Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

James Harding, editor, The Times, Peter Wright, editor, Mail on Sunday, and Bob Satchwell,
Executive Director, Society of Editors—Oral evidence (QQ 889–936)
that, in a world in which access to information is changing, so does our understanding of
how you deal with things like privacy. I will give you a small example.
If you contact someone over Facebook and it says on their Facebook page that they
are over 18, but actually it turns out that they are not over 18, how do you manage that?
Often in the newsroom one of the things is not just making sure that you understand what
the code is but trying to make sure that you understand how you can enforce it in a world
that is changing quite rapidly. It is partly knowing the code; it is partly making sure there
is—it is a terrible word—training; but the reality is that you are sitting around and talking
through with your journalists how you enforce that code. I should say on the issue of
privacy we think it is pretty good.
Q303 Lord Black of Brentwood: To follow the point about the code and the
application of the code, in your newspapers you produce large numbers of stories all the
time: 80, 100, stories—whatever it might be—a week or daily. There are bound to be
occasions when something goes wrong, the code gets breached inadvertently, or the mark is
overstepped on one of the significant number of rules and regulations that we were hearing
about earlier. What happens in those circumstances to make sure that it will not happen
again?
James Harding: I should be clear about one thing. The reputation of the paper and
the good conduct of our journalists is not strictly limited to an adherence of the PCC code.
As everyone in this room, or anyone who works in a paper, knows your contract is with
your readers. When they feel you have breached that, you are in real trouble. If we feel
someone is not living up to the standards we expect of a Times journalist or is going to do
damage to the reputation of the paper, essentially one of three things can happen. They will
get a verbal warning, and the verbal warning could come either from the head of
department, from the managing editor’s office or from me. In the instance where we are
significantly more concerned, they would get a formal written warning, which would have an
impact on their likely further employment at the paper, or they would face dismissal. Those
would typically be the ways in which we would handle things.
Peter Wright: It would be very similar for us, and from time to time we take action
against people. I think on about three occasions in the last four years we felt the need to
conduct an inquiry, and on one occasion suspended somebody from working for us.
Q304 Lord Black of Brentwood: Would you say that the regional press has the
same thing?
Bob Satchwell: It is some years since I have edited a paper, but the code was part of
every journalist’s contract, and that is pretty well universal across regional papers as well as
national papers. The code says that editors have to take care to ensure that it is observed
rigorously by all editorial staff and external contributors, including non-journalists. I can
remember disciplinary procedures against journalists where there was a problem. We also
would require regular contributors, freelance organisations or news agencies to sign an
agreement that they accepted the code as well.
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