SubScribe: press regulation

Showing posts with label press regulation. Show all posts

Friday, 6 January 2017

Section 40, Press freedom and the rival regulators

Newspaper readers have been bombarded this week with dire warnings about how the Government, the Left, a gaggle of press-hating fanatics, celebs and vindictive tycoons want to censor what they read. Reporters, leader writers and columnists on both national and local titles have been called to arms to hammer home the argument.
Their articles take a similar approach: "This is really boring and you may not think it matters, but it's important for YOU." So important that the Metro published its first leader in 17 years to make the case.
Meanwhile on social media and in the blogosphere there has been a similar flurry of activity, denouncing the lawless, lying Press and its scare-mongering.
Newspapers say they face the toughest regulation in the world, critics that our Press is one of the least trusted in the world.

What has got everyone hot under the collar? Press regulation.

But didn't we go through all this a few months back? Yes.

Last October a putative regulator called Impress gained recognition under the Royal Charter set up after Leveson. That raised the prospect of implementation of Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act - which could not apply until there was an approved regulator - and the first bout of "beware the enemies of Press freedom" editorials.
Rather than enforce Section 40 (details soon), Culture Secretary Karen Bradley announced a public consultation on the subject and on whether the second part of the Leveson inquiry - looking into the relationship between the Press and the police - should go ahead. That consultation period ends on Tuesday, hence the latest clamour.

Rather like the EU referendum campaign (there are other similarities, not least David Cameron opening a can of worms to help him wriggle out of a sticky situation), the arguments put forward are partisan and incomplete. Both sides of the debate claim that their preferred regulator is independent and that the rival one is beholden to a vested interest. Both sides have published opinion polls that apparently show public support for their case. One side says the freedom of the Press is in danger, the other that it is being protected. The newspapers have bandied Max Mosley's name around a lot, although he is actually a red herring.
SubScribe has written about regulation on several occasions, most frequently in 2013 in the aftermath of Leveson, when the whole Royal Charter debate started. Looking back at the posts, I would change a few things - not least some of the language - but today I want to try to set out the background and examine some of the claims and counter-claims. As all our columnists say, it's likely to be tough going for the reader, but I hope it will be worth it.

Leveson

Sir Brian Leveson's inquiry concluded that a new system of "independent self-regulation" was required for the Press that would protect the interests of the public and govern the industry. Since newspaper misconduct had been the subject of seven official inquiries in as many decades, Leveson felt that legislation was needed to underpin the establishment of the new body (or bodies).
It was not, he said, for the Government or Parliament to set up such a body; that should be down to the Press. The new regulator should operate independently of government and of the newspapers it oversaw and have no influence in the publication or suppression of anything other than corrections. Parliament's role would be to accept a duty to protect the freedom of the Press and to establish a process by which the new body would be officially recognised.
The report went on to list 47 recommendations on the form and function of the new regulator.

The Royal Charter

Parliament accepted most of Leveson's recommendations and decided to create a Royal Charter to establish a Press Recognition Panel, which would determine whether any regulator that came forward complied with the Leveson criteria. The shape of the Royal Charter was agreed by the three main party leaders and put to representatives of the lobby group Hacked Off in an early-hours meeting in Westminster. No representatives of the newspaper industry were in attendance.
The industry meanwhile dismantled the discredited Press Complaints Commission and established the Independent Press Standards Organisation, under the chairmanship of the former Appeal Court judge Sir Alan Moses. Most national and local newspapers, with the exception of the Guardian, i and Financial Times, have signed up to be regulated by Ipso. It has not sought recognition under the Royal Charter.
A second regulator, Impress, was set up independently of the industry with £3.8m of financial backing from Max Mosley plus crowd-funded donations, including contributions from JK Rowling and David Sainsbury. Up to 50 (reported numbers vary) mostly local organisations have signed up to be regulated by Impress and it was given official recognition in October.

The Royal Charter was brought into being through two acts of Parliament, one of them the Crime and Courts Act 2013. It is this law whose Section 40 is the subject of the current angst. This seeks to encourage newspapers to sign up to a recognised regulator by offering a level of protection against vexatious litigation, while also making redress more accessible for people without deep pockets who have been wronged by the Press.
In order to achieve recognition, a regulator has to offer people with legal complaints (such as libel or invasion of privacy) against a newspaper an affordable arbitration service to avoid racking up expensive court costs. Under Section 40, any complainant - or newspaper - who insists on going to court when they could have used arbitration must expect to foot the entire legal bill, regardless of the outcome.

The rival regulators

Leveson provided a template for how a regulator's board should be appointed, who should be qualified to serve, how it should conduct itself and so forth.
He suggested the chairman and board should be appointed by panel with a substantial majority of members of people "demonstrably" independent of the Press, at least one person with a current understanding/experience of the Press, and no more than one serving editor.
The board itself should also have a majority of people independent of the Press, a "sufficient" number of people with experience of the industry, including former editors, senior or academic journalists, but no serving editors or MPs.

The Ipso board has 12 members. Five, including the chairman Sir Alan Moses, have no discernible connection with the Press, two others are mostly involved with television, three are former newspaper editors, one is a serving magazine editor and one a national newspaper executive.
Its 12-strong complaints committee comprises eight journalists, a solicitor, two with knowledge of dealing with disputes involving the NHS or financial services, and Sir Alan.

The Impress board has eight members under the chairmanship of Walter Merricks, a former financial services ombudsman. Three are journalists, though none now works for a newspaper, another is the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, one an insurer and two practise media law.

In the sticks-and-stones world, those who deride Ipso point to the fact that Trevor Kavanagh of the Sun serves on its board, while those mocking Impress point their fingers at Martin Hickman, the former Independent journalist who co-wrote Dial M for Murdoch about the death of a private investigator linked to the News of the World.
Ipso is criticised for having "too many" journalists on board, Impress for having too few.

Newspapers knocking Impress also make great play of its financial dependence on Mosley, who won a libel action against the News of the World after it accused him of involvement in a "sick Nazi orgy" with five prostitutes. The court ruled that there was no Nazi element to the goings-on.
Critics of Ipso say it cannot be independent because it is funded by the newspapers it regulates. It was, however, Leveson's expectation that the Press should finance its own regulation and Impress hopes that fees paid by papers that sign up will eventually fund its operations.

Both organisations insist that their boards operate entirely independently of the bodies that finance them. Mosley's money is funneled through a charitable trust and cannot be withdrawn other than in exceptional circumstances - such as Impress going bankrupt. Ipso's money comes through a funding company whose board is entirely made up of industry representatives. It says that its independence is guaranteed because of the lay majority on its board.

Supporters of Impress cite a YouGov poll commissioned by Hacked Off showing that 73% of people believe that newspapers should be regulated by a body independent of government and publishers, with only 3% supporting a regulator set up by publishers. Newspapers counter with another YouGov poll, this time commissioned by the News Media Association, showing that 49% of respondents thought the Press should finance their own regulation with only 4% thinking wealthy individuals should foot the bill. Given the phrasing of the questions, both sets of responses were entirely predictable - as was the fact that each camp accused the other of misinterpreting the results.
One "external" assessment of Ipso says it's doing an OK job, another that it's a disaster.

Both regulators offer a "low-cost arbitration"service, although Ipso's is only a 12-month pilot project. The Impress system, which uses a firm of commercial arbitrators, is free for complainants. The website says that an administration fee is payable, but complaints chief Brigit Morris told SubScribe that plans to charge £75 had been abandoned at least for the time being. Ipso charges £300 plus VAT for basic arbitration and if the complainant wants a further ruling, they have to pay a maximum of £2,800 plus VAT. Both expect the publisher to pay the cost of the arbitrator and for each side to pay their own legal fees. Both discourage the incursion of such fees, emphasising that the intention is to create a lawyer-free zone.

The consultation

The Government is asking people whether Section 40 should be implemented, repealed, put on hold or implemented in part - allowing papers signed up to Impress to benefit from the costs protection without penalising those outside the regime. Responses are invited in the form of a questionnaire and Private Eye has helpfully tweeted the link, which is reproduced here.
Campaigners have been even more helpful. Hacked Off has produced a template response, which you can see here, and also published a critique of a rival template published on a site called freethepress.co.uk.
Hacked Off notes, correctly, that the template is the only content on the freethepress site and that it gives no details of members of supporters. Yet the group asserts that it was set up by "the Trotskyists-turned-libertarians of Spiked magazine" and "appears to be financed by the newspapers". It may mean the hashtag Twitter campaign and possibly material on the News Media Association site, but that's not what it says.

What does SubScribe think?

Ipso got off to a promising start, but seems to have stalled. It needs to make sure it is Leveson-compliant, fine-tune its arbitration service and generally shape up so that it can secure at least the support of the unregulated Guardian, FT and i. The failure to do that speaks volumes.

It also needs to be more pro-active in initiating investigations; it was too slow off the mark during the EU referendum campaign where newspapers knew that they could write whatever they liked and that there would be no time for them to be forced into correcting misleading material before the vote. It should be more robust in enforcing the Editors' Code provisions for separating news reporting and comment and be bolder in demanding prominent corrections - it is unfathomable that it is still seen as acceptable to publish a lie in 120pt on page one and a correction in 8pt on page 2.

There are signs of hope in that Paul Dacre has at last stood down as chairman of the Code committee (of course, levels of joy about that depend on who replaces him) and that Moses has shown a willingness to engage with groups of people who want to discuss various issues with him. That hope is, however, dampened by an interview with the FT in which he said that much of what he saw in the papers -about immigration in particular - dismayed him, but that he was not in a position to do much about it.

Faith in Ipso was certainly dented with the rulings on Katie Hopkins's "cockroaches" piece and Kelvin MacKenzie's tasteless remarks about the newsreader Fatima Manji. Tony Gallagher's defiance after being forced into a correction on the Queen and Brexit and Trevor Kavanagh's crowing over the Manji ruling did not help.

The question is, would another regulator have ruled against Hopkins or MacKenzie? Obnoxious as their words were, they were expressing personal opinions and we have no right not to be offended. SubScribe readers will know that this blog finds much coverage of migration offensive and disproportionate, but where it is true, readers are the only people who can stop it - by not buying. No regulator can dictate news values or impose punishments because they think an article is in bad taste.

As to Impress, it never had a chance of attracting the support of any significant newspaper. Mosley's involvement is an irrelevance - a bit of colour for the Littlejohns and Liddles, an opportunity for the Sun to give us all a laugh with a leader saying we can't entrust our free Press to a vindictive tycoon. (Of course it wasn't irony fail, as Twitter chortled. It could only have been deliberate.)

As Sun editor Tony Gallagher said in his interview on Radio 4's Today programme this week: "No newspaper worth its salt will sign up." Not because of Mosley, but because newspapers are resolute about having no truck with any State-approved regulator, no matter how many checks, balances, promises and pledges are made about political interference. Impress could have been set up by the Angel Gabriel, financed by the most benign benefactor and staffed by legendary journalists and the greatest brains of the age. The answer would still have been No.

[Incidentally, Gallagher was given a rough ride for asserting in his Today interview that Leveson had cost £50m. It didn't. It cost about £5m, and Sarah Montague put him right. The inquiry, the police investigations and the court cases cost £43m - but none of those would have happened if Gallagher's sister paper hadn't broken the law and his employers handed over masses of material betraying staff and sources alike. That apart, it was game of him to agree to appear at all; tabloid editors do not generally submit to interview.]

And so to Section 40. Leveson recognised that newspapers would need to be cajoled into accepting a regulator approved by the State, so he suggested introducing a penalty for unregulated papers that ended up in court rather than use a cheap arbitration service. His idea was that they should not have their own costs reimbursed by the litigant, even if they won:

The normal rule is that the loser pays the legal costs incurred by the winner but costs recovered are never all the costs incurred and litigation is expensive not only for the loser but frequently for the winner as well. If, by declining to be a part of a regulatory system, a publisher has deprived a claimant of access to a quick, fair, low cost arbitration of the type I have proposed, the Civil Procedure Rules (governing civil litigation) could permit the court to deprive that publisher of its costs of litigation in privacy, defamation and other media cases, even if it had been successful. After all, its success could have been achieved far more cheaply for everyone.

If MPs had followed that advice, we might not be in the middle of this furore. But they took it a stage further and decided that, win or lose, whichever party had shunned arbitration should pay both sets of costs. Section 40 states (on page 45 of this link):

If the defendant was not a member of an approved regulator at the time when the claim was commenced (but would have been able to be a member at that time and it would have been reasonable in the circumstances for the defendant to have been a member at that time), the court must award costs against the defendant unless satisfied that (a) the issues raised by the claim could not have been resolved by using an arbitration scheme of the approved regulator (had the defendant been a member), or (b) it is just and equitable in all the circumstances of the case to make a different award of costs or make no award of costs.

[The Act's previous paragraph makes the same provision in reverse for claimants who could have used an arbitration service, in an apparent attempt to offer a carrot as well as a stick to newspapers to sign up.]

The potential for abuse is obvious. Anyone could attempt to deflect any investigation of their activities by threatening to sue, knowing that they could hire the costliest lawyers in the land and not have to pay the bill. A provision that was supposed to encourage compliance with a regulatory regime and provide cheap redress for ordinary people was turned into a potential weapon for the wealthy, powerful, corrupt and criminal.
Newspapers that don't want to be regulated by anyone authorised by the State - let alone Max Mosley and Hacked Off - felt that they were being blackmailed into submission.
The language may be melodramatic, hysterical even. If you want to see threats to Press freedom, look at Turkey, at Egypt. Read the Committee to Protect Journalists or Reporters Sans Frontieres websites. To say, as many papers do, that Britain has the toughest system of Press regulation in the world is patent nonsense. Yes, Ipso has the power to fine miscreants up to £1 million, but I am not aware of any financial penalty being imposed on any publication (I may be wrong).

Had MPs enacted the Leveson recommendation, newspapers would still have squealed, but their case would have been weaker. They might lose money defending a winning case, but at least they would be in a position to make a decision about how much they were willing to risk in the fight. If they have to pay the other side's legal bill as well, there is no knowing where it could end.
As it stands, Section 40 offends natural justice, and it is this fact that adds power - and some public sympathy - to their argument.

SubScribe suspects that courts would recognise that, and that judges would reject the costs directive in favour of the (b) provision that it would not be just or equitable. But the very existence of Section 40 would leave papers vulnerable and local journalists, in particular, could be scared off tricky investigations. The protection against vexatious litigants wouldn't be enough to overcome the risk of bankruptcy if a case ended up in court.

So just sign up? Well here the Mosley factor comes back into play. Even if papers put aside their qualms about state-backed regulation, most would balk at being regulated by an organisation funded by Mosley and supported by Hacked Off - although the NUJ does support Impress.

What if Ipso applied for recognition? That would be the simplest solution. It would need to beef up its act - which it ought to do anyway - but that aversion to being tied to anything with any State involvement is still insurmountable.

Where next then? SubScribe's instinct is that Bradley will introduce the costs incentives for Impress publications without the penalties for the rest. To repeal Section 40 would show bad faith to victims of the excesses of the Press - and invite still worse behaviour from the worst of the newspapers.
There might be some value in leaving it on the books and offering abolition as a carrot if an unrecognised Ipso can demonstrate its independence and the effectiveness of its arbitration system.
But to enforce it and antagonise Murdoch and Dacre when Theresa May's Government needs all the help it can get in this pre-Brexit world? She'd be bonkers.

And isn't that where we came in - disquiet over newspapers' political influence and journalists' cosiness with politicians?

Saturday, 22 October 2016

Gary Lineker, The Sun and free speech

Why would the country's best-selling newspaper (circulation 1.7m) declare war on the country's most popular football pundit (Twitter following 5.3m) over a couple of tweets about refugees from the Calais Jungle?
Because it hates the BBC?
Because it's worried about immigration?
Because it's not that keen on Gary Lineker?
Because it wants to distract attention from the jailing of a former star reporter?
Possibly - probably - all of the above.

But also because it is worried.

The Sun is worried because this week will see the next chapter in the saga that began when its sister paper's reporters started listening in to people's voicemail messages.

A body called the Press Recognition Panel, which has spent £2m of public money over the past two years trying to find something to recognise, at last appears ready to grant its imprimatur to an "independent" press regulator that will conform to the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry.

Impress has been set up with money from motor-racing magnate Max Mosley and encouragement from Hacked Off - both renowned lovers of our tabloid newspapers - and has the backing of the National Union of Journalists.
It does not have the support of publishers of national newspapers, most of which have agreed to be regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation, under the chairmanship of Sir Alan Moses. (A couple - the FT and Guardian - have chosen not to submit to regulation by anyone.)

Ipso, also established in response to Leveson, has been up and running for a couple of years and is, according to a recent review by a former senior civil servant, doing an OK job.
Given its rulings on Katie Hopkins calling refugees "cockroaches" and Kelvin MacKenzie's protestations that a woman in a hijab shouldn't read news about terrorism, not everyone would agree, and many people still have qualms about it because it was set up and is funded by the publishers.
That tends to be the way of things with self-regulation - and even those wanting more controls on the Press insist that self-regulation is the preferred option.

Ipso won't seek recognition from the PRP because that was created and financed by the State, and state-backed regulation - even at "arm's length" and with "triple locks" - is anathema.

Now we are about to move from the situation of a recognition panel with nothing to recognise to one of a regulator with no one (apart from a few small publications) to regulate.

If you're not that worried about £2m of public money going down the drain, that might not matter too much. But the chances are that the Government will want to rescue its baby.
For the time being, forget Article 50. The pressing concern for journalists this week is whether Theresa May will trigger Section 40.

For this provision in the 2013 Crime and Courts Act includes the blackmail - an emotive word, but justified - that will require newspapers that decline to accept the authority of a state-recognised regulator to pay all the costs any time they are taken to court. Even if they win.
The idea is to encourage the use of arbirtration rather than the courts to settle complaints, but the implications of such a law - which can be brought into force by statutory instrument because the parliamentary debates have been and gone - for press freedom are self-evident.

There has been some pretty ropy journalism from our national newspapers this year, particularly in the coverage of the referendum and immigration, but there has also been commendable work. Besides the huge sporting scandals, there have been investigations into tax avoidance by big business, sex abuse, charities, terrorism, election spending, religions and family courts - there are more than 50 entries in the investigations section for this year's British Journalism Awards.

Under Section 40, any or all of those could have been strangled at birth by a threat to sue.
Yes, editors have always had to weigh up the potential costs of pursuing a story, but under the proposed regime they will have to consider the greater risk of having to pay legal costs even if they come out on top in court.

(Remember that the phone hacking that started all this was exposed by exactly the kind of investigative journalism that might be thwarted by Section 40 - it takes a lot of time, money and nerve to go after the biggest beasts. It's also worth remembering that it did not require Leveson to bring guilty journalists to justice. There were laws in place, the problem lay in the way the police accepted obfuscation from the people they were supposed to be investigating.)

There is a provision in Section 40 that a judge does not have to enforce the costs rule if it is not "just" - and one would hope that if you proved someone was a lying toerag, a sane judge would find in your favour. SubScribe is convinced that the rule would collapse the first time it was tested in court. But until that happens, the Press can only hope.

No wonder newspapers are squealing. The Times ran a top leader on Thursday headlined "Not impressed" that said the rival regulator could become a vehicle for an unprecedented attack on free speech. The Daily Mail, which fervently wants to Britain to be free of the European Convention on Human Rights, is invoking that very convention in its fight against Section 40. [Monday update: Today it reprints an article by Matthew Parris that first appeared in The Times on Saturday, describing the statute as "cowardly blackmail". The Murdoch papers are in full cry, with the leader and Parris in the Times, the Lineker story in the Sun followed up by a full-drop leader today, and a leader about the PRP replacing one about Putin at the last minute in the Sunday Times.]
Local newspapers, which were blameless in the eyes of Leveson, are particularly worried and many have also carried leaders on the subject.

The Murdoch papers and the Mail are in full cry

The "worthy" argument focuses on centuries of freedom from state control, but there are also cries of "it's not fair". And it isn't. Because these provisions apply only to newspapers, putting them at a further disadvantage in their struggle against broadcasters and the internet.
That is why The Sun took the opportunity to attack a BBC presenter for something he said on unregulated Twitter - hitting two rivals with one stone.

The central concern for the Murdochs, Rothermeres, Barclays and their editors is, of course, commercial (always remember that newspaper publishing is a business, not a public service - proprietors are not obliged to print stuff that people don't want to read). They don't like competitors having an advantage and they want the freedom to print what they like.

As far as competition is concerned, nearly every paper indulges in routine BBC-bashing and leaders demanding that ministers rein in the corporation (they're not so concerned about editorial freedom and state control for the BBC because it is a publicly funded rival). But that's about as much as they can do. There's no way anyone can attempt to regulate the internet.

As to freedom, the ostensible objection to Impress is one of principle - the very notion that the State should have any influence at all, however far removed - and that is hard to argue against. But that battle was lost in 2014.
Even so, while there was no official regulator on the horizon, there was still some hope of winning the war by default. That is about to change.

Come on, I can hear doubters say. They aren't worried about free speech or constraints on their ability to hold the powerful to account; they're scared they're going to be forced to behave.

Well let's park the role of the State (yes, it's the crux of the matter, but bear with me) and ask would it make any practical difference if newspapers were regulated by Impress rather than Ipso?

For the moment, the answer appears to be No. Impress has published a draft code of conduct (currently out for consultation) that is remarkably similar to that employed by Ipso.
Provisions for intrusion, privacy, accuracy all pretty well match Ipso's. Impress would have the right to instigate investigations without a complaint if it felt a story warranted it - but so does Ipso. Both can impose big fines.

Sir Alan Moses told the FT this month that he was frustrated by the "tone" and "nasty edge" of some newspapers before the referendum, but that while he would like the Press to be more responsible, "I don't think a regulator can address it."

SubScribe raised a similar issue with Impress last month, asking if it would be able to do anything to tackle the drip-feed of negative headlines about migration that the UN and European organisations have blamed for increasing racism and hate crime. It replied that - like Ipso - stories would be considered on a case-by-case basis. As it stands, then, there would be no way of dealing with the cumulative effect of a series of stories on any subject.

Thus, the signs are that Impress is unlikely to offer any greater comfort to those who want to restrain the tabloids than Ipso.
They might hope for a "hanging judge" to oversee complaints, but referendum coverage has shown how easy it is for papers to meet "accuracy" requirements by finding a patsy MP or whoever to say the right thing to justify its approach. Free speech for columnists - even when offensive - is sacrosanct. And newspapers, unlike public broadcasters, have no obligation to provide "balanced" coverage - for if they did, how could they campaign on issues of genuine public interest?

As Moses says, it would be wonderful if our papers were less nasty and more responsible. But there is nothing to suggest that Impress would be able to achieve that. And there is no chance that any national newspaper will sign up to be regulated by an organisation linked to Mosley and Hacked Off either willingly or under duress.

So why - apart from saving face and justifying the expense of Leveson and the £2m so far handed to the recognition panel - force the issue and make martyrs of the villains who set this whole sorry ball rolling?

Weary observers of the Press might be tempted to think that if all three Murdoch papers and the Mail are united against something then it must have something going for it.
Not this time.

The Sun was wrong in its McCarthyite attack on Lineker. It was absurd to run a leader headlined "Web of deceit" complaining about "lies" on Twitter on the very day Mazher Mahmood was sent to jail for perverting the course of justice. It was crass to allow MacKenzie to crow about a victory over an "anti-free speech mafia". It was unwise to let Trevor Kavanagh continue the Lineker fight in his Monday column (when you're in a hole...) and even more so for him to heap further unwarranted insults on Fatima Manji.

The Sun exaggerates the virtues of its journalism and over-eggs the freedom of speech argument (especially when it wants to deny Lineker the right to express his personal opinion on his personal Twitter feed).
The Sun is wrong in a hundred different ways every week.

But when it comes to newspapers being regulated by an organisation appointed and overseen by a state-financed panel, it is right.

The poke at "free-speech hating celebrities, Left-leaning Hacked Off" and "odious Mosley" in its Monday leader is irrelevant. It wouldn't matter if the twelve disciples, the prophet Muhammed and Buddha were sitting in judgment. The point of principle is not who is behind any regulator that might be approved, it is the wrongness of State involvement and coercion.

And that is why Mrs May should consign Section 40 to the dustbin.

Wednesday, 22 June 2016

Regulation, regulation, regulation

Hugo Rifkind wrote a thoughtful piece in The Times this morning in response to the exclusion of Channel 4's Michael Crick from a Vote Leave rally.
We should worry, he said, when the Press is excluded from such events. The headline writer took the point further: "If the media is being gagged, start worrying".
Apart from the singular verb with a plural noun, fair enough. It is a given that a free Press is a key element of a functioning democracy.
Rifkind's article also cites Donald Trump, President Erdogan - for his persecution of Turkish journalists and for his attempts to pursue a German comedian who poked fun at him - and Jeremy Corbyn for smirking when Labour activists booed BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg. Rifkind concludes:

"This is what demagoguery is. It needn't start with jackboots and jails. It can start, as easily, with a smirk and a wink while a majority thinks "At last". Exclude the jokers, exclude the Press, exclude the experts, silence anyone who won't sing along. It is the pursuit of a clear-eyed narrative, clear of irritant grit. Watch out for it. Even if you are irritated too."

He's right.
So are all those people pointing to the death of Jo Cox and urging politicians to tone down their rhetoric.

But isn't there another group that needs to look to itself? A group that has indulged in a festival of smirking and winking, silencing and excluding, not to mention mocking and insulting? The very group that sees it as its right and duty to police those in the public eye?

No sensible person wants to muzzle or gag or stifle the Press, to licence it or bring it under state control. Regulator Sir Alan Moses said in his early days at the head of Ipso that we need a rumbustious, irreverent Press. We want our newspapers to be as entertaining as they are informative, to look out for us and ask awkward questions that put those in power on the spot.

What happens, though, when they peddle half-truths and downright lies? What happens when they put only one side of the story? And when they do so again and again and again?

Editors are supposed to abide by a code that demands accuracy and a clear distinction between fact, conjecture and comment.
The accuracy bit is easy in a campaign such as the one we're living through. There's always someone to express the view you want to put across and, unlike broadcasters, newspapers are not under any obligation to put the other side. Fred Bloggs says all Americans are gun-toting rednecks. He said it, we report it. It's accurate. But it's not the truth.

Indeed, when a newspaper declares that something is"the truth" or that it is "nailing lies", in most cases it is neither.

The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph have never made a secret of their dislike of the EU, so their support of the Leave campaign is unsurprising.
But the way they have shown it is as worrying as Boris Johnson's exclusion of Michael Crick from that rally.
When George Osborne says leaving the EU would cost families thousands of pounds, it is part of "Project Fear". When Boris Johnson says we'll have to pay an extra £2.4bn to Brussels if we stay in, it is further evidence of the need to vote Out.
When Ian Botham backs Brexit, it's a "good old Beefy" picture story. When Professor Stephen Hawking backs Remain, it's a blob par at the foot of the page.

The "Project Fear" bandwagon started rolling early in the campaign, when the focus was squarely on the economy.
But then a much gaudier wagon came over the hill and, beguiled by the giant glittery letters IMMIGRATION over the driver's bench, our fab four couldn't wait to scramble aboard.

Turks, Romanians, Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, Albanians: millions of them apparently want to abandon their homelands and settle in the English countryside - and only leaving the EU will stop them.
No claim was too preposterous, no figure too huge to print. And when our intrepid reporters were caught in the 120pt splash caps lie? Just put a par of 8pt on page two under "corrections and clarifications" and a bit on the bottom of the story on the website.

This all matters. These four papers have a combined readership of somewhere between 10 and 12 million, but beyond that, their front pages are seen by millions more when people go to the supermarket, to buy sweets or cigarettes in the newsagents, to pay for petrol at the service station. They are shown on the late-night news bulletins and discussed on radio and television.
The front pages thus have an influence way beyond the rest of the paper. Passers-by who saw the "We're from Europe, let us in" or "12m Turks want to come to Britain" headings won't have seen the corrections published inside much later. The stories have had their impact, the false message has reached its target.

On May 23, I decided to start monitoring every paid-for mainstream national newspaper's referendum coverage for the final month of the campaign (you can see the results by clicking on any of the front pages on this webpage). Had I had half an idea how draining the exercise would prove, I would never have embarked upon it. But the imbalance in the rightwing papers and the relative ambivalence of the left-leaning Mirror and Guardian made me gasp.

In masochistic mood, I then resolved to look at everything one paper - the Mail - had written about the referendum since the date was set in February. The cynicism was even more breathtaking. You can see how the battle lines were drawn on this blog post.

The fact that I focused on the Mail does not mean it was the only - or even the worst - sinner.
The Express has failed to put the Remain case anywhere, other than to report "outrage" and "fury" over its arguments. Over the past week or so it has run a daily back-of-the-book spread labelled "Why I'm voting Leave". No counter-view has been countenanced.
The Sun was rebuked by Ipso for its "Queen supports Brexit" front page. It carried the obligatory correction, but the editor promptly said he stood by what he'd published - knocking for six any hope that the new regulator would be seen as strong enough to restrain the Press and so save it from its detractors.

For the past four months our two best-selling newspapers have poured buckets of manure over the Prime Minister they moved heaven and earth to get re-elected. They have played fast and loose with facts (which are inevitably thin on the ground, since no one can predict what will happen next week). They have discounted the opinion of every politician financier, economist, businessman, scientist or academic who counsels caution - and God help any "luvvie" who dares to open their mouth. "Shove it in your cakehole", as the Sun so charmingly put it.

These are the very two papers that shouted loudest when the Supreme Court ruled that they couldn't publish the name of a celebrity whose sexual antics had been touted around the street. A privacy law by the back door?
They were right.
Yes, anyone who cared knew by that stage who the fuss was all about and, yes, the whole legal challenge started out of prurience. But it was a dangerous precedent.

There is nothing wrong with (and much to admire about) a Press that cocks a snook at authority, that refuses to be cowed. But if you want to be admitted into people's homes, to persuade the reader that you are their trusty friend, you have to be responsible and trustworthy.

The lead letter in this morning's Daily Express describes the paper as a "beacon of truth". Social media may mock the hypochondriac weather-obsessed Express, but there are people who rely on it. They may be having their prejudices reinforced, but there are half a million buyers out there who really think hordes of undesirable johnny foreigners are waiting on the other side of the Channel to board a fleet of coracles to "sneak" into Britain.

Goodness knows what these papers will do on Friday if there is a vote to stay in the EU - or, indeed, if there is a vote to leave and it turns out that they have helped to bring down the Government they were so keen to elect last year. #
Do they have half an idea of what is likely to happen next? Or even know what they want? An administration led by Boris Johnson? Another general election that Labour - under a new leader - might win?
They rubbish Osborne and Darling's warnings about the need for an emergency budget in the event of a Leave vote.Yet (in company with pro-Remain papers) they blithely publish a Leave "manifesto" that promises Bills not only to get out of Europe but also to abolish VAT on domestic energy and other fantasy measures as though Gove and Johnson are an official opposition in a conventional general election. How will these Bills be put before Parliament?
In all their huffing and puffing about "the facts" and "the truth", papers that claim to be "on our side" and "looking out for ordinary people" have failed to ask the simplest questions or give their readers any clear picture of the sequence of events that is likely to follow the vote on Thursday.

What's the solution?
Ipso has the power to fine a recalcitrant paper £1m - but we all know it won't use it. Even if it did, papers that passionately believe that the EU is a Bad Thing - and that the end of getting out justifies almost any means - would probably consider half of Paul Dacre's annual income a price worth paying.
So retrospective punishment is unlikely to be meted out and would in any event be ineffective. It's too late. The damage has been done - to the reputation of the Press, and possibly to democracy itself.
Licensing is beyond the pale. So is any form of state regulation, however "triple locked" it may be.
Some call for Leveson 2, but that is supposed to deal with relations between the police and the Press and is hardly likely to result in a more effective form of regulation.

I really wish I had an answer.
Maybe Hugo Rifkind can offer one. What do we do when it's the "muzzled" Press that's wearing the jackboots?

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Leveson: an expensive hiding to nothing

The Joneses are thousands of pounds in debt. The children need new school uniforms, there isn't enough cash to pay the woman who comes to look after their ageing grandmother, and the car has failed its MoT. Most of the neighbours are in the same boat. Times are tough.
In the living room there is a television set. It's not brilliant - the picture and sound quality are a bit iffy - but it's just about done the job for the past few years. Even with all the other pressing demands on their bank accounts, the family is thinking about replacing it, so Mrs Jones decides to commission a personal shopper to find a new one.
She wants an independent opinion, so she doesn't approach anyone with any background in making or selling televisions. Having chosen the man for the job, the family asks him to look into DVDs and home cinemas while he's at it. He should conduct his research as widely and thoroughly as possible - but even when he reaches his conclusions, the Joneses may ignore his advice. Everyone thinks it's a great idea.

Well it's obviously utterly bonkers. Money down the drain.
But here we have a Government up to its ears in debt, austerity all round, limited funds for education, health or transport and the swirling crisis in Europe threatening to make things worse.

Yet we're happy to spend anything up to £50m - enough to rebuild five delapidated secondary schools - on trying to put a leash around the country's most important watchdog: the Press. And incidentally allow everyone to join in the fun of the official hounding of Rupert Murdoch.

The News of the World should not have hacked into anybody's phone.
But when people found out that it had done so, no one really cared. There wasn't even much outrage when it turned out that it was Prince William's phone that had been tapped.
When the Guardian suggested that many more people had had their calls intercepted, the claims were treated with disbelief and brushed aside. But the newspaper was dogged in its pursuit of the story and eventually the wider truth emerged. The former head of the Professional Footballers' Association was paid a huge sum in compensation after he threatened to sue for intrusion - a sum that was assumed to have included 'hush money', or to put it more formally, a confidentiality clause; common practice in cases settled out of court.
A procession of celebrities came forward to say that they, too, had suffered invasions of their privacy - but there were still few people beyond the Guardian offices who cared much. Millions of readers continued to buy the redtops without questioning where all the showbiz gossip came from. Until the parents of Milly Dowler said that her voicemails had been erased, giving them false hope that she was still alive when in fact she was long dead.
Suddenly everyone was overcome with righteousness. The police belatedly swung into action, and promptly went into overdrive. The News of the World was closed down. People started asking questions about the Prime Minister's judgment in appointing a former editor of the paper as his communications chief. Resignations and arrests followed.
When you have a furore such as this, it doesn't take long for someone (usually Her Majesty's loyal Opposition) to cry 'There must be a full public inquiry.' And so it came to pass that Lord Justice Leveson was charged with examining the culture and ethics of the Press, the relationship between the Press and the police, and the relationship of the Press and politicians. He has further been asked to come up with a new regulatory system to replace the Press Complaints Commission.

We are obsessed with public inquiries, royal commissions and judicial reviews and we never learn: they rarely reveal much that we didn't know already and even less frequently bring about effective change.
In 1981 Lord Scarman conducted an inquiry into the causes of the Brixton riots and concluded that relations between the police and the community - particularly the black community - had broken down and needed a fundamental rethink. As a result of his report, the independent Police Complaints Authority was set up.
Eighteen years later Sir William Macpherson was asked to examine the way the police had investigated the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The inquiry cost £4m and Sir William concluded that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist and that relations with the community had broken down. So much for Scarman.

In 1973 the Daily Mirror published an unprecedented 'shock issue' on the life and death of Maria Colwell. I can visualise it to this day. Maria was given up to foster parents as a baby and lived with them until she was five. Then her mother decided she wanted her back. The child was abused and starved until one day her mother's boyfriend came home and found Maria watching television. Her punishment was to be battered and kicked to death. She was six years old. William Kepple was jailed for eight years for manslaughter, a sentence reduced to four on appeal.
The case appalled the nation and Sir Thomas Field-Fisher led a public inquiry that brought some changes in the law. The inquiry revealed a pattern of events that is now all too familiar: care professionals incapable of joined-up thinking, social workers being fobbed off by parents who could get a degree in lying, doctors and nurses not being alert to suspicious bruising and broken bones.
We know what happens not just from the fate of Maria Colwell, but from the inquiries into the deaths of Jasmine Beckford, Tyra Henry, Victoria Climbie, Baby P. But have these investigations taught us how to save such children? Sadly not. What we have learnt is to blame overstretched social services officials when the real villains are the bastards who kill the children. And we gasp in astonishment when one dares to fight back, as Sharon Shoesmith did after being publicly tried and convicted by Ed Balls before a word had been given in evidence.

Some inquiries do produce radical change - there was a huge overhaul of Underground safety as a result of Desmond Fennell's inquiry into the Kings Cross fire that killed 31 people in 1987. The Taylor report on the Hillsborough disaster brought an end to standing on terraces at football grounds, but many thought his conclusions flawed and other recommendations went unheeded.
Other hearings have seemed pointless. The Saville inquiry spent 12 years and £195m going into minute detail of the Bloody Sunday killings in Londonderry in 1973. At the beginning we knew that the Paras had opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing 26. At the end we knew that Paras had fired on unarmed protesters, killing 26 - and that Martin McGuinness had, as suspected, been one of the "bad guys" of the Troubles.. Nearly £8m per victim is a lot to pay for 'closure'.
The Franks inquiry into the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands told us that the Foreign Office had taken its eyes off the ball. Peter Carrington had drawn that conclusion in the opening days of the conflict and resigned as Foreign Secretary, taking responsibility for others' failings on his watch - something that rarely happens these days. But I guess if the country has to go to war because someone ballsed up, perhaps we should look into it. As we did with Chilcot and Hutton: £7.5m worth of investigations into the Blair Government's approach to the Iraq escapade and we're still arguing about it a decade later. Can anyone remember what their lordships decided?
Whatever an inquiry chairman concludes, there will always be people queueing up to denounce the verdict, and if the Government doesn't like it or the public purse can't stretch to the recommended reforms, nothing much will change. In too many cases, inquiries produce only the public vilification of someone who made a catastrophic mistake while doing their job and who will have to deal with the guilt, remorse and 'if onlys' for the rest of their lives, long after everyone else has forgotten their name.

And so to phone hacking. Rupert Murdoch has been a pantomime villain since he first stepped foot in Fleet Street (ok, technically it was Bouverie Street) in the Sixties with his purchase of the News of the World. We booed as he bought and reinvented the Sun, complete with page 3 girls. We yelled 'oh no you won't' when he wanted to buy Times Newspapers, but oh yes, he did. We hissed about cross-media ownership when he set up Sky. We cried 'foul' as he took over the Today newspaper when no one else wanted it. And, most of all, we shouted and stamped our feet when he sacked 5,000 print workers and started producing papers the way he wanted to in Wapping.
Many have suffered at his hands, but rivals who denounce him have had few qualms about following where he led. How many national newspapers are today produced using hot metal, old fashioned printers and typesetters? How many millions watch complete football matches on TV, rather than 45 minutes of edited highlights of one game on a Saturday night?
Well we have now reached the scene where the villain is tied up against the stake for his show trial with everyone relishing his discomfort.
We're also rubbing our hands with glee to see his red-haired sidekick in manacles. We never liked her much - she was too smart and glamorous by half - and she didn't do herself any favours when she cast hundreds of her crew adrift while trying to cling to her personal lifeboat. We lap up the stories of Rebekah's police horse, Rebekah and Dave's country suppers.
But is this a legitimate way to spend public money? Especially as the chances are that the next scene will begin 'with one bound he was free'.

Lord Justice Leveson and Robert Jay QC are a fantastic double act; their show one of the most entertaining things on television. And my goodness, they've had some great guest stars: every national newspaper editor, every proprietor, government ministers PLUS three former prime ministers, the leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Prime Minister and today the Prime Minister himself. Wowee! What a show! How we love to see the posh boys squirm.
The only trouble is, Leveson has an impossible task: to create a new regime to regulate the Press, ie newspapers.
But what is a newspaper? Something that runs a little paragraph on the front or back paqe saying 'printed and published by...registered as a newspaper at the Post Office'? What if you don't register? What if you don't appear in print? The Guardian has stated that it sees its future in digital only. Would it be subject to any new regulation? The UK Press Gazette now appears as a weekly magazine online; is it part of "the Press"? Is this blog? What about review sites? Leveson has conceded that the Internet is the 'elephant in the room'. He can't control the web, but if that's the only platform on which you publish your journalism, are you bound by the rules that govern your newsprint rivals?

Doctors who can kill us are allowed to police themselves, but the Press can't be trusted. Nor, it seems, can the upholders of the law. Everything untoward that the News of the World folk are accused of doing is covered by existing legislation, as Ian Hislop kept telling the inquiry during his joyous morning of evidence. His point is proved by the fact that two people went to jail over Prince William's voicemail. We now have 150 coppers scurrying round investigating what went on in Wapping, arresting journalists all over the place and running up a bill which UKPG reported today is likely to end up at £30m-plus.
As a matter of interest, the Milly Dowler investigation, 'Operation Ruby', involved 100 officers and cost £6m - and still failed to nail the killer. Levi Bellfield was linked to the case only after he was arrested on another matter. Compare the spending and consider which is more important, finding a child killer or finding out who listened into Sadie Frost's phone calls?

And what about the rest of Fleet Street? Nobody's looking at them, we're all so engrossed in Murdoch. It would be naive to think that these practices were confined to News International and fingers have been pointed at the Mirror and the Mail groups, but there has been no real scrutiny.
Only today the CPS announced that it would not be prosecuting David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations executive editor, for hacking the phone of an arms company executive. Leigh not only admitted in print that he had listened to the businessman's voicemail but said that doing so had given him a 'voyeuristic thrill'. A prosecution would not be in the public interest, the CPS said.
The Telegraph may be whiter than white - or maybe it has immunity because of the MPs' expenses. That was, of course, a case of dealing in stolen goods. The Times rejected the tapes for that very reason, a decision that displeased Murdoch, as we heard during his two days of evidence to Leveson. Stolen goods or not, it quickly became clear that the Telegraph was right to take the chance, the disclosures were without a doubt in the public interest. What, then, if you hack into a phone and find that a government minister is selling secrets to China? Is it suddenly OK? Oh, the benefits of hindsight.

Leveson knows he's on a hiding to nothing on the ethics/regulation front: he outlined his vague thinking to Tony Blair and pretty well begged him to turn it into something workable.He seems to be leaning towards statutory control. Wrong decision. The Tories won't buy it and his report will end up on the bottom shelf. Better just to reform the existing self-regulation system and give the PCC or its successor the power to fine newspapers or suspend journalists whose behaviour is dodgy but still just about legal. The existing laws can do the rest.

So how about relations with the police? It is already an offence to pay a public official; do we need further laws? Bribery legislation that came into effect last year is causing enough problems for businesses that don't know whether a bottle of scotch at Christmas or a ticket to the Olympics opening ceremony are allowable any more. The police need the Press's help with appeals to find criminals; reporters need police contacts to get the inside story. Are they allowed to buy each other a drink? How do you set the parameters? Two glasses good, four glasses bad? Read Orwell and you'll see that things do not always pan out quite as you had hoped.

Then there are the politicians. Just like the police, they need the Press. They also need the support of business, unions, ordinary people. Where do you draw the line? A woman goes to her MP's surgery to complain about the rubbish collections or to seek help with an official letter. He obliges by raising the issue in Parliament or untangling the red tape. Fine?
A film director goes to a reception at No 10 and chats about the prospects for tax breaks to help the British film industry. Is that all right?
Diageo tells the Chancellor that increases in alcohol duty are leading to a surge in booze cruises and making Britain uncompetitive. Is that above board?
The CBI lobbies the Tories for reductions in corporation tax; the unions tell Labour to change employment law. We take that for granted.
Why then, is it so terrible for newspapers - and not just the Murdoch Press - to put their agendas to ministers who may seek their endorsement come election time?
Rebekah and Dave may have been too cosy; Tony and Rupert may have been too close. But the door to No 10 wasn't closed to every other newspaper proprietor and editor. There was a time that Paul Dacre seemed to be running the country.
This inquiry is supposed to be about the whole of the Press, but the focus is squarely on Murdoch. Vince Cable was rightly stripped of his powers to decide on whether the BSkyB deal should be nodded through or examined more closely. Declaring war on Murdoch didn't exactly build confidence in his ability to deliver an impartial decision. We now know that his replacement, Jeremy Hunt, was too friendly with the Murdoch team and didn't even understand what was meant by quasi-judicial. Whatever either of them ended up deciding wouldn't have made a jot of difference to what was broadcast since News Corp already controlled the network.

The Leveson inquiry has so far cost £2m, and it has a way yet to run. Is it worth it?
Not if you listen to two people who should know. Two years ago Lord Bichard said in a debate at Gresham College, Oxford, that public inquiries were a waste of money because they had so little impact. Lord Bichard was put in charge of an inquiry into child protection issues after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham. It ended up costing about £10m, but he said that he had to nag politicians to take any notice of his recommendations. "I regret that there seems to be a remarkable reluctance to adapt to the changes identified by these inquiries in so many professions," he said.
Lady Justice Smith, who ran the £21m inquiry into the Harold Shipman murders, felt much the same. "Positive proposals can be very slow to emerge and even if they eventually do, they are often diluted," she said. "It's a source of great regret to me."

The phone hacking scandal and belated police investigation have clipped Murdoch's wings and forced him into changes - as well as costing his company more than $100m. His son has lost all hope of inheriting his mantle; a newspaper with a long history and unique reputation has been killed off; trusted lieutenants have had to resign and some could even face jail.
All of that happened or was in train before Leveson started. It seems to me that this is ample evidence that mechanisms exist to deal with wrongdoing within the industry. It was exposed by industry - the Guardian - and dealt with by the existing forces of the law and commercial imperatives.As Hislop says, we just need to use the powers we already have a bit more efficiently.
The inquiry may have started as a 'get Rupert' witch-hunt, but it is David Cameron, with his lapses of judgment on Coulson, Brooks and Hunt, who may rue the day he set it up.

And so, as we close another week of celebrity evidence, here are a couple of final observations:

1: About 200 News of the World journalists lost their jobs when the paper closed. Many were re-employed at the Sun. In the fallout more than a hundred Times and Sunday Times workers also lost their jobs. One explanation was that the company had taken on premises at Thomas More Square in the expectation that four newspapers would share the costs; when there were only three, it was time for belt-tightening all round.
Murdoch told Leveson that he should have closed the NoW years ago and replaced it with a Sunday edition of the Sun. So even as he stands lashed to the stake, he still comes out with one result he always wanted.

2: One of the prime anti-NI cheerleaders is Tom Watson, a Labour MP and member of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. He regards the behaviour of Murdoch and his staff as beyond the pale. He may well be right, but what of his own behaviour?
When details of MPs' expenses were published in full after the Telegraph blew the issue wide open with tales of duck houses and 30p plugs charged to the taxpayer, it emerged that Mr Watson and fellow MP Iain Wright had spent £100,000 of our money on the purchase and furnishing of a Westminster flat. Unfortunately, they were unable to claim the cost of their dining room suite because it went over the allowance. But Mr Watson did charge the full £4,800 a year for feeding himself - and the pair also used our money to buy the freehold of the flat. That will have made it more valuable, but Mr Watson and Mr Wright will be perfectly entitled to keep any profit they make on a future sale.
Very ethical. Perhaps there should be a public inquiry.

Pages