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Index | Editorial | Birds-eye view view| Opening the toolbox | Zoom-in on the newsroom | Media landscapes mages. It was common knowledge within the trade that private personal information was also being obtained by payments to public servants and by illicit access to bank accounts, health and telephone records. Then in July 2011 The Guardian newspaper revealed that News of the World reporters had intercepted messages on the mobile phone of 13 year old Milly Dowler, who had been abducted and murdered in 2002. It caused a public outcry and led directly to Cameron’s statement during which he spoke of “accusations of widespread lawbreaking by parts of our press; alleged corruption by some police officers; and ... the failure of our political system over many, many years to tackle a problem that has been getting worse.“ He said that the police had 3,870 names, and around 4,000 mobile and 5,000 landline phone numbers, of people who may have been the subject of unlawful interference by journalists, or private investigators acting on their behalf. Parliament intervenes Plainly this was a massive scandal involving criminal activity and the inquiry he set up, under a senior high court judge, Lord Justice Leveson, was to have two parts. In the first he would look into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, its relationship with the police and politicians, and the failure of the current system of regulation, and the issue of cross-media ownership. He would make recommendations for a more effective way of regulating the press while supporting its freedom, plurality and independence from Government. A second part would examine the unlawful or improper conduct at the News of the World and other newspapers, and examine the management and police failures, which allowed it to happen. Cameron would later say on television, BBC1, that he would “absolutely” abide by Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations, unless as the interviewer suggested, they were ‘bonkers’. “The status quo is not an option,” he said. He wanted a system that worked for ordinary people without the state becoming involved. An initial compromise using an ancient device called a Royal Charter, was developed by a government minister in consultation with the industry, and then revised in a late-night, all-party meeting with campaigners for media reform who had originally been reticent about this approach. It would create a Recognition Panel, independent of the press and parliament, whose sole task would be to ensure that any self-regulatory body set up by the industry complied with the criteria proposed by Lord Justice Leveson. But the deal done was instantly rejected by the industry, who have since come up with a variant on the same theme, but this time with the industry rather than the monarch’s advisors in charge. This in itself posed an constitutional problem since the monarch could not proceed to approve either Charter while controversy raged. If the politicians‘ version gets the go ahead most newspapers have said they will not comply. If the industry’s version is adopted, victims and critics of the press will remain dissatisfied. Open season on the press, police and politicans Before conducting his 11 month long inquiry in the law courts, Leveson had held a series of briefings for his team and then two days of seminars with editors, academics and other media experts, to give them a chance to suggest, which lines of inquiry he should follow. Opening the Inquiry proper in November 2011 he said: “The press provides an essential check on all aspects of public life. That is why any failure within the media affects all of us. At the heart of this Inquiry, therefore, may be one simple question: who guards the guardians?” His purpose was to make ‘recommendations for a more effective policy and regulation that supports the integrity and freedom of the press while encouraging the highest ethical standards’. In seeking to determine an answer to his own question he and his team of assessors (former journalists, media executives, a civil rights lawyer, a city regulator and a former police chief) heard from some 135 organisations and 474 individuals, in person or in writing. He conducted a forensic examination of complaints against the press, as well as interrogating editors, journalists, police officers and politicians. The revelations about the journalistic culture, and the damage caused to individuals by intrusive or inaccurate coverage, kept the inquiry high on the news agenda, and while many positive aspects of the work of journalists were mentioned, most evidence did damage to their reputation. Lord Justice Leveson’s report on the first part of his Inquiry, published in December 2012, runs to some 2,000 pages. The executive summary is 46 pages long and contains 92 recommendations relating to the press, self-regulation and the behaviour of the police and politicians. The central challenge was to the newspaper industry – to come up with a new system of self-regulation that would win back public trust in journalism. It would need to be led by an independently appointed Chair, with a board clearly independent of the industry, with no dominance by editors, and powers to impose heavy fines on those who seriously transgressed an agreed Code of Practice. Significantly he proposed the creation of a separate, independent ‘recognition body’ which would ‘guard the guardians’. It’s sole role would be to ensure that the new system of self-regulation lived up to the required standards. He suggested that the existing statutory regulator for broadcasting and communications, Ofcom, might fulfil that role, unless a new body was created with statutory backing to ensure it had sufficient authority. Neither the new self-regulators nor the recognition body could force publishers to sign up to the new scheme, so Leveson proposed an incentive. Those that joined a self-regulatory body – and he left it open to the industry to decide how many such bodies might be set up – would avoid the risk of exemplary damages being awarded against them in the event of litigation. This too would require legislation, following the Irish model.
Leveson’s plan caused an instant rift within the coalition government. The Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg welcomed the proposals. ”Lord Justice Leveson has considered these issues at length,” he told Parliament. “He has found that changing the law is the only way to guarantee a system of self-regulation which seeks to cover all of the press. And he explains why the system of sticks and carrots he proposes has to be recognised in statute in order to be properly implemented by the courts.“ The Prime Minister took a different line, prompting suggestions that he had been ‘got at’ by leading media executives. “The issue of principle is that for the first time we would have crossed the rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land,“ Cameron told Members of Parliamemts (MPs). “I‘m not convinced at this stage that statute is necessary.“ The devil is in the detail Analysis of the ‘Press Barons’ Charter’ by leading campaigners for regulatory reform (see box below), all suggest that it is a reversion to a system distinctly similar to the discredited Press Complaints Commission. Far from being independent of press and parliament, this new proposal allows industry representation throughout and even makes room for members of the House of Lords to sit on the Recognition Panel. “It is further away from what Leveson recommended than anything that has gone before,” said Claire Enders, founder of the media research company Enders Analysis. The Press Charter would neither meet his primary purpose to ensure that self-regulation set up by the industry was fit for purpose, she explained, nor the second – to allow an arbitation service which should be included to be recognised by the courts, in part to protect publishers from high costs. At a Foundation for Law, Justice and Society workshop on media law after Leveson held in April at the University of Oxford Law Faculty, Eric Barendt, Emeritus Professor of Media Law at University College, concluded that “the media’s objections to Leveson are not so much philosophical as neurotic”. Former broadcasting standards regulator Lara Fielden, author of a recent international study of press councils, said that since the media are granted special privileges in the public interest and in the interest of democracy, “in return, we expect those who hold power to account, to account for the powers granted them.” Throughout the backroom negotiations about how best to proceed – entirely against the spirit of transparency envisaged by Leveson – and despite evident support for Leveson among politicians and the public, as media lawyer and Hacked Off proponent chair Hugh Tomlinson QC, told the gathering “the media have managed to conduct a campaign of outrageous and barely believable misinformation to fight the opposition forces to a standstill.” A non-stop battery of headlines and stories vilifying their critics and suggesting that their real aim was state control of the press was spearheaded by The Daily Mail, the Telegraph Group and News International titles, leading proponents of the ‘Press Barons’ Charter’. A Free Speech Network (www.freespeechnetwork.org.uk) claiming the support of 25 national and international media organisations, campaigned with pamphlets and adverts as if those seeking a more effective regulatory system were in favour of state control of the press. Indeed <strong>MediaAcT</strong> was characterised as part of an European Union conspiracy to take control of the press in The Telegraph in April 2013. Only four, low circulation, national newspapers, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent and the Morning Star have stood by Leveson’s key principles. Having sought to present Leveson’s recommendations as the end of press freedom in the UK after 300 years, the mainstream newspaper groups have now devised a delaying tactic for reform which can “In rETUrn, wE ExpEcT ThOsE whO hOld pOwEr TO AccOUnT, TO AccOUnT fOr ThE pOwErs grAnTEd ThEM.“ only be resolved by negotiation on their terms. While this may be understandable, since newspapers have a vested interest in defending their territory, it also highlighted the difficulty of obtaining any sort of balance or independent critical analysis on a matter of supreme public interest, when the ‘agenda setters’ have their own agenda. Although there was some parliamentary debate, negotiations to resolve the impasse over Leveson were conducted in secret – at first amongst editors and proprietors, then between them and government ministers, and finally between political party leaders and the Hacked Off campaign. What had begun with one public scandal – the revelations about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone – ended with another – the almost total exclusion of the public from the debate about how best to improve media accountability. After one of the most comprehensive public analyses of journalistic behaviour ever undertaken in the UK, or elsewhere, as we go to press the UK is no nearer a resolution to the age old and vexed question asked by Lord Justice Leveson, ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?` dEclArATIOn Of InTErEsT Mike Jempson is director of the journalism ethics charity MediaWise (www.mediawise.org.uk) which assists members of the public with complaints about media misbehaviour, and vice-chair of the Ethics Council of the National Union of Journalism (Uk & Ireland). Both organisations gave evidence to the leveson Inquiry favouring press self-regulation but in a significantly strengthened form underpinned by statute. lInks The leveson Inquiry: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk Media standards Trust: Analysis: press coverage of leveson, by gordon neil ramsay, May 2013: http://mediastandardstrust.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/05/MsTleveson-Analysis-090513-v2.pdf leading campaigners for regulatory reform in the Uk: Hacked Off: http://hackinginquiry.org/ The Media Standards Trust: http://mediastandardstrust.org Media Reform Coalition: http://www.mediareform.org.uk Media Policy Project, The London School of Economics and Political Science: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/ Index | Editorial | Birds-eye view | Opening the toolbox | Zoom-in on the newsroom | Media landscapes
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