYG7zAuhysCzcNGmpdtwA5ilv1lemzMX6WhFGlNOPnjZ4N-lW-dvCrZ7WE_iZhoQbouiAb8xSenNoAQXf2hB4kIVsIniROmsGeY-o4wdV_W63npVz4eVvRS5Wx0krjA6granIb_wgNQazb1Q2Ngg7V-IyOGwh0g2t1dy">Associated News and News UK</a> for alleged violations of privacy and unlawful information gathering.</p>
<p>Harry stated in an <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2023/01/08/prince-harry-interview-with-tom-bradby-in-full-18061892/">interview</a> earlier this year that campaigning against the injustices of the press had become his <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/nationals/prince-harry-press-media-itv-interview/">life’s work</a>. And, as media lawyer <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/prince-harry-hacking-case-latest-duke-of-sussex-to-find-out-if-he-has-won-landmark-case-against-mirror-group-newspapers-13030737">Persephone Bridgman Baker</a> told Sky News: “We certainly haven’t seen the end of phone hacking [in the courts].”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell 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>Prince Harry’s victory against the mirror is only the latest episode in an epic saga.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/2200092023-12-19T15:13:48Z2023-12-19T15:13:48ZPrince Harry and the Mirror: how court victory reopened the phone hacking scandal the British press had hoped was over<p>A pivotal court <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Duke-of-Sussex-v-MGN-Judgment.pdf">judgment</a> has found evidence that “habitual” phone hacking went on at Mirror Group newspapers for years.</p>
<p>The high court judgement from Mr Justice Fancourt left no doubt: “There is compelling evidence that the editors of each newspaper knew very well that [phone hacking] was being used extensively and habitually and that they were happy to take the benefits of it”.</p>
<p>This is an extraordinary vindication for Prince Harry, who has been determined to hold publishers to account for phone hacking and covering it up. It also has repercussions for the British press, since Fancourt’s judgment names a number of editorial and executive figures as complicit in the Mirror’s unlawful activities.</p>
<p>Fancourt found that phone hacking began in 1995 and was “widespread and habitual” from 1998. But unlawful activity by the press was not confined to hacking phones. A 2006 <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/archive-content/meyer-intercepting-mobile-phone-messages-is-completely-unacceptable/">investigation</a> by the Information Commissioner’s Office uncovered an “undercover economy” where <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c800240f0b626628ac7f5/0036.pdf">hundreds of journalists</a> were buying personal information. </p>
<p>In 2007, the News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman was jailed after pleading guilty to hacking Prince William’s phone. Although the paper’s editor Andy Coulson resigned (claiming no knowledge of unlawful activities), the episode was dismissed as the miscreant activities of “one rogue reporter”. </p>
<p>Cursory investigations by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) – the then industry regulator – <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110902132404/http:/pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NjAyOA==">concluded</a> both in 2007 and 2009 that there was no evidence to suggest that unlawful practices were widespread or ongoing.</p>
<h2>The Leveson inquiry</h2>
<p>In 2011, after first refusing to reopen criminal investigations, the Metropolitan Police acted on further evidence and arrested a number of News of the World journalists. News International, the UK arm of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire, made limited admissions in a few high profile cases. There the matter may have rested: a niche industry issue being doggedly pursued by the Guardian’s Nick Davies, but assiduously avoided by the rest of Fleet Street.</p>
<p>That changed with the revelation in July 2011 that News of the World journalists had hacked the phone of murdered teenager Millie Dowler. Murdoch responded to public revulsion by closing the paper.</p>
<p>David Cameron, prime minister at the time, then set up the Leveson inquiry – a two-part judicial investigation into the culture, practices and ethics of the press.</p>
<p>During the first part of the inquiry, senior editorial figures across the UK’s national titles gave sworn evidence that their newspapers had no part in phone hacking or any other forms of unlawful information gathering.</p>
<p>In 2012, Leveson recommended a new framework for independent press regulation, with incentives for publishers to join up. Parliament agreed (overwhelmingly) but the press refused to participate. Instead, they set up their own complaints body, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), to replace the discredited PCC. </p>
<p>They lobbied furiously against key components of the Leveson framework, arguing that forcing them into a regulator that would actually maintain standards was a threat to press freedom. And anyway, went their argument, the industry was now reformed.</p>
<p>As in previous decades, the government caved. In 2018, it cancelled the second part of the Leveson inquiry, which was supposed to investigate who authorised unlawful activities and the extent of any collusion between the press and the police. It has since committed itself to repealing legislation that would give real teeth to the Leveson framework.</p>
<p>Throughout this period, Murdoch’s News Group has been quietly settling claims to a reported total <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/phone-hacking-scandal-total-costs/">cost</a> of around £1.2 billion, while repeatedly denying any unlawful activity at the Sun. Just this month it <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2023/12/05/news-corp-was-out-to-get-me-chris-huhne-condemns-murdoch-empire-after-settlement-for-phone-hacking-and-intrusion/">agreed</a> a six-figure payout to former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister Chris Huhne for intrusions allegedly ordered by company executives.</p>
<p>Before Fancourt’s judgement, the Mirror publisher had made limited admissions in 2014 (again after repeated denials) with a fulsome apology across its titles. The most recent judgment covered both further hacking claims (including Prince Harry’s) and other unlawful techniques that were again furiously <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5JB_DBfwBo">denied</a> during the trial as “fantastical” and “in the realms of pure speculation”.</p>
<h2>The truth outs</h2>
<p>Over the past 20 years, the police, which <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/83/home-affairs-committee/news/177507/110720-phone-hacking-report/">failed to properly investigate</a>, the British legal system, which allows cases to be settled without the evidence being made public, and parliament, which allowed Leveson to be cut short, have comprehensively failed to hold a powerful industry to account.</p>
<p>Fancourt even found that hacking continued during the Leveson inquiry itself – an extraordinary demonstration of press contempt for the legal and judicial process. That it should take the resources and determination of Prince Harry to elicit the truth in court is an irony that will not be lost on many journalists.</p>
<p>The truth about the extent of unlawful information gathering by the press is finally emerging – and there are further cases against the Sun and Mail titles due in court over the next 18 months. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, ordinary victims of press wrongdoing still have no protection. In 2021, my colleague Dr Gordon Ramsay and I <a href="https://camri.ac.uk/blog/2021/06/23/ipso-regulator-or-complaints-handler/">produced a report</a> detailing how Ipso is owned and controlled by the media companies it is supposed to regulate. </p>
<p>Although Ipso <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/ipso-publishers-have-overhauled-editorial-compliance-in-post-leveson-era/">says</a> that it works “to promote high editorial standards and provide accountability where there are shortcomings”, our findings suggested otherwise: that Ipso is either unwilling or unable to deal properly with complaints or to impose sanctions, and is therefore a wholly ineffectual regulator.</p>
<p>But politicians still fear the power of the press. Circulations may have plummeted, but newspapers and their websites set agendas that are followed by broadcasters. Political parties want their readers’ votes.</p>
<p>Any real and meaningful change will depend on the courage of a new government to reverse decades of inaction and introduce a regulatory framework that does not rely on a wealthy royal warrior to bring justice. If recent press <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/16/labour-backs-away-press-reforms-after-prince-harry-phone-hacking-victory">reports</a> are to be believed, Labour leader and prime ministerial hopeful Keir Starmer may be the next to duck any political responsibility for action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett is on the management and editorial boards of the British Journalism Review. He is a member of the British Broadcasting Challenge which campaigns for Public Service Broadcasting. He is on the board of Hacked Off which campaigns for a free and accountable press.</span></em></p>Prince Harry won a comprehensive victory in the first of three court cases against newspapers. What is the context for that judgement, and what are the implications for the UK press?Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927532022-10-19T14:28:24Z2022-10-19T14:28:24ZDoreen Lawrence and Prince Harry’s lawsuit against Daily Mail publisher underlines need for Leveson Inquiry part two<p>One of the key moments of the 2011 Leveson Inquiry into press standards came when the Daily Mail’s then-editor, Paul Dacre, took to the witness box to accuse Hugh Grant of pursuing “mendacious smears driven by a hatred of the media”. Dacre was responding to Grant’s <a href="https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/hugh-grant-claims-evidence-links-mail-to-hacking/s2/a546816/">allegation</a> that a 2007 Mail on Sunday story could only have been obtained by hacking his voicemails. </p>
<p>The Mail has always vehemently denied any involvement with phone hacking or any other unlawful activities. So it came as a shock when, two weeks ago, a high-profile group including Prince Harry, Elton John, Liz Hurley and Baroness Doreen Lawrence <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/06/doreen-lawrence-prince-harry-and-others-launch-legal-action-against-daily-mail-publisher">announced</a> that they were launching a legal action against the Mail’s publisher, Associated Newspapers. </p>
<p>Their claims of unlawful activity by the papers go well beyond phone hacking to the alleged hiring of private investigators to bug cars and homes. They also include allegations of the accessing of bank accounts and other financial transactions through illicit means, and the payment of police officials, with corrupt links to private investigators, for inside information.</p>
<p>Without doubt, the most eye-catching name among the claimants is that of Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. It was the Mail, at Dacre’s behest, which first splashed the names of Stephen’s alleged killers on its front page. As Guardian commentator Jane Martinson <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/11/allegations-paul-dacre-daily-mail-peerage-travesty-doreen-lawrence">reminded</a> us, it is just five years since Baroness Lawrence sat next to Dacre at a banquet to celebrate his 25 years as Mail editor. </p>
<p>These allegations have been vehemently denied by the publisher. In a <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/doreen-lawrence-prince-harry-and-elton-john-allege-criminal-privacy-breaches-by-mail-group/">statement</a> which branded the claims as “unsubstantiated and defamatory”, Associated Newspapers said: “We utterly and unambiguously refute these preposterous smears.”</p>
<p>The legal process will now run its course. Within the next few weeks, these claimants will serve their “particulars of claim”, followed by the publisher’s defence. At this point, there will be more disclosures about the allegations (and the claimants’ evidence) as well as the Mail’s response. In the meantime, Dacre’s long-expected peerage has reportedly <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/former-daily-mail-editor-paul-dacre-is-dropped-from-peerages-list-skfcrh0k9">been delayed</a>.</p>
<p>However these cases develop, this new litigation serves as a reminder that the Leveson Inquiry is unfinished business. While the inquiry was prompted by revelations in July 2011 about News of the World journalists hacking the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, it was set up with an explicit two-part remit. Part one, looking generally at the culture and practices of the press, ended with the <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/229039/0779.pdf">Leveson Report</a> in November 2012, and recommendations for a new framework of self-regulation.</p>
<p>But because police investigations into possible criminal behaviour were ongoing (and subsequently resulted in several trials), the first part could not address the details of precisely who authorised, committed or was a party to unlawful activity, nor to what extent any corruption extended to the police. The inquiry’s chair, Sir Brian Leveson, acknowledged that important lines of questioning were not pursued in the full expectation that they would be covered in part two, which had been explicitly promised by the then-prime minister, David Cameron. </p>
<h2>Unfinished business</h2>
<p>In the intervening ten years, Mirror Group has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/05/hugh-grant-wins-damages-from-mirror-phone-hacking-case">admitted</a> that senior editors and executives “actively turned a blind eye” to phone hacking on its newspapers, and have spent several hundred million pounds in settling claims. While Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) – publisher of the Sun and the now-defunct News of the World – has refused to make any such admission in relation to the Sun, it too continues to pay out vast sums in settlements and legal fees. </p>
<p>In December 2021, the actress Sienna Miller <a href="https://inforrm.org/2021/12/10/news-group-settle-news-of-the-world-and-sun-hacking-claims-statements-in-open-court/">called</a> her settlement from NGN “tantamount to an admission of liability on the part of the Sun”. Further phone hacking claims against the newspaper were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/11/the-sun-faces-fresh-claims-of-phone-hacking-during-rebekah-brooks-era">announced</a> just last week. </p>
<p>These claims may be historic, but those in senior editorial positions at the time remain influential in the industry. And yet nobody has been held accountable for extensive wrongdoing which – in the words of the Leveson report – “wreaked havoc in the lives of ordinary people”. Against such a murky backdrop of settlements, allegations and continuing claims of unlawful behaviour, any other industry would be facing a clamour for truth and accountability. </p>
<p>Not this time. On the contrary, virtually every UK newspaper has used its editorial columns to reject the case for part two, dismissing it as backward-looking and a irrelevant. In March 2018, the then-culture secretary, Matt Hancock, responded to ferocious press lobbying by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43240230">confirming</a> that Leveson part two would indeed be shelved. </p>
<p>But these new claims suggest that the second part of Leveson is still relevant. It was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/01/leveson-2-explained-what-was-it-meant-to-achieve">designed to examine</a> – once relevant criminal trials had finished – the relationships between journalists and the police, as well as between publishers and politicians and relevant regulatory bodies (such as the failed Press Complaints Commission) over the decade before the phone hacking scandal broke. </p>
<p>It was also supposed to investigate failures of corporate governance at newspaper groups which seemingly allowed misbehaviour to become routine.</p>
<p>Leveson followed a similar pattern to the Calcutt reports of <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/ilp15&div=31&id=&page=">1990</a> and <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/271963/2135.pdf">1993</a> which produced an equally scathing account of shocking press behaviour in the 1980s. Calcutt’s recommendations were also ignored after intense press lobbying, and the phone-hacking scandal was arguably a direct result of that political cowardice. Leveson part two could put an end to the cycle of press misbehaviour followed by weak and ineffectual political responses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192753/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>The second part of the Leveson Inquiry was cancelled in 2018, but there is still unfinished business.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1244562019-10-02T12:34:14Z2019-10-02T12:34:14ZMeghan Markle, Ben Stokes, Gareth Thomas: three reasons why UK press needs help to understand ‘public interest’<p>The Duke and Duchess of Sussex <a href="https://sussexofficial.uk/">have announced</a> their intention to launch legal action against the Mail on Sunday for <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6686817/Letter-showing-true-tragedy-Meghan-Markles-rift-father.html">publishing a private handwritten letter</a> the Duchess had sent to her estranged father. Prince Harry <a href="https://sussexofficial.uk/">said in a statement</a>: “I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”</p>
<p>This latest episode follows two similar instances in September where high-profile sporting figures accused UK tabloids of insensitivity and invasion of privacy. The treatment of Ben Stokes and Gareth Thomas brings back to memory the litany of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/14/leveson-inquiry-full-list-participants">press abuses</a> uncovered during the hearings of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">Leveson Inquiry in 2011-12</a>. Taken together, these sorry stories show the need for tougher regulation of media processes to ensure fairness for people directly affected by publications.</p>
<p>Thomas, a former Wales international rugby union player, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49739345">revealed</a> on September 18 that he had been compelled to publicly disclose that he was HIV positive after an unidentified tabloid had threatened to publish details of his diagnosis. This was essentially the same thing as threatening to reveal details of someone’s medical record or treatment. This type of information has always been <a href="https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/2004/22.html">seen by the courts</a> as being worthy of privacy protection.</p>
<p>What makes the conduct of the press particularly egregious in this case is the callous behaviour towards a person who belongs to a particularly vulnerable group. The right and opportunity to tell something so deeply personal appears to have been taken away by a journalist who, according to Thomas, informed his parents of his HIV-positive status before he had the chance to tell them himself.</p>
<p>The Sun’s <a href="https://imagevars.gulfnews.com/2019/09/18/The-Sun-tweet-Ben-Stokes_16d4512b8a3_original-ratio.jpg">front-page story</a> on the tragedy that affected the close family of Stokes, an England cricketer, about 30 years ago – before the player was born – was described by Stokes in a highly poignant <a href="https://twitter.com/benstokes38/status/1173893834377441280">statement</a> on Twitter as the “lowest form of journalism”.</p>
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<p>The newspaper defended its publication, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/49726913">stating</a> that the unfortunate events were already in the public domain following wide coverage in New Zealand at the time and that an estranged family member had shared details. Although Clause 2 of the <a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">Editors’ Code of Practice states</a> that “in considering an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy, account will be taken of … the extent to which the material complained about is already in the public domain”, this is not always easily reconciled with how privacy law works.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ben-stokes-v-the-sun-gross-intrusion-or-simple-reportage-how-media-privacy-law-works-123827">Ben Stokes v The Sun: gross intrusion or simple reportage? How media privacy law works</a>
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<p>The Sun’s explanation disregards the seminal 2016 Supreme Court judgment in PJS v News Group Newspapers Ltd (known as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/may/19/supreme-court-upholds-celebrity-threesome-injunction">“celebrity threesome”</a> case), in which the private information that a high-profile public figure (known only as PJS) sought to protect through an injunction had already been widely circulated in other jurisdictions – similar to the story concerning Stokes and his family. </p>
<p>The fact that the information was available was not decisive, the Supreme Court held. Such a proposition overlooked the invasiveness and distress which unrestricted publication by the English media would entail. The Sun should have known – not least because its own publisher was the defendant in the PJS case – that the same could apply to Stokes’ case. There was little doubt that publication in England would unleash, as the court put it, a “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2016-0080-judgment.pdf">media storm</a>”, which would reproduce intimate details likely to add greatly to the intrusiveness felt by Stokes and his family, who had not courted any publicity.</p>
<h2>The public interest</h2>
<p>Occasionally journalists may act in a way that is incompatible with the Editors’ Code of Practice. Breaches of <em>some</em> of the code’s provisions may be justified if an editor can demonstrate that what was done was “<a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">in the public interest</a>”. This includes (but is not confined to) exposure of serious impropriety. Intrusions into a person’s private life may also be warranted to <a href="https://www.editorscode.org.uk/downloads/codebook/codebook-2019.pdf">unmask hypocrisy and prevent the public from being misled</a>. But Stokes’ story and Thomas’ treatment were nowhere near these exemptions. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">Clause 4</a> of the editors’ code places the onus of responsibility for appropriate sensitivity in cases involving trauma squarely on the press and requires journalists covering tragedy and suffering to make inquiries with “sympathy and discretion”. But Stokes’ <a href="https://twitter.com/benstokes38/status/1173893834377441280">tweet stated</a> that “serious inaccuracies” were included in The Sun’s article which, in his words, exacerbated the impact of the publication for his family. The same code also <a href="https://www.societyofeditors.org/resources/editors-code-of-practice/">makes it very clear</a> that a public interest defence <em>cannot</em> be put forward in cases which engage Clause 4.</p>
<p>Thomas’ public figure status cannot also, by and of itself, justify a threat to publish sensitive details such as his HIV status. The journalist who initially approached the athlete’s parents ought to have appreciated that it was not part of his role to break the news to his family, something which reportedly caused Thomas enormous upset.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1174262770700824576"}"></div></p>
<p>In both cases, in my view, the press flagrantly ignored its responsibilities towards the public interest, in whose name it exercises its privileged position in society. There is always of course a considerable role to be played by the courts, which maintain powers to order <a href="https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1964/1.html">exemplary damages</a> (if sought through a privacy claim) in order to punish outrageous press misconduct that disregards claimants’ rights for commercial profit.</p>
<h2>Wrecking ball</h2>
<p>The treatment of the two sportsmen’s deeply personal stories has swung a wrecking ball through responsible journalism. It raises serious questions as to whether the tabloid press has learned any lessons from the Leveson Inquiry, <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/leveson-statement-in-full-8368769.html">which concluded</a> “beyond doubt” that the British press had “damaged the public interest, caused real hardship and … wreaked havoc in the lives of innocent people” for many decades.</p>
<p>In 2018, the government <a href="http://merlin.obs.coe.int/cgi-bin/article.php?iris_r=2018%205%2019&language=en">regrettably decided</a> against putting into motion <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/section/40/enacted">section 40</a> of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, under which publishers not signing up to be members of a formally recognised regulator (for example <a href="https://impress.press/about-us/faq.html#what-benefits-impress-membership">IMPRESS</a>) would be hit with the potentially severe penalty of having all the costs of a complainant’s privacy (or defamation) action automatically awarded against them, irrespective of whether they won or lost the case. Although this provision remains on the statute books, it has been <a href="https://pa.media/2017/01/09/pa-bringing-section-40-force-will-simply-enact-expensive-pointless-injustice/">vehemently opposed</a> by much of the news industry.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-believe-what-you-read-section-40-will-protect-the-local-press-not-kill-it-71226">Don't believe what you read: section 40 will protect the local press, not kill it</a>
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<p>Whatever happens in the case of the threatened action by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, alongside the experiences of both Stokes and Thomas, one can now see less reason than in the past as to why this provision should not be put into effect. If it is implemented by a future government, it is likely to create an additional incentive for the press to think twice before publishing a story that unreasonably interferes with an individual’s privacy and lacks any meaningful public interest.</p>
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<p><em>The Conversation is a member of the independent press regulator IMPRESS.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandros Antoniou 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>A number of recent controversial stories show why the UK media needs a regulator with teeth.Alexandros Antoniou, Lecturer in Media Law, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1116582019-02-13T15:36:18Z2019-02-13T15:36:18ZCairncross review: two cheers and two fears for the future of UK journalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258778/original/file-20190213-181609-1hjbk2n.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">Willy Barton via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the then culture secretary, Matt Hancock, first announced a government review of the future of “high-quality” journalism, there was widespread <a href="https://inforrm.org/2018/09/21/what-high-quality-journalism-a-response-to-the-cairncross-reviews-call-for-evidence-julian-petley/">scepticism</a> about his motives. Having just surrendered to a powerful press lobby in <a href="https://inforrm.org/2018/03/01/news-government-abandons-leveson-part-two-sir-brian-leveson-fundamentally-disagrees/">abandoning the Leveson recommendations</a> on self-regulation, was this government making an honest attempt to resolve the growing and serious problem of journalism’s broken business model?</p>
<p>Certainly Dame Frances Cairncross, entrusted with the task, had a reputation for being fiercely independent and forensic – but the “<a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/media/dame-frances-cairncross-ubveiled-as-chair-of-high-quality-journalism-review/">expert panel</a>” appointed to advise her contained a disproportionate number of old school press types who were accustomed to winning concessions.</p>
<p>In fact, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cairncross-review-a-sustainable-future-for-journalism">Cairncross Review</a> has produced some innovative and potentially exciting ideas which – if properly and independently implemented – could genuinely deliver more diverse, high-quality public interest journalism, particularly at the local level where it is desperately needed. But it will require political will to resist a powerful print lobby motivated by corporate self interest, and avoidance of at least two dangerous bear traps. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258777/original/file-20190213-181619-138add8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&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">Vital exercise for the future of British democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport</span></span>
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<p>Perhaps surprisingly, Dame Frances resisted calls for a tough regulatory framework for the online tech companies that are mostly responsible for the collapse of journalism’s advertising-funded business model. She advocates only “regulatory supervision” to ensure that online distribution platforms monitor reliability of news sources, alongside a media literacy strategy to help users navigate their way around content origination and news sources (some of us call it “media studies”). Beyond that, two proposals stand out: for funding and for distribution of funds.</p>
<h2>Public interest</h2>
<p>First, Cairncross recommends a new “innovation” fund of £10m per year which should “work closely” with Google and Facebook on sustainable business approaches. She also proposes two forms of tax relief to promote public interest journalism: removing VAT on digital subscriptions – a no-brainer, since hard copy publications are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and-services">already exempt</a> – and finding ways of extending charitable status to non-profit publishers, who could then enjoy the significant tax advantages. This was originally canvassed by the <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201012/ldselect/ldcomuni/256/25602.htm">Lords Communications Committee</a> in 2012 and has since been <a href="https://theconversation.com/reform-charity-law-to-allow-funding-of-public-interest-journalism-102422">promoted</a> by many academics and civil society groups.</p>
<p>Second, and at the heart of this review, is the proposal for a new Institute for Public Interest News which would forge partnerships with publishers and platforms, distribute revenue, commission research and presumably – though this is not made explicit – monitor output to ensure compliance with public interest objectives and accountability for public money. </p>
<p>Cairncross stresses the fundamental importance of a governance structure that should be “carefully designed to ensure complete freedom from any obligations, political or commercial”. Anyone familiar with the Leveson structure of press self-regulation will appreciate the emphasis on complete freedom from industry and government influence for any organisation tasked with monitoring journalism, let alone defining “public interest news”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/open-access-and-academic-journals-the-publishers-respond-2804">Open access and academic journals: the publishers respond</a>
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<p>The Press Recognition Panel (PRP) which was set up in the wake of Leveson to audit press self-regulators was established on precisely that premise. In fact, Cairncross cites the carefully constructed PRP appointments process as a potential model for her institute, and there is no reason why the PRP itself could not be reengineered as her institute.</p>
<h2>Potential pitfalls</h2>
<p>So what are the bear traps? Inevitably, given the press industry’s eternal whinge about the BBC “crowding out” commercial news providers, Cairncross finds it necessary to acknowledge those complaints while making it clear she actually thinks the BBC is providing precisely the kind of high-quality news across platforms that democracy (and the public) demands.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258784/original/file-20190213-181593-19ff65x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Cairncross Review has made it clear that the BBC provides a high-quality news service which must be protected.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jarretera via Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>She felt compelled, however, to recommend that Ofcom should assess BBC online content and confirm “appropriate boundaries for [its] future direction”. We can therefore expect an Ofcom review, and a systematic lobbying campaign by the News Media Association (NMA) – the powerful press lobbying group – echoing The Sun’s self-serving <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8407498/british-media-under-siege-bbc-web-giants/">editorial</a> this week: “The BBC’s ever-expanding online news empire has been calamitous for local papers in particular … [and] must not be allowed to crowd out and destroy commercial rivals with coverage far beyond its remit.” We will be relying on Ofcom to stand up to newspaper bullies and defend the public interest.</p>
<p>Second, Cairncross recommends an expansion of the BBC-funded Local Democracy Service which currently pays for 144 reporter contracts with local publishers. Because the scheme was dreamt up in conjunction with the NMA, the big three regional groups – Newsquest, JPIMedia (formerly Johnston Press) and Reach plc (formerly Trinity Mirror) – have hoovered up the vast majority of those <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/full-breakdown-of-bbc-local-democracy-reporter-allocations-by-title-and-council/">contracts</a>, leaving just a handful for the smaller independent and hyperlocal sectors. Thus, £8m of licence payers’ money is effectively subsidising three very large regional publishing groups without any oversight or accountability, while those publishers are simultaneously making their own journalists <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/newsquest-cumbria-journalists-walk-out-over-job-cuts-and-poor-pay-but-publisher-says-staff-more-secure-than-before-takeover/">redundant</a>.</p>
<p>From the beginning, the LDS scheme has been a seriously flawed exercise, and it’s clear that Cairncross understands both the deliberate marginalisation of smaller publishers and the risk of expanding the scheme without major changes. She describes the BBC’s own evaluation as “fairly light touch” (a euphemism for barely existent) and recommends “a careful independent review.” </p>
<p>In the longer term, she sees the whole LDS scheme being handed to the new institute, which would ensure both transparency and genuinely independent scrutiny. It could also generate additional funding from platforms, foundations and even government, and would alleviate the risk of further money being appropriated from a cash-strapped BBC.</p>
<h2>Risk and reward</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258782/original/file-20190213-181627-u53ute.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The mainstream commercial news media has consistently resisted reform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lenscap Photography via Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Ultimately, the usefulness of this review will stand or fall on whether the government is willing to face down a press lobby which is accustomed to flexing its muscles and – as the Leveson enquiry graphically demonstrated – has successfully bullied successive UK governments for decades. Cairncross fully understands the fundamental importance not only of public interest news, but of a wholly independent scrutiny body responsible for interpreting the remit, distributing funds and monitoring output. </p>
<p>Whether it is her institute, a beefed-up PRP, or some other incarnation is less important than its insulation from any political interference and – crucially – independence from an industry which will be intent on wrenching back control.</p>
<p>It won’t be easy, but the public benefit rewards for getting it right will be incalculable.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The Conversation’s deputy editor Jo Adetunji was a member of the Carincross Review Advisory Panel.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111658/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>The review contains some great ideas. It remains to be seen whether these will ever see the light of day.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1086142018-12-11T14:38:34Z2018-12-11T14:38:34ZBrexit, Leveson II and why 2019 could be the year for press reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249947/original/file-20181211-76956-1n0g1jm.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">Lenscap Photography via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On no fewer than five occasions in the course of <a href="https://www.discoverleveson.com">his inquiry</a> into the press in 2011-12, Brian Leveson expressed to witnesses and the public a concern that his report might end up gathering dust on the second shelf of a professor of journalism’s bookcase – nothing more than historical evidence of wasted effort.</p>
<p>Today the <a href="https://inforrm.org/2017/03/27/how-dacre-and-the-mail-are-making-the-case-for-section-40-brian-cathcart/">key legislative incentive</a> for his regulatory scheme has still to be put into operation, while the second part of his inquiry <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/01/leveson-inquiry-part-2-cancellation-condemned-by-labour-as-breach-of-trust">has been cancelled</a>. And the High Court has <a href="https://hackinginquiry.org/leveson-two-jr-challenge-rules-in-favour-of-gov/">dismissed an attempt</a> by victims of press abuse to force the government to keep the promises made to them at the time of the inquiry.</p>
<p>Does this mean that, after six years, the judge’s fears have been realised? Emphatically no. While no one could deny that the corporate press – by which I mean the main national and regional newspaper groups – have so far managed to avoid independent, effective regulation of the kind the Leveson report recommended, it’s very clear that they are hanging on by their fingertips.</p>
<p>Never before, on my reading of the history, have they been so politically isolated. Only their intimate alliance with the current Conservative leadership protects them – and while it has been enough so far to enable them to block the Leveson reforms, we need to remember that this is a minority government and a fractured party.</p>
<p>Among the other parties in the House of Commons, meanwhile, there is a powerful consensus in favour of change, and the Leveson reforms – the fruit of a careful, year-long inquiry, and with most of the necessary pieces now in place – are the only game in town. In other words, unless these particular tendencies in the Tory party somehow remain in power indefinitely, meaningful change is extremely likely. It may not happen today or tomorrow, but it’s on its way.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"969237305633492992"}"></div></p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44051990">Commons vote</a> on Leveson II last May was revealing. Though the press mounted the most blustering and hysterical campaign it could manage, urging MPs to back the cancellation, the majority on the day was just nine votes – one of the government’s closest shaves at that time.</p>
<p>Why, you may ask, if my description of the slender support for the press industry’s position is correct, was there a majority at all? The answer is Brexit.</p>
<h2>Balance of power</h2>
<p>In the Conservative party, the debate <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-05-09/debates/CE43B0ED-87D3-4F63-B8A4-2A66964790C2/DataProtectionBill(Lords)">broke along Brexit lines</a> with Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith backing cancellation while Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve were against. Clarke and Grieve both rebelled, voting with Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and other smaller parties, but the government was saved by two things.</p>
<p>First there were the numerous Remainer Tories who favoured Leveson II but preferred to save their rebellions for a vote directly relating to Brexit. And second there was the Democratic Unionist Party, which put its pro-Brexit alliance with Theresa May before its longstanding commitment to press reform.</p>
<p>What has Leveson II to do with Brexit? Defeat on the issue would have undermined the May government and the Brexiteers needed that government to deliver Brexit (or at least, so it appeared to them at the time). And the Brexiteers also needed the press, which (again, at that time) was strongly pro-Brexit and fairly strongly pro-May. If those papers had suddenly found themselves facing a public inquiry into past criminal activities their willingness to back the May government would have been tested – probably beyond breaking point.</p>
<p>The shaky foundations of the press victory were obvious, and one of those foundations – the alliance between the Conservative leadership and the DUP – already seems to have <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1056903/brexit-news-dup-arlene-foster-theresa-may-irish-backstop-democratic-unionist-party">crumbled away</a>. So even if this parliament survives a couple more years I doubt if the industry’s leadership are confident they could pull off the same result again.</p>
<h2>Need for reform</h2>
<p>Could there be another vote? Look at it this way. The conduct of the press shows <a href="https://hackinginquiry.org/thrown-to-the-wolves/">no sign of improving</a>. Trust in national newspaper journalism is <a href="https://inforrm.org/2017/12/12/trust-in-print-journalism-its-low-and-that-matters-brian-cathcart/">appallingly low</a>. And IPSO, the non-Leveson regulator, <a href="https://inforrm.org/2018/04/14/how-ipso-cherry-picks-complaints-brian-cathcart/">is – in my opinion – a disgrace</a>. As toothless as its discredited predecessor, the Press Complaints Commission, it is a captive of the industry that manifestly fails to uphold journalistic standards or protect the public from disinformation, cruelty and abuse. So the need for reform remains as obvious as ever.</p>
<p>Parliament has other things on its mind for the moment – but 2019 could bring possibilities. The May government seems eager to create <a href="https://inforrm.org/2018/03/31/the-cairncross-review-its-about-subsidising-the-press-brian-cathcart/">new public subsidies for the press</a> – but MPs might wish to ensure that public money only found its way to news organisations that were independently and effectively regulated along the lines spelled out by Leveson in his report.</p>
<p>Another possibility relates to the civil courts, where – though you may not have read about it in the press – <a href="https://www.byline.com/project/76/article/2342">a new scandal is unfolding</a> about phone hacking. People continue to sue papers over this and, thanks to forced disclosure and to whistleblowers, shocking information is emerging about what went on and who got away with it – exactly the sort of information that Leveson II was meant to uncover. If the revelations continue, parliament might eventually feel it has to act.</p>
<p>In short, something may well come up, but even if it does not there is always the inevitable general election. And whether that comes sooner or later, the press industry knows that all its eggs now reside in one very battered Tory basket.</p>
<p>Before then, if you need to know what all this is about, the entire inquiry archive is now available online, fully searchable and freshly curated, as <a href="http://DiscoverLeveson.com">DiscoverLeveson.com</a> – a rich new resource for researchers, students and the general public.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>DiscoverLeveson.com, a Kingston University project, received funding from the David and Elaine Potter Foundation and the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust. The Trust also supported Brian Cathcart's work in 2014-15 on 'The News from Waterloo' (Faber, 2015). Brian Cathcart was a founder and the first director of Hacked Off and he remains an active supporter.</span></em></p>As the May government crumbles, there is new impetus for reviving part two of Lord Leveson’s inquiry into press misconduct.Brian Cathcart, Professor of Journalism, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/974692018-05-30T14:25:12Z2018-05-30T14:25:12ZThe Sun’s ethical failings over the Raheem Sterling gun tattoo story<p>The Sun newspaper has caused controversy with a front page story about England striker Raheem Sterling displaying an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44289119">assault rifle tattoo</a> on his right leg. The story quotes anti-gun campaigners demanding the Manchester City player is dropped from the England squad for the World Cup in Russia next month. The story sparked clashes on social media between the likes of <a href="https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/1001479202745470977">Gary Lineker and Piers Morgan</a>. </p>
<p>Some – like Lineker – accused the tabloid of persecuting Sterling. But others, including the father of murdered ten-year-old Damilola Taylor, said the footballer was <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6406492/raheem-sterling-gun-tattoo-damilola-taylor-dad-richard-taylor/">glamorising guns</a>.</p>
<p>I believe there were a series of ethical failings in this story that make accusations of racism, bullying and victimisation against Sterling difficult for The Sun to defend. First, there was no clear indication of an attempt to contact Sterling for an explanation in the original story. </p>
<p>Journalists are expected to source both sides of the story, particularly around controversial or contentious issues. Yet The Sun’s treatment is noticeable for not only failing to represent Sterling’s side of the story but also showing no indication that it had even tried to. Readers would expect to read a final paragraph stating “Sterling could not be reached for comment” at least.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BjS93neFGDg/?hl=en\u0026taken-by=sterling7","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Sterling’s reaction on Instagram later in the day transformed the context of the story. The 23-year-old <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44285455">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I was 2 my father died from being gunned down to death. I made a promise to myself I would never touch a gun in my life time, I shoot with my right foot so it has a deeper meaning N still unfinished.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But this detail did nothing to alter the <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/6397808/raheem-sterling-m16-assault-rifle-tattoo/">tone of The Sun’s online coverage</a> which broadly stuck to the same story as the print version’s – save for a paragraph of Sterling quotes inserted into the story lower down.</p>
<p>Responding to the criticism, The Sun’s Head of PR Andy Sylvester posted a <a href="https://twitter.com/silvesterldn?lang=en">series of tweets</a> defending the story.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1001388041175556096"}"></div></p>
<h2>Febrile climate</h2>
<p>There was also scant evidence of sensitive or responsible handling of the subject matter. The original story acknowledges Sterling was a boy when his father was shot dead in Jamaica yet it does not seem to consider that this detail seems at odds with the anti-gun campaigner’s claim that Sterling must be glamorising gun violence.</p>
<p>Also, by running such a one-sided story, The Sun disregarded the febrile climate surrounding the footballer after he was the victim of a racist attack for which a man was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/dec/20/karl-anderson-jailed-16-weeks-racially-assaulting-manchester-city-raheem-sterling">jailed for six weeks</a> in December 2017. </p>
<p>The player has been subjected to particularly ferocious media coverage in the past with racial undercurrents. This has not gone unnoticed by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/dec/22/why-we-should-take-our-hats-off-to-raheem-sterling">newspaper commentators</a>. The Guardian’s Barney Ronay wrote in 2017:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Football thrives on easy targets, on muster points for all that gathered intangible rage. For two years Sterling was repeatedly and relentlessly trashed and scorned in ways that went far beyond football. Lacks balls and fight, lacks toughness. This has often been said in the past about black footballers in England. It was said, quite a lot, about Sterling.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Examples include The Sun claiming that Sterling was partying 24 hours after saying he was “too tired” to play for England in a Euro 2016 qualifier; the Daily Mirror labelling Sterling “greedy” in pay talks in 2015; and The Sun (again) running a story headlined “Obscene Raheem” about him showing off his house on social media in 2016.</p>
<h2>Football scandals and Brexit</h2>
<p>Fleet Street’s tabloids have a long tradition of revelling in scandal involving England footballers ahead of major football tournaments. Former England midfielder Paul Gascoigne can testify to repeatedly falling victim to adverse press coverage. In one example, Gazza was pictured being plied with spirits while <a href="https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/519198/Gazza-dentist-chair-Euro-96-2016-booze-up-party-england-three-lions">strapped to a “dentist’s chair”</a> at a nightclub prior to Euro 96. Two years later, he was <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-1063781/EXCLUSIVE-I-watched-Glenn-Hoddles-rage-Gazza-mess-unfolded-.html">snapped eating a kebab</a> at 2am in Soho ahead of the 1998 World Cup. </p>
<p>It is no surprise that Sterling is the target for the 2018 instalment – but it now feels very different. The World Cup is the first post-EU referendum major football tournament (the vote took place during Euro 2016). Brexit’s right-leaning definitions of Englishness and patriotism can find full expression in attitudes towards the England’s national team. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1001586818465370112"}"></div></p>
<h2>Media ethics</h2>
<p>It may also be that the tabloids feel emboldened after the second part of the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics was kicked into the long grass by the government and will now not go ahead (providing it survives <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/may/21/leveson-2-government-taken-court-over-cancelled-inquiry">a legal challenge</a>). </p>
<p>Leveson 2 may have focused on the relationship between journalists and police but it would have kept ethics firmly on the agenda at a time when reporting in national newspapers has adopted increasingly irresponsible and inflammatory stances. </p>
<p>The fear is now, of course, that the government’s unwillingness to instigate an ethical review against the press will do nothing to deter divisive and dog-whistle reporting that has led to headlines such as the Daily Mail’s notorious “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/04/enemies-of-the-people-british-newspapers-react-judges-brexit-ruling">Enemies of the People</a>” in December 2016, which accused three judges of defying Brexit voters in insisting that the government would need parliamentary consent to activate Article 50.</p>
<p>And what of the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/windrush-52562">Windrush scandal</a>? Surely a news story as recent as this should have led the media towards being particularly sensitive when handling stories involving immigrants from the Caribbean. (Sterling moved to England from Jamaica at the age of five.)</p>
<p>The problem with The Sun’s gun tattoo story is that it presents the reader with taken-for-granted assumptions that link black youths to gun crime. It inevitably leads to social media debates around the “right and appropriate sort of person” to be playing football for England which is ultimately one of racial and ethnic inclusion and exclusion – central themes surrounding Brexit. There is little in The Sun’s basic ethical conduct that suggests otherwise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon McEnnis worked at The Sun between 2000 and 2009.</span></em></p>The Sun’s treatment of Raheem Sterling exposes the ethical failings of its reporting.Simon McEnnis, Principal Lecturer in Journalism, University of BrightonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/916062018-02-10T08:41:48Z2018-02-10T08:41:48ZWhy the Mirror buy up of the Express is yet another sign of a newspaper industry in peril<p>The Daily Express and the Daily Mirror are almost the same age. Among the UK’s first national, daily, popular newspapers, they both came into being as a direct response to the success of the Daily Mail. The Express was launched as a direct competitor in 1900, while the Mirror was set up as a “woman’s paper” by the Mail’s proprietor Alfred Harmsworth. </p>
<p>By the middle of the 20th century, they were Britain’s most successful ever newspapers. Selling millions of copies, they were considered integral parts of British culture, informing and entertaining huge numbers of lower-middle and working-class readers. Together they marked the commercial and cultural high point of the “tabloid century”, when popular newspapers were a powerful force in British life.</p>
<p>Now, with the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/09/trinity-mirror-buys-express-star-127m-deal-richard-desmond-ok">Mirror Group confirming</a> its purchase of the Express (along with the other parts of Richard Desmond’s publishing portfolio) the two papers have considerably different reputations. </p>
<p>The Mirror, for example, is still suffering from the fall-out of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8634176/Phone-hacking-timeline-of-a-scandal.html">the phone-hacking scandal</a>. Editors and executives <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/hugh-grant-wins-trinity-mirror-hacking-case-names-piers-morgan-guilty-editor/">continue to be accused</a> of allowing journalistic behaviour that repeatedly crossed legal and moral boundaries. </p>
<p>The Express, meanwhile, is now commonly associated with hard-line editorial stances against immigration and the recent refugee crises in Europe and North Africa. It has been accused (including by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/24/katie-hopkins-cockroach-migrants-denounced-united-nations-human-rights-commissioner">UN’s Human Rights High Commissioner</a>) of publishing hate speech. </p>
<p>Even united under the same publisher, it is extremely unlikely that either of these papers will reclaim the popularity, power and respect they once enjoyed.</p>
<p>This consolidation of ownership of two of the country’s most-read print newspapers has raised questions of editorial influence. Will the Mirror publisher try to move the staunchly right-wing Express leftwards? Such fears (flatly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42991304">denied by Trinity Mirror’s CEO</a>) are indicative of wider attitudes towards the tabloid media which assume their content is dictated entirely from the top. </p>
<p>But while newspaper owners such as Rupert Murdoch and editors such as Paul Dacre direct the content of their newspapers, they are also conscious of the necessity of a strong relationship with their readers. Any move to change the Express’s politics would be to ignore the interests (and loyalty) of the hundreds of thousands of people who continue to buy and read them. It is unlikely that this merger will lead to a radical change in the politics of the British press.</p>
<p>What is more likely – and more disheartening – is a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/02/09/daily-mirror-owner-strikes-200m-deal-buy-daily-express-daily/">reduction in the number</a> of journalists. While key writers – particularly distinct political commentators – are likely to be kept at both papers, reporting teams will probably merge – and staff will be cut. </p>
<h2>Deadline approaches…</h2>
<p>While Trinity Mirror’s push for cutting costs is understandable in a press environment of declining advertising revenue and print circulations, to see staff cuts across two of the country’s biggest and most historic titles would be a disappointment. </p>
<p>As students continue to study journalism, the sight of further job restrictions on the horizon – particularly from two big name publications – will no doubt dent morale.</p>
<p>Once they were two of the earliest pioneers of tabloid journalism, and found huge success in speaking to large audiences better than any generation of British newspaper before it. At their peaks, they were the dominant forces in the business, with millions of readers enjoying their papers every single day. </p>
<p>Today these two former titans feel more like weary former foes reunited at the end of a long fight. They have joined forces to try and prolong their existence in a media landscape far flung from their past glories. And it may well help them to continue for longer than either would alone. </p>
<p>The fact remains, however, that this merger was unthinkable until only very recently. Just as their birth marked the beginning of print tabloid dominance, their union, propping each other up for the sake of survival, may well be seen in future as a marker of the tabloid newspaper’s demise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Shoop-Worrall has received funding from the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Historical Research. </span></em></p>The two papers were once titans of publishing. But their future looks less rosy.Christopher Shoop-Worrall, PhD Researcher in Journalism History, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/907042018-01-30T10:27:04Z2018-01-30T10:27:04ZThe Sun’s settlement of phone-hacking cases means all eyes now on Leveson II<p>The decision by News Group to close its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/feb/04/news-international-phone-hacking-compensation">phone-hacking compensation scheme</a> in 2013 has proved to have been expensively premature – with nine more victims, including actor David Tennant and Olympic hurdler Colin Jackson, <a href="http://pressgazette.co.uk/actor-david-tennant-among-nine-phone-hacking-claims-settled-by-news-group-newspapers/">winning damages</a> at the High Court recently.</p>
<p>Despite that attempt to draw a line under the greatest scandal to hit British newspapers, the saga still has a distance to run – the law firm behind these cases, <a href="https://www.collyerbristow.com/item/2009-press-coverage-on-phone-hacking-victims-issuing-claims-to-high-court">Collyer Bristow</a>, apparently still has 50 more cases to go from the 200 phone-hacking clients it gained in the seven years since the News of the World folded.</p>
<p>At the same time as the Collyer Bristow cases were being settled, four other celebrities, represented by a different firm, 5RB, including comedian Vic Reeves and TV presenter Kate Thornton, also concluded their cases without the need for a full hearing after News Group struck deals. All are believed to have accepted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/18/phone-hacking-cases-against-murdoch-papers-settled-at-last-minute">six-figure damages</a> on top of costs estimated at around half a million pounds.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203809/original/file-20180129-41413-1lldk3f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Private Eye magazine, January 18 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Private Eye</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These settlements are hardly helpful in the ongoing struggle by print media to bring the wider issue of press regulation reform to a conclusion – but nor do they add very much to the already detailed picture of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/phone-hacking-2415">hacking and blagging operation</a> of industrial proportions, other than the identities of the targets.</p>
<p>The latest proceedings relate to events back as far as 2006 when phone-hacking was uncovered and which led to the first journalist, Clive Goodman, going to jail in 2007 along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.</p>
<p>But they keep the phone-hacking pot boiling at a time when Labour and Liberal Democrat peers have just raised the threat of another inquiry into media data handling practices via <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/prime-minister-vows-to-overturn-lords-votes-on-data-bill-that-would-undermine-free-press/">Lords amendments to the Data Protection Bill</a>, which as framed would be a much wider probe than the Leveson Inquiry was. The legislation is now back with the Commons and must be passed on to the statute books by May 2018.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/murdochs-defence-strategy-sorry-we-had-no-idea-what-was-going-on-2415">Murdochs' defence strategy: 'Sorry, we had no idea what was going on'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Section 40</h2>
<p>Another amendment will establish a punitive costs regime for media companies found to have committed data breaches, mirroring the measures contained in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/section-40-of-the-crime-and-courts-act-2013-explained_uk_586e5e76e4b0f100063b62af">Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act</a>, whereby media companies that have not subscribed to a state-approved regulator will have to meet the costs of both sides in civil court cases, win or lose.</p>
<p>Despite it being law, Section 40 has yet to be triggered by the recently appointed culture secretary, Matt Hancock – and although the Conservative party <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/conservative-manifesto-section-40-scrapped-and-action-promised-on-central-concern-of-press-gazette-duopoly-campaign/">promised its repeal</a> in its 2017 general election manifesto – the failure to win a majority means the threat remains. Hancock must decide what to do with Section 40, but also whether the Leveson Inquiry is to be revived as Leveson II after being on hold since Sir Brian Leveson’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/nov/29/leveson-report-key-points">findings were published in 2012</a>. </p>
<p>Leveson was able to make his recommendations for reform at that point but not carry on with the second part of his task – a detailed probe into the relationship between the police and the press – because of the number of criminal cases still live at the time.</p>
<p>According to the Press Gazette, an estimated <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/in-depth-the-63-uk-journalists-arrested-andor-charged-following-the-news-of-the-world-hacking-scandal/">67 journalists were arrested</a>, 57 were cleared and ten convicted. In 2013, a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/564508/Consultation_on_the_Leveson_Inquiry_and_its_implementation.pdf">government consultation paper</a> reported that a total of 40 convictions were secured as a result of the various investigations stemming from phone-hacking – such as Operations <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/feb/26/operation-elveden-a-sad-and-sorry-tale">Elvedon</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/operation-weeting">Weeting</a> – including 11 police officers and 19 public officials.</p>
<p>Each one of those cases involved a full public investigation into the circumstances – and the key participants received a far more exacting cross-examination from the prosecution as accused persons in a criminal trial than they would as witnesses in a non-adversarial civil inquiry.</p>
<h2>Unfinished business</h2>
<p>The original <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/270939/0780_i.pdf">Leveson II remit</a> was split into five parts: to investigate the extent of improper conduct in News International and other media organisations, how the original 2006 police investigation was conducted, the extent of corrupt payments to the police, management failure at News International. It was also to make recommendations about the future relationship between police and press.</p>
<p>In 2016 the Department of Culture, Media and Sport <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-the-leveson-inquiry-and-its-implementation">ran a consultation</a> about Section 40 and the prospect of reviving Leveson II and received <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/140000-respond-to-governments-leveson-part-two-and-section-40-consultation/">140,000 submissions</a> which Leveson himself has been reviewing, and his conclusions are expected imminently.</p>
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<p>It is possible he will argue that the last part of his remit, producing proposals for managing press-police relations, has not been met. But he might also recognise there is more than enough information in the vast quantities of material produced by the criminal and civil cases to produce a plan without having to force witnesses to repeat in another judicial inquiry what they have already told a criminal court.</p>
<p>The pressure from campaigners Hacked Off to reopen the inquiry remains high, and after the Lords amendment was voted through, <a href="https://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/house-of-lords-vote-to-keep-parliaments-promises-to-press-abuse-victims/">executive director Evan Harris said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The victims of press corruption … deserve to know the truth about the illegal and corrupt practices which occurred, as do the thousands of ordinary victims of data breaches committed by or on behalf of newspapers … We urge the government to proceed with the second part of the Leveson Inquiry immediately.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leveson I <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-seeks-views-on-press-regulation-issues">cost a total of £5.4m</a>, compared to the £9.7m originally set aside, so the question for Leveson is whether spending some of the £4.3m he didn’t use in 2012 will be money – or time – well spent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John McLellan is director of the Scottish Newspaper Society, the trade association for Scottish news brands, and is a member of the News Media Association’s legal, policy and regulatory affairs committee.</span></em></p>News Group recently settled a number of cases relating to phone-hacking. What does this mean for the long awaited second part of the Leveson Inquiry?John McLellan, Honorary Professor of Journalism, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/842782017-09-21T19:42:57Z2017-09-21T19:42:57ZWhose interests? Why defining the ‘public interest’ is such a challenge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186736/original/file-20170920-910-y2p3r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What may be deemed in the public interest today may not be so in a decade's time.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The “public interest” is a political concept that’s regularly trotted out along with other democratic principles such as transparency and accountability. And, like transparency and accountability, it’s difficult to pin down exactly what it means.</p>
<p>Deputy NSW Ombudsman <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AIAdminLawF/2006/2.pdf">Chris Wheeler</a> has pointed out:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… while it is one of the most used terms in the lexicon of public administration, it is arguably the least defined and least understood … identifying or determining the appropriate public interest in any particular case is often no easy task.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Centuries of scholarship examine the public interest alongside the “common good”, “common interest”, and “public good”, associated with some big names in political philosophy. Common among their thinking was the idea that governments should serve the people, and the people should be the beneficiaries of governing.</p>
<h2>Why is the public interest so hard to define?</h2>
<p>The public interest is such a complex and tricky concept to navigate because it has intentionally evolved as ambiguous and mutable. It has no overarching definition because it is contextually determined in scope and purpose. </p>
<p>This means, in any particular instance, political, legal and regulatory authorities make judgement calls. And what may be deemed in the public interest today may not be in a decade; it changes with social mores and values. </p>
<p>For example, during the UK’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-inquiry-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press-executive-summary">Leveson Inquiry</a> into the media, the public interest came under close scrutiny. The inquiry found media practice should better reflect the contemporary views of the British public. </p>
<p>As Guardian blogger Andrew Sparrow <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/20/open-door-definition-public-interest">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>50 years ago it was assumed that there was a public interest in knowing that an MP was gay, but little or no public interest in whether he drove home drunk, hit his wife or furnished his house using wood from non-sustainable sources. Now, obviously, it’s the other way round.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Legal bodies and judgements also steer clear of definitions. The <a href="https://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/8-balancing-privacy-other-interests/meaning-public-interest">Australian Law Reform Commission</a> has expressly noted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Public interest should not be defined. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, in a Federal Court Freedom of Information case, justice Brian Tamberlin <a href="https://jade.io/article/99792">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The public interest is not one homogenous undivided concept. It will often be multi-faceted and the decision-maker will have to consider and evaluate the relative weight of these facets before reaching a final conclusion as to where the public interest resides.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most will never have reason or occasion to engage with the public interest in an official sense; we leave that to politicians, officials, judges, heads of inquiries, and so on. Wheeler places the onus squarely on their shoulders:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Public officials have an overarching obligation to act in the public interest.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Public interest is about more than compliance</h2>
<p>Monday night’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2017/09/14/4733836.htm">Four Corners</a> program put the Gold Coast City Council and its “developers, donations and big decisions” under a public interest spotlight.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">ABC Four Corners program All That Glitters.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What was intriguing about the program was the conflation of the public interest with “real or perceived conflicts of interest” as relating to development issues. </p>
<p>Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate and his deputy, Donna Gates, both described staying in council chambers to participate in discussion and vote on development issues citing the “public interest” as holding overriding importance. </p>
<p>Giving evidence before the Crime and Corruption Commission, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-18/gold-coast-deputy-mayor-votes-in-favour-of-donor-development/8940600">Gates said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have, in the main, stayed in the room to vote in the public interest because I firmly believe that that’s what I need to do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Journalist Mark Willacy and Tate pointed out that all behaviour is legally compliant. Willacy concluded:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What’s happening with development here is well within the law and to many that’s the problem.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But (despite its lack of definition) the public interest should mean more than legal compliance – it is as much about process and procedure as it is outcome. It’s also about governance and ethics. </p>
<p>Wheeler lists seven elements that better round out the full process that should take place:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>complying with applicable law (both its letter <em>and spirit</em>);</p></li>
<li><p>carrying out functions fairly and impartially;</p></li>
<li><p>complying with the principles of procedural fairness/natural justice;</p></li>
<li><p>acting reasonably;</p></li>
<li><p>ensuring accountability and transparency;</p></li>
<li><p>exposing corrupt conduct or serious maladministration;</p></li>
<li><p>avoiding or properly managing private interests conflicting with official duties; and</p></li>
<li><p>acting apolitically in the performance of official functions.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There’s no rule book for working in the public interest and, despite arguments that it is too loose, ambiguous and easy to hide behind, it is an integral part of the discourse, law, regulation and governance of modern democracies. </p>
<p>Some professions, such as the <a href="https://www.icaew.com/technical/ethics/the-public-interest">Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales</a>, have tackled it head-on. This would seem a prudent measure for all professions in the future.</p>
<p><em>* Correction: This article was updated on January 23, 2019, to amend the title of Deputy NSW Ombudsman Chris Wheeler, who was previously named as the former ombudsman.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Johnston 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>Despite arguments that it is too loose, ambiguous and easy to hide behind, the ‘public interest’ is an integral part of the discourse, law, regulation and governance of modern democracies.Jane Johnston, Associate Professor in Communication and Public Relations, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708742017-01-06T14:05:35Z2017-01-06T14:05:35ZWhy Fleet Street is right to fight government-backed regulation of the press<p>It is rare for an issue to prompt all sectors of the British press into being “on the same page”, so to speak. But from the local <a href="http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/cannot-give-up-200-years-12319910">Birmingham Mail</a>, to tabloids including <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2529359/join-our-fight-to-keep-investigative-journalism-alive-and-kicking/">The Sun</a>, to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/oct/27/press-freedom-danger-if-mps-vote-in-section-40-by-the-back-door">the Guardian</a> and the Sunday Times broadsheets – and almost every other British newspaper on the shelf – the view is clear: dark times lie ahead if the government brings the legislation known as Section 40 into force.</p>
<p>Section 40 forms part of the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/section/40">Crime and Courts Act 2013</a>. It governs the allocation of costs in libel cases. What its implementation effectively means is that any publisher not signed up to a “recognised” regulator (of which <a href="http://impress.press">IMPRESS</a> is the sole example at present) risks enormous expense if it is taken to court, where the judge can direct it to pay both sides’ costs – win or lose.</p>
<p>The Sunday Times says such rules would have prevented it from <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/23830777">exposing cyclist Lance Armstrong</a> as a drug user. Other scandals, such as <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/">MPs’ expenses</a> or the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28934963">sex abuse cases in Rotherham</a>, may never have come to light if Section 40 had been in force at the time because the risk of court costs would have been too high.</p>
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<p>That it might be in force soon is a result of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24746137">Royal Charter on self-regulation of the press</a>, which is clearly a contradiction in terms. If approved by the Privy Council-created Royal Charter, the press cannot be engaged in “self-regulation”. It was never recommended by the Leveson Inquiry into press culture and ethics – it was created by the government.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, legislation was passed to penalise news media publishers who refuse to be subject to state-approved regulation. Sections <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/part/2/crossheading/publishers-of-newsrelated-material-damages-and-costs">34 to 42 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013</a> set out harsh sanctions on publishers who do not conform. </p>
<p>The state-funded quango, the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk">Press Recognition Panel</a>, then approved <a href="http://impress.press/">IMPRESS</a> to be the regulator. But IMPRESS is largely bankrolled by a family trust connected to <a href="http://impress.press/about-us/funding.html">media victim and Hacked Off campaigner Max Mosley</a>, and not one significant national, regional or local news publisher wants anything to do with it. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.private-eye.co.uk/about">Private Eye</a>, the UK’s number one best-selling news and current affairs magazine, has long performed a courageous role in pursuing investigative journalism that other news publishers were too terrified of publishing. It has always eschewed having any truck with press regulation and taken its chances in the casino chamber of litigation. And when the dice in most UK media law cases are loaded in favour of claimants with the burden of proof on media defendants (a position that does not exist in criminal law or any other form of civil negligence) Private Eye has always known that the stakes are high. </p>
<p>The magazine lost when former police superintendent <a href="http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/media-firms-forced-pay-gordon-12062900">Gordon Anglesea sued the magazine</a> and three other publishers over child abuse allegations in 1994. Anglesea picked <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/04/ex-police-chief-gordon-anglesea-jailed-child-sexual-abuse-north-wales">up £375,000 in damages</a> which he was free to spend until he was last year finally convicted of sexual offences against children. </p>
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<p>The double jeopardy in media law that faces Private Eye and other news publishers includes a legal costs system of conditional fee arrangements condemned as <a href="http://pcmlp.socleg.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/defamationreport.pdf">the highest in Europe</a> and ruled as a <a href="http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2011/66.html">breach of Article 10</a>, the right to freedom of expression by the European Court of Human Rights. </p>
<p>But this has not been reformed. Instead the Crime and Courts Act has given the green light for courts to award exemplary damages to punish recalcitrant news publishers such as Private Eye.</p>
<p>To discriminate and create such outrageous legal prejudice for any news publisher that refuses the heel of state approved press regulation is a gross breach of natural justice. It is a breach of English common law, the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and indeed, the United Nations Charter on Human Rights. Indeed, media freedom NGOs including <a href="https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/12/section-40-jeopardises-press-freedom/">Index on Censorship</a>, <a href="https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/38529/en/article-19%E2%80%99s-response-to-recognition-of-impress">Charter 19</a>, <a href="https://www.englishpen.org/campaigns/press-regulation-royal-charter-and-legal-framework-are-not-how-to-curb-excess/">PEN</a>, and <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/snoopers-charter-and-section-40-costs-threat-set-to-push-uk-yet-further-down-reporters-without-borders-press-freedom-index/">Reporters without Borders</a> are opposed to, or critical of Section 40. </p>
<h2>Pressed freedom</h2>
<p>There is no pressing social need to implement it. It is not necessary in a democratic society. It will generate a genuine and disturbing chilling effect on British journalism.</p>
<p>Serial rapist and paedophile Jimmy Savile enjoyed the immunity that establishment approval and gongs gave him, safe in the knowledge that newspaper publishers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/oct/10/jimmy-savile-bbc">had no chance of defending any libel action he would have launched</a>. He knew the newspapers had to prove their case, while he did not have to prove his.
The credibility of his vulnerable victims with their troubled backgrounds would have been annihilated in court by expensive QCs. And Section 40 would have given Savile the pleasure of knowing the defending newspaper had to pay for his legal costs had any libel verdict gone against him.</p>
<p>The history of British media law is littered with scenarios of successful libel actions that turned out to be stories <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/covered-up-50-years-how-6686843">that were substantially true</a>, and secret privacy actions where the truth was regarded as a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sir-fred-goodwin-super-injunction-lifted-2286385.html">matter of public interest</a>.</p>
<p>News media publishers rightly regard the Section 40 sanction for not signing up to regulation by IMPRESS as oppressive, bullying and anti-democratic. And the press industry already has its own substantially reformed independent self-regulator, IPSO, with a low-cost arbitration route. It has been externally reviewed as <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/external-review-of-ipso-finds-press-regulator-is-independent-effective-and-largely-compliant-with-leveson/">largely “Leveson compliant”</a>.</p>
<p>Enacting Section 40 will mean news publishers will have no choice but to avoid <em>any</em> publication that risks <em>any</em> kind of media legal action. It would be the death of critical and investigative journalism. If news is what somebody wants to keep out of the newspapers, then Section 40 will achieve just that. In its place will remain the advertising, publicity and propaganda somebody always wants to keep in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70874/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Crook is Chair of the Professional Practices Board of the Chartered Institute of Journalists.</span></em></p>Beware the death of investigative journalism in UK newspapers.Tim Crook, Professor in Media and Communication (Goldsmiths), Visiting Professor of Broadcast Journalism (Birmingham City University), Chair of Professional Standards Board, CIoJ., Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/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/692262016-11-30T12:09:29Z2016-11-30T12:09:29ZLeveson has stopped police talking to reporters – and that’s dangerous<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148084/original/image-20161130-17065-1r33d2a.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">Canley</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/">Lord Justice Leveson recommended</a> in 2012 the formal reporting of contacts between police officers and the press, greater consistency of police–press policies and practices nationally, and “clear and direct” policy guidance. But as The Guardian’s crime correspondent, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/mar/22/police-leveson-report">Duncan Campbell, suggested</a>: “The big chill on relations between the police and journalists had started some months before the Leveson Report was completed”, with official and unofficial contact between the press and the police being severely restricted. </p>
<p>Many crime journalists at the time, including Campbell, worried about the ability of crime journalists to continue to carry out their job effectively, to inform the public on policing and crime issues, and when necessary, hold the police to account.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/10/12/bjc.azw077.abstract">article recently published</a> in the British Journal of Criminology, I explore relations between the Metropolitan Police and the national press, four years on from the Leveson Inquiry. I found that there were still serious curbs on police and media communication and that the police were seemingly more in control of the flow of information to the public than ever before.</p>
<p>Journalists interviewed for this study suggested that when official briefings on the Metropolitan Police’s work are held, they are only being given part of the story or an overly favourable impression of police work. And without informal contacts to corroborate their concerns, they are unable to voice their fears in the press. </p>
<p>Inaccurate information is being printed in the press because police press officers are worried about overstepping their brief and giving too much information to journalists. And while, in the past, many abuses of police power or corruption were brought to the attention of the press by serving officers, this channel has now seemingly been closed.</p>
<p>My study was based on <a href="http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/10/12/bjc.azw077">recent empirical research</a> between 2012 and 2015. I carried out 35 interviews with senior Metropolitan Police officers, staff from the Directorate of Media and Communication at Scotland Yard, both past and present, and crime journalists working for national news outlets in online, broadcast and print media.</p>
<p>In my study, I argue that prior to the phone-hacking scandal of 2011, which precipitated the commission of these reports as well as <a href="https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmic/media/a-review-of-police-relationships-20111213.pdf">a report by the HMIC</a>, the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and the national press functioned relatively effectively and was based on mutual relations of trust and reciprocity.</p>
<p>However, since 2011, it would seem that the balance of power has been more firmly skewed in favour of the Metropolitan Police. This is due to three factors: restrictions on contact with the press; cuts in the media industry leading to journalists being more dependent on press releases from police media officers, and the rise of social media.</p>
<h2>Directing traffic</h2>
<p>Social media has allowed the police to bypass the traditional press in many ways. The police are able to communicate more directly with the public than ever before, they have more control over the content of stories published on social media, and can even carry out aspects of operational policing – such as warning the public of risk, identifying suspects and appealing for information – through its use. But the lack of accountability of material published online has on occasion posed problems for the police.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"798177115426459649"}"></div></p>
<p>Police respondents, particularly those involved in frontline activities – such as heads of specialist squads – suggested that the advent of new media coupled with the deterioration of relations between the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and the national news media could have grave consequences. Not only could this disconnect result in inaccurate, speculative reports based on information from members of the public posting on Twitter, but it could also on occasion cause distress to victims’ families or prejudice judicial proceedings when the names of suspects are released into the public domain too soon. As one police respondent explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The press seem to think that the big problem in this clampdown on contact is that they won’t be able to carry out their Fourth Estate role – but the fact is, the real problem for both sides is the fact that without contact, without that trust, things are going to be put in the public domain that are not in the public interest, that are going to damage police operations and are going to damage press credibility if they put out information they can’t back up.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Pressing matters</h2>
<p>Similarly journalists interviewed for this study understood the need for reticence on the part of press officers, in a climate where, as one respondent suggested: “You can be investigated for having a coffee with the press”. But they also argued that at the end of the day, “We’ve got a job to do and a paper to fill.”</p>
<p>While both police and press respondents acknowledged that relations between some police officers – particularly in the Metropolitan police service – and some members of the news media had been problematic in the past, both sides believed, as one police officer put it “that the police have over-reacted. What was needed was a sticking plaster and instead we have put a bloody great cast on the problem.”</p>
<p>Finally, both police and press interviewees suggested that a breakdown in communications was no answer to the problem and that – in the age of social media – both sides needed each other more than ever, to work together to make sure stories were as accurate as possible and to ensure sensitive information was not leaked too soon.</p>
<p>If Leveson 2 does take place, then for many reasons – the legitimacy of policing, the ability of the public to understand and assess current crime issues, and the integrity of crime reporting – that dialogue needs to be opened up once more and a relaxation of restrictions on contact between the police and the press needs to be a priority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69226/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marianne Colbran 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 inquiry needed to put a sticking plaster on the problem, but instead used a ‘bloody great cast’.Marianne Colbran, Visiting Research Fellow in Criminology, London School of Economics and Political ScienceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/686132016-11-29T15:16:10Z2016-11-29T15:16:10ZThe lack of justice for journalists’ sources is a catastrophe for democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147922/original/image-20161129-10973-10mkp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Whistle blowers still seeking justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-418094146/stock-photo-gold-lady-justice-statue-on-the-top-of-the-old-bailey-in-london-england-with-a-sunset-sky-in-the-background.html?src=3lIRIzl_ia9n0vZCul7-OA-1-24">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ten long years ago, Robert Norman was getting on with his demanding job as a prison officer at the high security Belmarsh Prison in London. Then in 2006 he became an undercover whistle-blower, revealing hidden details of the growing crisis in Britain’s prison system. The first story published by his journalist contact, Stephen Moyes of the Daily Mirror, reported that the prison he worked in was out of control, with <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/exclusive-the-jail-run-by-al-qaeda-576109">officers having to battle Islamic gangs</a>. </p>
<p>He was not paid for the information. But over the next five years, for intel which led to further stories, he received £10,684. He was later arrested, charged and jailed for 20 months, as one of the “successful prosecutions” of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35666520">Operation Elveden</a>, the Metropolitan Police investigation into alleged payments to police and public officials by journalists.</p>
<p>Yet all of the warnings Norman provided about the rapid decline of security and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38126646">conditions in UK jails</a> have come to pass. We now see widespread reports of riots, prison break-outs, allegations of vulnerable inmates being “brainwashed” by Islamic extremists, prisoners confined to cells 23 hours a day, staff shortages, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/12/staff-shortages-british-prisons-bedford-pentonville-truss">and the highest ever number of prisoner suicides</a>.</p>
<p>So it would seem that Norman was providing the public with information of acute and urgent concern. </p>
<p>Tragically, however, Norman and many other public officials <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/nov/24/trinity-mirrors-chiefs-should-resign-for-failing-to-protect-a-source">have been betrayed</a> by the publishers of their stories. </p>
<p>Operation Elveden <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/new-law-needed-to-protect-journalists-sources-after-conviction-of-32-under-operation-elveden/">secured 32 successful prosecutions</a> of public officials whose lives have been devastated by exposure, unemployment, destitution and public humiliation. Norman is the only source to appeal his conviction, and although <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/jailed-daily-mirror-prison-source-loses-appeal-court-says-publisher-willingly-gave-up-union-official-to-police/">he was unsuccessful</a>, <a href="http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2016/1564.html">his Court of Appeal ruling in October revealed</a> how willingly Trinity Mirror and News International voluntarily gave him up to the Metropolitan Police. He is still fighting on. His lawyers have put in <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/supreme-court-urged-to-act-after-trinity-mirror-outed-prison-source-to-save-people-further-up-the-tree/">an appeal to the UK Supreme Court</a>. </p>
<p>What he has gone through has been <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/daily-mirrors-paid-prison-whistleblower-speaks-out-about-impact-of-publishers-decision-to-give-his-identity-to-police/">catastrophic and tragic for him and his family</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Met Police have <a href="http://news.met.police.uk/news/operation-elveden-completed-152789">proudly boasted about the achievements of Elveden</a> with a snazzy mediagraphic and an assertion that “these were not whistle-blowers, but people working in some of the most trusted positions in the police, prisons and healthcare, who were only seeking to profit”.</p>
<p>I do not agree. Far from being a successful police operation, Elveden has been the most disastrous blow to the democratic role of journalism in modern British history. </p>
<p>Elveden investigated 434 “leaks of information” because British news publishers surrendered over 20,000 emails and 12,000 documents starting in 2011 that were critical to journalist source confidentiality. </p>
<p>News International (now News UK, publishers of The Sun, The Times and the former News of the World) and Trinity Mirror (Daily Mirror, The People) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/08/james-murdoch-criminal-charges-phone-hacking">were panicked</a> into volunteering all this material because they <a href="http://www.poynter.org/2011/phone-hacking-scandal-a-corruption-story-like-enron-and-countless-others/139853/">feared corporate corruption charges</a>. </p>
<p>This has not just produced a chilling effect. It has created an Arctic climate in which no potential source can have any confidence at all in news publishers protecting their anonymity.</p>
<p>International law, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights, and British case law unanimously declare the protection of journalist sources to be a vital element of <a href="http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/1996/16.html">the role of the media as watchdogs of democracy</a>. </p>
<p>Worse still, the legal system has failed to protect the Elveden sources. Directors of Public Prosecutions <a href="http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d_to_g/guidance_for_prosecutors_on_assessing_the_public_interest_in_cases_affecting_the_media_/">gave the green light</a> to deny them the legal protection of acting in the public interest. </p>
<p>Judges threw them to the mercy of juries who had been conditioned by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-leveson-reforms-become-law-has-press-regulation-made-victims-of-us-all-49387">hullabaloo of the Leveson Inquiry</a> that being a public official sneak and taking money for information was corrupt. </p>
<p>Media victim pressure groups, politicians, and senior figures in journalism have all been silent and willing bystanders to this catastrophe. </p>
<h2>Whistle blowing at risk</h2>
<p>There has been plenty of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/feb/26/operation-elveden-a-sad-and-sorry-tale">protest about the journalists put on trial</a>, many of whose legal costs were covered by embarrassed employers who had hung them out to dry. </p>
<p>And most of the journalists, including Moyes, had their charges dropped, were acquitted, or had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal. </p>
<p>The treatment of the journalists was appalling. The dawn raids and the immoral use of police bail was disproportionate, and oppressive. But the journalists’ sources have suffered much worse. They have criminal records, have lost their liberty and careers, and the extent of their disillusionment must be incalculable.</p>
<p>The situation also leaves the ability of journalism to secure sources of information for public interest stories in tatters. The crime of misconduct in public office snares any public official for leaking any information whether they are paid or not.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/23/contents">2010 Bribery Act</a> makes it a crime for journalists to pay employees either in the public or private sectors for any information concerning their work.</p>
<p>But journalists had always paid for information, including from police officers, since the time of <a href="http://www.communicationethics.net/journal/v9n1/v9n1.pdf">Charles Dickens and his newspaper Daily News in 1846</a>. The British parliamentary expenses scandal exposed by the Daily Telegraph <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2084826/Former-Daily-Telegraph-editor-reveals-paid-150-000-disk-containing-MPs-expenses-information.html">was prised open by the payment of around £150,000 to a source</a>.</p>
<p>Communication and content creation in publication is lawful commerce – a democratic and legitimate process of exchange that is absolutely central to the freedom of expression. The marketplace of ideas and information is what drives and defines the relationship of journalistic payment to source – not corruption or bribery. </p>
<p>Real corruption is a police officer being paid to avoid making an arrest, or a prison officer smuggling contraband to a prisoner. Criminalising compensation to sources for revealing truth to power makes casualties of democracy, public welfare and the public interest.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68613/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>The protection of confidential journalistic sources in public life is vital. We must not lose it.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/678642016-10-28T11:18:38Z2016-10-28T11:18:38ZIan Hislop’s right: Murdoch’s cosy relationship with Tories should be investigated<p>The reciprocal closeness in the relationship between journalism and power is a prominent feature of British political history. In times of war or national crisis, media organisations are expected more often than not to behave as if they were an <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-baron-and-propagandist-who-led-charge-into-world-war-i-29855">arm of government</a> – but, for the newspapers of Rupert Murdoch, this close relationship seems to have become business as usual, whoever is living in Number 10 . And the willingness of various governments to yield to Rupert Murdoch’s news empire has been exhaustively documented.</p>
<p>We know by the media mogul’s own admission that he often entered Downing Street “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14206371">by the back door</a>” and, as journalist <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/anthony-hilton-stay-or-go-the-lack-of-solid-facts-means-it-s-all-a-leap-of-faith-a3189151.html">Anthony Hilton</a> noted in February of this year:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. “That’s easy,” he replied. “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is increasingly clear that the influence of <a href="https://www.news.co.uk/">News UK</a> (the rebranded News International whose titles include the Sun, the Sun on Sunday, The Times and the Sunday Times) has not diminished in the aftermath of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hacking-affair-is-not-over-but-what-would-a-second-leveson-inquiry-achieve-29715">Leveson Inquiry</a> or the phone-hacking scandals. Far from it. When Theresa May visited New York in late September (mere months after becoming prime minister) she found time in her hectic 36-hour schedule to meet with Murdoch. </p>
<p>Perhaps, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/29/theresa-may-meeting-rupert-murdoch-times-sun">The Guardian hinted</a>, the previously media reticent May was just performing a realpolitik quid pro quo because in the Conservative leadership battle <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1396848/the-final-choice-for-who-will-be-our-next-prime-minster-must-be-between-theresa-may-and-michael-gove/">The Sun had backed her</a> and Michael Gove – instead of, as had been expected, prioritising Gove as a former News employee. The <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1396848/the-final-choice-for-who-will-be-our-next-prime-minster-must-be-between-theresa-may-and-michael-gove/">Sun’s leader of July 6</a> stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The final choice for who will be our next prime minister must be between Theresa May and Michael Gove.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The Eye has it</h2>
<p>So what happened to Michael Gove after his personal leadership debacle? He’s (back) working for the Times. Let’s not forget that at the Leveson Inquiry, Gove <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rupert-murdoch-is-a-great-man-says-michael-gove-7800683.html">described his boss</a> as “one of the most significant figures of the last 50 years” a “force of nature, a phenomenon and a great man”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143643/original/image-20161028-15816-5q8xua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Connections: Michael Gove and Sarah Vine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yui Mok PA Archive/PA Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fact that Gove has returned so quickly to a position at the Times has irked the editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop. Hislop recently told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee that Gove’s reappointment <a href="https://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/news/ian-hislop-urges-investigation-michael-gove-and-rupert-murdoch">should be investigated</a> because of his past closeness to Murdoch while in government. There was the possibility, posited Hislop, that the relationship may have influenced political decisions. Hislop told the committee:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I sat through the entire proceedings of Leveson in which one of the main points was the closeness of the relationship between senior members of the Conservative party and Mr Murdoch. And Mr Gove has had a number of meetings with him when he was in various of his departments. So I think there is a question there about when you are in office … imagining a future when you might need the generosity of say Mr Murdoch to sustain your career and whether that would influence the decisions you’ve made.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Blurring the lines</h2>
<p>That’s as maybe – and Hislop is no doubt also aware of Daniel Finkelstein, now <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-finkelstein/4283">Lord Finkelstein OBE</a>. In 2013, when the Times columnist was elevated to the Lords, <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/09/daniel-finkelstein-lord-of-journalism/">Peter Oborne wrote</a> about the collapse of the boundaries between politics and media and cited Finkelstein – a man he also described as “a decent, highly intelligent man, who lacks an ounce of malice” – as an example. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/143645/original/image-20161028-15810-gbivpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daniel Finkelstein.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://www.acumenimages.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Finkelstein is a Times political journalist who in 2011 became chairman of the Conservative Think Tank, Policy Exchange, and enjoyed a strong relationship with the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, speaking on the phone to the latter “six or seven times a day. Probably more”. In his fascinating essay, Oborne stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As any newspaperman will recognise, Daniel Finkelstein has never in truth been a journalist at all. At the Times he was an ebullient and cheerful manifestation of what all of us can now recognise as a disastrous collaboration between Britain’s most powerful media empire and a morally bankrupt political class.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Club class</h2>
<p>In terms of political journalism, it is very easy to be cynical and view politicians and journalists as being part of one exclusive Westminster club which makes decisions based solely upon the needs of its membership. It may be the case that the hierarchy of the media – the <a href="http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1992----02.htm">cultural managers</a> that Chomsky and Herman refer to: the editors, the leading columnists and so on – share a class interest with the political establishment. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"790845541685063680"}"></div></p>
<p>So there exists within the news media an institutional bias that guarantees the mobilisation of certain campaigns on the behalf of the elite few. And this never changes.</p>
<p>In all the column inches around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/press-regulation-in-britain-a-step-forward-and-a-step-back-67582">Impress verdict by the The Press Recognition Panel (PRP)</a> this week, one thing struck me as significant. In The Sun, the culture secretary, Karen Bradley, was quoted as saying the government was preparing for a “<a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2042988/government-signals-major-u-turn-in-its-war-on-press-freedom/">major U-turn in its war against press freedom</a>”. Her special adviser? <a href="http://order-order.com/2016/08/10/craig-woodhouse-to-be-dcms-spad/">Craig Woodhouse</a> – former chief political correspondent of the Sun.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell 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 appears to be a revolving door between Rupert Murdoch’s papers and the Conservative Party.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/675822016-10-25T12:08:15Z2016-10-25T12:08:15ZPress regulation in Britain: a step forward – and a step back<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142970/original/image-20161024-28409-z9lr6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">zefart</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anyone reading recent <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/not-impressed-srf2bdrsj">editorials</a> in the British press will know that the industry is worried. Following the discovery in 2011 that journalists on a number of newspapers <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/phone-hacking-2415">had been hacking people’s phones to get stories</a>, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/leveson-inquiry-7469">Leveson Inquiry</a> made a number of recommendations for independent and effective self-regulation of the press. </p>
<p>In a diluted form these were accepted by parliament and included an independent body, the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/">Press Recognition Panel</a> (PRP), designed to scrutinise would-be self-regulators according to criteria of good governance and effective implementation of a journalistic code. These were detailed in a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254116/Final_Royal_Charter_25_October_2013_clean__Final_.pdf">Royal Charter</a>, also passed by parliament. </p>
<p>Now, the PRP is meeting to decide whether to <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/board-meeting-on-impress-application-for-recognition/">recognise a regulator called Impress</a>, set up by free speech advocate Jonathan Heawood in order to meet those criteria. And, judging by the hundreds of column inches devoted to fulminating outrage about the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3857836/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Freedom-not-bend-blackmail.html">end of 300 years of press freedom</a>, editors fully expect Impress to be recognised. </p>
<p>Further steps are needed to complete the self-regulation framework agreed by parliament: in particular the incentive scheme whereby newspapers which choose not to sign up to a recognised self-regulator are <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/S40-briefing-with-timeline.pdf">liable for the court costs of both sides in civil cases</a> still has to be signed off by the culture secretary. But recognition of Impress will be a vital and historic step forwards after decades of bitter industry resistance to meaningful reform.</p>
<p>The newspaper industry’s collective hysteria was entirely predictable, if grossly inaccurate. Rather less predictable was a recent <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sir-alan-moses-free-press-in-the-uk-is-doomed-if-it-allows-government-to-corral-it-into-state-backed-regulator/">intervention by Sir Alan Moses</a>, the inaugural chair of the <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/">Independent Press Standards Organisation</a> (IPSO) which was established by the industry as their two fingers to parliament and the Leveson framework. IPSO, we should remember, was acclaimed by the press in paid-for advertisements as “<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/press-announces-timetable-for-toughest-regulator-in-the-world-8902402.html">the toughest regulator in the Western world</a>” which would ensure that – finally – the press was genuinely accountable for breaches of its own code.</p>
<p>So what was the first chairman of IPSO’s message to the industry he was purporting to regulate? “Government, the powers that be, want to goad you, prod you like sheep into doing what they want.” And he continued: “The essence of successful regulation I believe is that it is voluntary. It’s something that you choose to do, not something into which you are driven.”</p>
<h2>Lobbying for the industry</h2>
<p>This was not the sound of someone preparing to get tough on an industry which breaches its own standards with impunity. It was a message that might have come straight from a Daily Mail, Sun or Telegraph editorial, a final confirmation that IPSO and its leaders have gone the same way as the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) which preceded it – swallowed up by its paymasters and unable to distinguish effective regulation from industry backslapping.</p>
<p>That history is repeating itself is abundantly clear from Sir Brian Leveson’s brief <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/comment/yes-the-pcc-was-discredited-by-leveson-and-heres-the-proof/">historical assessment of the PCC</a> in which he demonstrated how the PCC acted as – in his words – “an unabashed advocate or lobbyist for the press industry”.</p>
<p>The evidence was unequivocal. Under its second chairman, Lord Wakeham, the PCC lobbied for the press to be <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8534600/Lord-Wakeham-law-must-be-changed-to-stop-judges-handing-out-gagging-orders.html">exempt from Section 8 of the Human Rights Act</a>, which guarantees the individual right to privacy. Having failed, Wakeham negotiated with the then home secretary, Jack Straw, to <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcumeds/362/36205.htm">add a new section 12</a> designed to tip the balance of power towards the press in any trade-off between privacy and free speech.</p>
<p>Similarly vigorous lobbying under Wakeham’s successor, Christopher Meyer, was targeted at the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Exhibit-SA-X17.pdf">1998 Data Protection Act</a>, this time arguing against custodial sentences for breaches of section 55. Since this section related to unlawful procurement of personal data, and in light of a subsequent <a href="https://ico.org.uk/media/1042393/what-price-privacy.pdf">report by the Information Commissioner</a> that theft of confidential data by journalists was taking place on an industrial scale, it was hardly a regulatory priority to restrict penalties for offenders. As Leveson commented: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Little consideration appears to have been given to those who might be the subject of intrusive breaches of data protection at the hands of the press … Yet it is the complaints of those people which the PCC exists to mediate or resolve.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2005, the PCC coordinated its lobbying efforts in Europe to fend off a proposed clause in the <a href="http://www.budobs.org/other-projects/eu-observer/bo-documents/87-television-without-frontiers-the-convention-and-the-directive.html">Television Without Frontiers directive</a> which was considering a statutory right of reply to press inaccuracies.</p>
<p>It should be no surprise, then, that Leveson concluded: “At times, it seems that the PCC acted as both advocate and champion for this industry, a role that it rarely adopted in relation to those who had been wronged by the press.” </p>
<p>And as the PCC aligned itself unashamedly with the interests of those it was purporting to “regulate”, it constantly manoeuvred to reassure critics that it was becoming tougher and more independent.</p>
<h2>Keeping up appearances</h2>
<p>So following a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/271963/2135.pdf">highly critical second report</a> from Sir David Calcutt in 1993, the PCC’s first chairman Lord McGregor, and then Wakeham, sought to assure parliament that real changes were being implemented through a series of largely meaningless reforms such as minor tweaks to the editorial code. Several years later, Meyer announced another programme of reform couched in terms of “<a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcumeds/362/9032407.htm">permanent evolution</a>”. Then his successor, Lady Buscombe, launched an <a href="http://www.pcc.org.uk/assets/441/Independent_Governance_Review_Report.pdf">Independence Governance Review</a> which reported in 2010.</p>
<p>None of these measures amounted to a row of beans in terms of serious and effective systemic change – but each one was designed to give an impression of meaningful regulatory activity on behalf of the public. As Leveson wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Limited programmes of reform have been concerned with relieving pressure on the press and blunting calls for strengthening the self-regulatory system. A show of reform has been used as a substitute for the reality of it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://impress.press/about-us/">Impress</a> will provide an alternative self-regulator which is not funded by powerful media barons determined to protect their own interests but by a trust set up by Max Mosley and run by trustees who must – by law – operate in the public interest. With a transparently appointed and genuinely independent board, it will be able both to protect the interests of journalism and ensure that its code of ethics is taken seriously by member publications. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"790514196056244224"}"></div></p>
<p>It has <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-regulator-impress-claims-40-member-publications-with-combined-readership-of-2m/">yet to persuade any of the big beasts to join</a>, but everyone is watching. Once the full Leveson incentives are in place, bigger publishers will want to take advantage. </p>
<p>Perhaps Sir Alan Moses has done us a favour. He has shown us that, just like the PCC and its procession of industry-hugging chairmen, IPSO’s interests are now aligned with its paymasters. The spotlight can now turn to Impress and a new model of self-regulation which – if allowed to flourish – will both promote great journalism and prevent its worst abuses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67582/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New Leveson-compliant watchdog will provide firm hand for newspaper industry.Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/534652016-01-22T10:10:35Z2016-01-22T10:10:35ZWhy new regulator could be a game-changing moment for journalism<p>You are unlikely to read about it in the mainstream press, but this week saw a major step forward for genuinely independent press regulation in the UK. The new press regulator <a href="http://impress.press/">IMPRESS</a> (Independent Monitor for the Press) has announced that it has not only signed up a dozen publishers but that it has submitted an application for formal recognition. This will now be assessed by the <a href="http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk/">Press Recognition Panel (PRP)</a>, the wholly independent body established by <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-report-cross-party-royal-charter">cross-party agreement</a>.</p>
<p>The dozen <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/20/press-regulator-impress-unveils-first-members-and-makes-charter-submission">founding members of IMPRESS</a> include local newspapers, online hyperlocal sites, New Internationalist Magazine and investigative journalism outfits Byline and The Ferret. None of the big beasts of Fleet Street, but that was never expected at this stage. IMPRESS says it is in discussion with another 30 or so publishers.</p>
<p>Given the levels of misinformation about press regulation in most national newspapers, this story is worth a quick recap. In the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/phone-hacking-trial">phone-hacking scandal</a> and other unsavoury Fleet Street practices which came to light, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/leveson-inquiry">Lord Justice Leveson</a> recommended a new framework for press self-regulation. </p>
<p>The industry, he said, should set up its own self-regulator, but within strict rules to ensure that it was wholly independent of both politicians and the industry. Among other things, it should incorporate a low-cost arbitration scheme, an easy and effective complaints mechanism, a whistleblowing service for journalists, and the ability to demand apologies and corrections from offending publications.</p>
<p>These criteria were incorporated into a Royal Charter which established the PRP, and will be used by the panel to assess any application for recognition. Publishers who belong to a recognised self-regulator will, under certain circumstances, be entitled to protection from heavy court costs or damages. IMPRESS is the first such self-regulator to apply for recognition.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the country’s main newspaper publishers – with the exception of the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times – have set up their <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/index.html">own regulator IPSO</a> (Independent Press Standards Organisation), in defiance of both Leveson and parliament. But IPSO has made it clear that it has <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/sir-alan-moses-says-ipso-not-leveson-compliant-insists-it-will-be-independent">no intention of applying for recognition</a> under the Royal Charter.</p>
<h2>IMPRESS: Leveson-compliant</h2>
<p>The brainchild of free-speech campaigner <a href="https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/press-regulation-the-impress-way/">Jonathan Heawood</a>, IMPRESS was designed to be Leveson-compliant. Its chairman, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/nov/05/impress-ipso-press-monitor-walter-merricks-chair">Walter Merricks</a> – a former finance sector ombudsman – was appointed by an independent appointments board with no links to any political party after an open recruitment process.</p>
<p>He was keen to emphasise that IMPRESS will handle complaints in a “fair, impartial, authoritative and transparent” manner. It will provide an affordable arbitration scheme in partnership with the <a href="http://www.ciarb.org/">Chartered Institute of Arbitrators</a>, allowing both publishers and ordinary members of the public to resolve disputes without the cost and stress of going to court. And it has established a confidential whistleblowing advice hotline, run by the whistleblowing charity <a href="http://www.pcaw.org.uk/">Public Concern at Work</a>, which guarantees that names will not be passed on to employers.</p>
<p>Its initial funding comes through the charitable <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-press-regulation-trust-iprt">Independent Press Regulation Trust</a>, which in turn has received a substantial donation from the <a href="http://opencharities.org/charities/1142898">Mosley Charitable Trust</a>, set up by former F1 motor racing boss Max Mosley in memory of his late son. The charitable nature of both organisations ensures that Mosley himself can have no influence over how IMPRESS operates.</p>
<p>While none of the named publishers are well known, the principle has now been established of a press regulator which is demonstrably free from industry control and political influence. The raison d’etre for IMPRESS is trusted journalism, which every <a href="http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/iggcymaqch/YG-Archives-Pol-Trackers%20-%20Trust.pdf">survey of public opinion tells us</a> – certainly for the printed press – is in very short supply. But it’s also about supporting great journalism, in particular providing protection for the kind of watchdog reporting which is increasingly vulnerable to the chilling effect of wealthy litigants threatening bankruptcy through the courts.</p>
<p>For that reason, IMPRESS is supported not only by one of Britain’s greatest newspaper editors, Sir Harry Evans, but by the National Union of Journalists and free speech campaigners <a href="https://www.article19.org/">Article 19</a>.</p>
<h2>IPSO: watchdog? Or industry lapdog</h2>
<p>By contrast, IPSO is the newspaper industry’s creature. It is funded by the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/most-national-and-regional-newspaper-publishers-sign-contracts-ipso-regulator-defiance-royal-charter">same combination of powerful publishers</a> which bankrolled and controlled its predecessor, the discredited <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/08/press-complaints-commission-close-phone-hacking">Press Complaints Commission</a>. As the Media Standards Trust revealed two years ago, these publishers – through a shadowy body called the <a href="http://www.regulatoryfunding.co.uk/">Regulatory Funding Company (RFC)</a> – control IPSO’s rules, code, investigations and sanctions. <a href="http://mediastandardstrust.org/mst-news/ipso-an-assessment-by-the-media-standards-trust/">IPSO’s independence is an illusion</a>.</p>
<p>Certainly IPSO’s chairman Sir Alan Moses and its chief executive Matt Tee believe that they run an independent operation and point to a streamlined complaints process as well as a few (small print) corrections in newspapers as <a href="https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/rulings/IPSOrulings.html">indicators of success</a>. There is plenty of evidence, however, to demonstrate that <a href="http://hackinginquiry.org/mediareleases/the-failure-of-ipso/">little has changed</a>, and their cri de coeur is identical to that of their predecessors. Meanwhile ordinary journalists, then as now, had nowhere confidential to go when they were being bullied or harassed into acting unethically.</p>
<h2>Finally, a game-changer</h2>
<p>Those newspapers which fund IPSO will do their best to undermine IMPRESS and derail the whole system. But there is no question that the framework recommended by Leveson, endorsed by parliament and supported by a great majority of the public, finally has momentum. It’s hardly a radical framework, following well-established principles for upholding standards in many other industries: self-regulation, but with an oversight body recognised in law.</p>
<p>It is likely to be several months before the PRP makes a final decision on recognition and the whole process has taken far longer than anyone – no doubt including Sir Brian Leveson – thought. In addition, under huge pressure from the powerful battalions of Fleet Street, culture secretary John Whittingdale is <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-versus-public-interest-in-battle-over-press-regulation-50114">dragging his feet</a> on implementing the court cost incentives which are an integral element of the benefits of recognition.</p>
<p>But it looks increasingly likely that the last bastion of unaccountable power in Britain, our national press, might finally face some genuine competition from a body committed to the kind of independent scrutiny which our newspapers routinely advocate for others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Barnett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It looks as if Leveson’s proposals might finally bear fruit. But will the government have the courage to make it happen?Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/519692015-12-15T10:58:39Z2015-12-15T10:58:39ZNews of the World: the factor in its demise that deserves more attention<p>The ill-tempered debate over the the downfall of the News of the World has often focused on the crimes committed by some of the newspaper’s staff. The Crown Prosecution Service’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/11/no-further-action-against-mirror-over-phone-hacking-cps-says">recent announcement</a> that it would take no further action against companies and journalists accused of phone hacking again stirred such discussions. Yet the end of the hugely popular and successful Sunday title should also be understood another way. </p>
<p>Once the paper’s wrongdoing was in the public domain, the newspaper was very quickly condemned in the court of public opinion and some of its staff subsequently appeared in the courts of law. The newspaper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733">shut it down</a>. Its final edition appeared on July 10, 2011. </p>
<p>Buying a copy that day at my local newsagent, I heard a neighbour saying it was “good riddance” – and overdue. As more and more of the NOTW’s excesses were exposed, it was a view then quite widely held – widely, but not universally. That final edition contained praise from a reader (Jeanne Hobson, from Lymington in Hampshire) who was quoted as saying she would “always remember the News of the World for the good things you have brought to light. I’m sad to say goodbye to my Sunday favourite”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/105781/original/image-20151214-9511-n1wthc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hardest word.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Crotheek</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That edition also contained an extract from George Orwell’s 1946 essay “The decline of the English Murder”, in which he pictured his reader’s perfect Sunday afternoon: “You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World.”</p>
<p>Orwell wrote of how murder had changed. Journalism, in our time, has too. That, I argue in a new essay in <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-news-of-the-world-and-the-british-press-18432011-laurel-brake/?isb=9781137392039">The News of the World and the British Press, 1843-2011</a> is one of the ways in which we need to understand the NOTW’s demise. </p>
<p>Laurel Brake and Mark W Turner, who, along with Chandrika Kaul, edited the volume, describe the 19th-century News of the World as having:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A high proportion of news, national and global, including financial and monetary news and expansive parliamentary and court reporting; breadth of entertainment copy including early sports coverage; a distinctively unstinting ‘Literature’ page and theatre reviews.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This was not entirely the kind of content the paper’s 21st-century readers would have expected, although it is interesting to note the NOTW’s pioneering role in sports coverage. Entertainment – in its modern form of celebrity scandal and gossip – endured and came to dominate the paper’s offering. These were the kind of stories where the ability to hack into mobile phones was sometimes to prove just too much of a temptation. </p>
<h2>Digital disruption</h2>
<p>For if the relative ease with which the voicemail of analogue mobile phones could be listened to illicitly was a gift from technology to the tabloids, it came at a time when much was also being taken away. Technological change also brought ever-wider access to the internet. In the case of the News of the World, the kind of celebrity stories which were one of its strengths were increasingly available online, for free. It was competition which Fleet Street had not foreseen. </p>
<p>This is a factor in the News of the World’s decline which has been overlooked in much of the discussion which accompanied its last days and eventual closure. The paper was shut down as a response to its law-breaking, but the era in which that happened is also significant. </p>
<p>In January 2012, during its coverage of the Leveson Inquiry, The Guardian website headlined “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jan/26/leveson-inquiry-facebook-google-popbitch-live">Facebook, Google, Popbitch executives appear</a>” – names which would have sounded like gibberish two decades earlier; and names without which in this decade no full discussion of the news business could take place. </p>
<p>These changes left Fleet Street facing competition to which they were unaccustomed. Proponents of press regulation might argue that the tabloids’ excesses meant tighter controls were necessary. Yet, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9691688/State-regulation-of-press-absolutely-pointless-because-of-internet.html">as their supporters argued</a>, newspapers faced, in the form of online media, competition which was not subject even to the same legal restrictions as they. </p>
<p>So while the demise of the News of the World should on one level be understood as a business decision taken in response to law-breaking, it is important for another reason, too. </p>
<h2>Times they are a-changin’</h2>
<p>Throughout the history of journalism, those who have succeeded have done so because they understood change, and positioned themselves to take advantage of it. Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, <a href="http://gdc.gale.com/assets/files/daily_mail/the_story_of_the_daily_mail.pdf">who founded the Daily Mail</a> introduced editorial innovations and, in the form of more efficient presses and railways, harnessed new technology to his purpose. </p>
<p>In the internet age, journalism has often had changed forced upon it. It has responded with varying degrees of success. There have also been failures. Tumbling print circulations and revenues are perhaps the most obvious example.</p>
<p>“Who, what, when, where, why, and how”: any undergraduate journalism student or trainee reporter can list the basic ingredients of a news story. In the case of the News of the World’s decline, the “when” – the moment in journalism history when it happened – deserves more attention than it has so far received.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51969/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 famed Sunday tabloid brought about its own sorry demise.James Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed 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/431462015-09-02T16:20:54Z2015-09-02T16:20:54ZWhy the Murdoch press wants to exterminate public broadcasters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/92287/original/image-20150818-12433-1ozo65t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>Like most people with even a passing interest in the part played by News Corporation in British politics, I remember exactly what I was doing when scandal broke in 2011 and the sense of a seemingly indestructible media behemoth crumbling into chaos and ruin before our eyes. Now, Rebekah Brooks <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/02/rebekah-brooks-return-tony-gallagher-sun-editor-rupert-murdoch">is to return as chief executive of News UK</a>, publisher of the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times. In 2014 she was cleared of all charges relating to the phone-hacking scandal. </p>
<p>I had been researching and teaching about the News empire for more than two decades by 2011. While I always took care to acknowledge Murdoch’s positive contribution to sustaining the idea that journalism is important and must be invested in if it is to survive the digital age, looking further back the deeply unethical behaviour of The Sun in relation to such events as the <a href="http://hillsboroughinquests.independent.gov.uk/">Hillsborough stadium disaster</a> and the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/falklands-war-a-look-back-in-50-photographs-7581454.html?action=gallery&ino=25">sinking of the Belgrano</a> during the Falklands war were and remain classic examples of the excesses of British tabloid journalism.</p>
<p>Murdoch’s use of his media to influence and shape the democratic political process in all the markets where he operates was illustrated by me by reference to Fox News, The Sun and other News Corp outlets which operate as what the late newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell called a “megaphone” for the Murdochian world view and political agenda.</p>
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<p>So the impact of the phone hacking scandal of 2011 was a genuinely shocking thing to behold. Robert Peston’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b049ffld">BBC Panorama documentary</a> was a reminder of that moment, which at the time was generally regarded as pivotal in British political history. Where senior politicians of both Labour and Conservative parties had for decades “queued up to kiss the shoes” of Rupert Murdoch and his tabloid editors (as investigative journalist Nick Davies put it to Peston), suddenly no one wanted to be his friend anymore. </p>
<p>The hitherto unspoken truth (unspoken among politicians who were its beneficiaries, that is) that the relationship between the Murdoch media and the political elite in Britain had become undemocratic and incestuous – became the new common sense overnight.</p>
<p>Among the many adverse impacts of the scandal on News Corporation was the collapse of its <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14112465">bid to buy the remaining 61% of the shares for BSkyB</a> that it didn’t own, a deal that was by now attracting heat for both the Murdochs and a government that had seemed eager to wave the multi-billion deal through despite massive public opposition. </p>
<p>Few doubted that the reputation of Rupert Murdoch and the corporate culture which he had presided over for more than 40 years had been seriously, perhaps terminally, wounded.</p>
<h2>Rupert resurgent</h2>
<p>That view has turned out to be well wide of the mark. Once again News Corporation is <a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/Politics/article1580368.ece">on the offensive against its old enemy</a>, the BBC, lobbying a Cameron government – armed now with a majority in the House of Commons and thus empowered to act with greater freedom than was possible in the five years of Coalition – to shrink the corporation.</p>
<p>Once again there are reports of Murdoch’s privileged access to the corridors of power, as in <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/george-osborne-under-pressure-to-reveal-if-meeting-with-rupert-murdoch-preceded-announcement-of-bbc-cuts-10428769.html">The Independent in July</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>George Osborne is under pressure to reveal if he held a private meeting with Rupert Murdoch days before the Treasury imposed a £650m budget cut on the BBC. Whitehall speculation about the alleged meeting – which would raise fresh questions about the closeness of the relationship between the Conservatives and the Murdoch empire – has prompted Labour to write to Mr Osborne demanding he release full details of his contact with the News Corp boss. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And now Brooks is back. It looks like business as usual, then, for a global media baron used to commanding the attention of political leaders and wielding his power to influence policy making.</p>
<h2>Whose side are you on?</h2>
<p>In Australia where I live and work – and where the phone hacking scandal had little impact on News Corporation’s activities – a similar offensive is <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/piers-akerman-grubby-excuses-cannot-erase-the-abcs-shame/story-fni0cwl5-1227417790359">underway against the ABC</a>.</p>
<p>In Australia, as in the UK, News Corporation is allied to a right-of-centre government which regards the public sector in general, and public service media in particular, as hostile to its goals and ripe for “reform”. The Australian, News Corp’s flagship title down under (like The Times and Sunday Times in the UK) maintains a steady flow of anti-public service media reportage and commentary, criticising with boring predictability executive salaries, or the alleged bias of its news department, or indeed anything that can be made to appear excessive and un-Australian.</p>
<p>Prime minister Tony Abbott <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/23/abbott-asks-the-abc-whose-side-are-you-on-over-zaky-mallahs-qa-appearance">recently asked of the ABC</a>: “Whose side are you on?” In a similar way, News Corporation likes to present the ABC as a cultural fifth column, its commentators regularly demanding that it be reduced to a “market failure” broadcaster (and in the process, coincidentally enough, allowing News the opportunity to become even more dominant in the Australian media landscape <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/media-ownership">than it already is</a>). On this issue, as on many others, Murdoch’s media act as cheerleaders for the Abbott government.</p>
<p>I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the ferocity of the campaigns against public service media in Australia and the UK could easily be read as more than coincidence. In both countries News Corp press seek to undermine the funding models of public service media, and their right to produce popular entertainment programming such as The Voice. This has been a decades long campaign for News Corp in the UK, and after the Jimmy Savile scandal and other dents to its reputation, the BBC is more vulnerable than it has ever been. </p>
<p>The ABC, one might argue, is in a stronger defensive position than the BBC. While the latter now faces five years of majority Conservative government, Abbott must go to the polls in September 2016 at the latest – and repeated opinion polls show a deep affection among Australians for the ABC. Tampering with Auntie would be politically risky. The real danger will come if the Coalition is re-elected with a comfortable majority, giving Abbott the freedom of manoeuvre now enjoyed by Cameron in the UK.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the BBC and ABC must hold their nerve, and trust in the capacity of the publics they serve to continue recognising the importance of the role they play and the excellent value for money which they deliver. Both the BBC and ABC cost the individual license fee or taxpayer much less than a subscription to Foxtel or BSkyB. Even the purchase of one daily newspaper in either country for a year exceeds the cost per person of funding pubic service media and the wealth of content they deliver on TV, radio and online.</p>
<p>Supporters of public service media are familiar with these arguments, but in both Australia and the UK they must be made and made again, forcefully and with confidence. To lose the BBC and the ABC, or to see them reduced to a pale shadow of public service media – <a href="http://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/stn-legacy/public-media-and-political-independence.pdf">think PBS and NPR in the United States</a> – would be a cultural disaster from which there would be no recovery that was not directed by News Corporation and other private media interests.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>We thought the phone hacking scandal would chasten News Corp. We were wrong.Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed 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">
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<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>
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<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/367852015-01-28T14:44:15Z2015-01-28T14:44:15ZPress freedom in Britain is now dead in the water<p>Britain’s rights to basic freedom of expression, which writers, journalists and free-speech activists fought for over centuries have been sacrificed and abandoned in the space of a few short disastrous years. </p>
<p>Free speech and the freedom of the press to do its job without fear or favour is one of the most important pillars of a true democracy. But this is in greater danger of being sacrificed than at any time in living memory. </p>
<p>There is a shameful litany of ways in which journalists’ ability to perform this key role is being compromised and undermined. </p>
<h2>Confidential sources and public office</h2>
<p>Take the use of sources: in a liberal democracy the unfettered flow of important information to the public is wholly dependent on confidential sources being protected when contacting and communicating with journalists. </p>
<p>Sometimes sources are committing crimes by leaking to journalists and taking that risk may mean they need to be paid for their information. Why is it a crime to pay a public official for information and not a crime to pay anyone else? This is inconsistent, and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2816478/We-need-free-brave-press-look-Rotherham-barrister-defends-paying-whistleblowers-public-interest.html">criminalising the act of rewarding whistle-blowers</a> undermines the protection of sources.</p>
<p>But this notion of source protection has been wrecked by the machinations of News Corporation’s “management and standards committee”, the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Director of Public Prosecution and judiciary.</p>
<p>It would appear thousands of confidential emails between journalists and their sources at The Sun and the former News of the World were <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/metropolitan-police-has-spent-%C2%A3335m-excluding-legal-fees-investigating-journalists-new-figures-show">accessed in evidence searching by the Metropolitan Police</a> during Operation Elveden – an operation that has <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/subject/Operation%20Elveden">cost the public £11.3m</a> so far. </p>
<p>Neither the journalists nor their sources were given any right to oppose this breach of their confidentiality. There was no independent hearing before a judge to decide if their Article 10 rights to free expression under the <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf">European Convention on Human Rights</a> would be violated.</p>
<p>The careers and lives of senior police officers have been destroyed for simply <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/legal-case-protecting-april-casburn">making a mobile phone call to a news desk</a>, or allegedly <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/senior-met-police-officer-sacked-giving-unauthorised-information-tabloid-journalist">background briefing</a> in a confidential journalist relationship.</p>
<p>The CPS, DPP and judiciary have done nothing to stop sources and journalists being criminally prosecuted for the common law offence of “<a href="http://lawcommission.justice.gov.uk/areas/misconduct.htm">misconduct in public office</a>”, which has been conjured up and developed since 2007 to replace the old and discredited Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act to criminalise the mere telling of official information. Its sledgehammer force crushed and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1558648/Scotland-Yard-man-jailed-for-terror-leak.html">jailed a Scotland Yard security expert</a> in 2007 for leaking a public interest story published in The Sunday Times. </p>
<p>In 2008 it was applied against a terrified weekly newspaper crime reporter, <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/42560">Sally Murrer</a>, after police had <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/police-failed-reveal-sally-murrer-was-journalist-when-they-sought-approval-bug-her-lawyer-reveals">bugged her contact with a source</a>. She was only rescued at Crown Court when the judge stopped her trial for the breach of her Article 10 rights.</p>
<h2>Police hacking</h2>
<p>Juries are becoming confused and bewildered in trials where they see <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/22/why-it-is-wrong-to-subject-the-sun-journalists-to-a-retrial">journalists in the dock</a> for publishing stories they strongly argued were in the public interest. When they can’t agree, the CPS pursues retrials. One MP, Tracey Crouch, observed that the CPS"<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/23/tory-mp-accuses-cps-of-pursuing-vendetta-against-sun-journalists">seems to be pursuing a vendetta</a>“ while a leading media law QC, Gavin Millar, asked: ”<a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/gavin-miller-qc-says-journalist-trials-make-no-sense-jurors-who-are-asking-what-earth-criminality">What on earth is the criminality?</a>“ </p>
<p>It now turns out that the police have been "bugging” and “hacking” into <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/leveson-effect-sharp-increase-police-media-leak-investigations-relations-journalists-all-time-low">communications between journalists and their whistleblower sources</a> without any independent judicial oversight since at least the millennium. </p>
<p>The government and parliament show no willingness to place police and security/intelligence surveillance of journalist communications under the <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-attack-on-journalists-sources-undermines-democracy-and-must-be-stopped-32537">Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000</a> in the same way that the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice">Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984</a> did – which required a hearing before a judge at which the affected parties were properly represented. </p>
<h2>Leveson’s chilling legacy</h2>
<p>The deep freeze in public official and police sourcing to journalists was turned arctic by the Leveson inquiry in 2012. Leveson argued for a review of the purposes of journalism protections in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice">PACE</a> and data protection acts to see whether they should be narrowed and constrained. He argued for increasing the criminalising and retributive punishment for journalistic conduct and publication.</p>
<p>The wider context of media freedom is utterly depressing. Leveson, academics and a host of other campaigning organisations such as Hacked Off, The Media Standards Trust and even the journalists union, the NUJ, have come out in favour of a statutory underpinning of press regulation. This extraordinary alliance of interests supports the alternative proposed system of public authority oversight through the medieval executive power of a Royal Charter. </p>
<p>Even worse, the provisions for “publishers of news-related material: damages and costs” in the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/22/part/2/crossheading/publishers-of-newsrelated-material-damages-and-costs/enacted">Crime and Courts Act 2013</a> punishes those media organisations who stand their ground for freedom from state interference. This appalling authoritarian measure imposes added costs and punitive damages in media litigation to media publishers asserting their basic constitutional freedom to be subject to the rule of law but not subject to regulation and approval by state interference.</p>
<p>The Royal Charter regime is a fundamental breach of the European Convention of Human Rights, English common law and constitutional convention. Article 10.1 of the Human Rights Act, which deals with freedom of expression, <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/9">explicitly states</a> that this right should be “without interference by public authority”. The only exception is for the regulation and licensing of “broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises”. And importantly, this does not include the press or online media.</p>
<h2>Creeping powers</h2>
<p>Another wider context of authoritarianism has been the slow sleep-walking into criminal privacy law for media conduct and publication. Not only has there been the development of a civil remedy with costs and damages for publishing truthful information deemed to be “private”. This has been accompanied by criminal legislation for <a href="http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/communications_offences/">privacy intrusion and publication of truthful though private information.</a> This means prosecution, conviction and punitive sentencing for actions that are also sued over for civil damages.</p>
<p>Criminal libel <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/44884">was abolished in 2009-10</a> because in the field of media communication and freedom of expression, a double legal jeopardy was seen as generating a chilling effect. Giving journalists and publishers a criminal record and, indeed, sending them to jail for making mistakes in finding information and publishing words seemed disproportionate and authoritarian.</p>
<p>Yet it is extraordinary that the Guardian newspaper, some academics and the country’s political establishment have delighted in campaigning for and establishing this effective double jeopardy in privacy for journalists and media where a civil rememdy for invasion of privacy is backed by criminal offences in the Data Protection Act, RIPA and other legislation.</p>
<p>While it can be accepted that human dignity and honour is being protected, I don’t think enough thought has been given to the social risks of legally prohibiting and criminally prosecuting the publication of truthful and accurate information (as opposed to lies and untruths which are covered by libel laws). So, in the case of phone-hacking, News Corporation paid hundreds of millions of pounds in damages for breaching the privacy of mobile phone messages, but on top of this several of its journalists were criminally prosecuted and, in some cases jailed, in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/operation-weeting">Operation Weeting</a> at a cost of nearly £20m. </p>
<h2>Fearful self-censorship</h2>
<p>As a result of all this, British journalism is now running scared. Litigation involving libel in privacy has been falling, not because journalists and their publishers are behaving better. The real explanation lies in an industry conking out as a result of <a href="http://media-cmi.com/downloads/CMI_Discussion_Paper_Circulation_Trends_102813.pdf">losing 50% of its circulation over the past 14 years</a>. Media law and compliance costs have also increased exponentially and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/feb/19/no-win-no-fee-lawyers-shackling-newspapers">are the highest in Europe</a>. </p>
<p>A few isolated commentators are lamenting how self-interest, false consciousness and political tunnel vision are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/journalists-not-terrorists-leveson-rupert-murdoch">dismantling the worthy and hard-fought reputation</a> that defined us as a country the world looked to for respecting journalistic freedom. It is frightening and disturbing that seeking to publish truthful information that people do not want published – the very basic tenet of journalism – should be mocked as <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Presentation-by-Professor-James-Curran-PDF-18.6KB1.pdf">first amendment fundamentalism</a>, which is an intolerant and propagandist turn of phrase that explains the spirit of the times we live in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36785/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 and serves on its professional practices board.</span></em></p>Britain’s rights to basic freedom of expression, which writers, journalists and free-speech activists fought for over centuries have been sacrificed and abandoned in the space of a few short disastrous…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.