We should not fudge this.

Geoffrey Robertson QCs idea is right. By the time the story is printed lives are already destroyed. Post publication exposure is ok, but papers need to fear repurcussions before they print what is nothing more than salacious gossip.

Bollocks. Self regulation isn’t fashionable, it’s right. The press were able to get away with reams of wrongdoing because the people weren’t sufficiently angered. But there must be ways of reprimanding the industry for sins that do not offend the majority and cause the citizen power needed. That’s why we have the state, to intervene in protection of the rights of minorities that the rest of us may not necessarily care about.

Let’s face it, on the whole we didn’t kick up a stink when the media ran roughshod over the right to privacy of celebrities and politicians, but that was just as wrong as invading the privacy of anyone else. Citizen power did nothing to stop those infringements.

The use of civil society as a regulator requires all of society to be civil. And we all know that’s not the case.

People power may be effective in the case of high-profile figures like Milly Dowler or 7/7 victims, but who is going to mobilise to protect the lesser figures whose abuse at the hands of the media goes relatively unreported, such as this lady?

http://nosleeptilbrooklands.blogspot.com/2011/01/true-story-of-daily-mail-lies-guest.html?spref=fb

.In common with most of the country I suspect the News Of The World is only slightly worse than the rest of Fleet Street and this information, which has been available for years, is coming out now because of the establishment wish to stop private competition to the state monopoly of Television.
The News of the World could easily have continued were it not a pawn sacrifice in the greater game which is a vicious defence of the status quo in broadcasting.
Can anyone imagine anyone at the BBC even caring enough about finding a story to cheat … why bother?
Of course we must retain a free Press whatever the left do to shut it down. We need a free broadcast media and on line media as well ,able to operate in a fair market.
Currently our taxes are being used to destroy an industry most of us want to grow.

[4] Paul, do you think Rupert Murdoch wants to operate in a “fair” market? Perhaps you’d care to tell us what colour cheese you think the moon’s made of, too…

Excellent post- public revulsion has worked better than anyone could have hoped.

What the News of the World did is already against the law- it isn’t as if they exploited a legal loophole that regulation could plug- so I don’t see what purpose further regulation would serve.

This isnt primarily a press problem, its a police and prosecution problem. This wasnt fundamentally about what the news of the world printed but the criminal acts it engaged in to get the stories, and how they got away with it using bribery and blackmail of authorities. I would suggest we need to decentralise decision making so that it isnt just the police who decide when to investigate crimes and the cps when to prosecue.

@ Ross – the trouble is if a government wants to be seen doing something, what it does is pass unnecessary and cumbersome legislation, or sets up some regulatory body that turns into a strangling bureaucracy. The last government was always doing that.

I just hope for proper criminal investigation, and then with a few media executives banged up, this will encourage the others.

@6 cheers Ross, and agree with you completely. What is needed is for the met to do its job properly in enforcing the law of the land, not a special body for regulating the content of the press

The problem with comparing public outrage about the Milly Dowler incident and the many other incidents against MPs and celebrities, is that it’s based on value-judgements which we all hold. I would suggest that the majority of people feel, that those who put themselves in the public eye cannot complain if their private lives are invaded, whereas the families of murder victims and dead soldiers do not court publicity. The subject matter will also determine our responses, what we are looking at is the death of children and soldiers against the sexual/financial shortcomings of those in the public domain.
How do we go about compiling any kind of legislation without unintentionally constraining good investigative journalists, who in the past have managed to address such things as the dumping of dangerous waste products in poor countries, consequently saving lives.
It will be a particularly stupid newspaper/journalist who resorts to the NOTW practice against the families of dead soldiers and children, the response of advertisers and the public have shown what financial action and moral indignation can achieve.
Those in the public arena are still likely to become the subject of questionable journalistic practices but there isn’t always a perfect answer to every situation, imo, the freedom of the press will alway outweigh the (sometimes) painful consequences brought about by the media exposing lawful behaviour which is, nonetheless, embarassing.

“It was civil society that forced the News of The World to shut down. ”

Yes but only because of the growing scandal of phone hacking. This doesn’t address the drip drip of lies and misinformation put out by the media that even when proven only get a tiny apology on page 19… six months down the road.

I don’t want papers to shut down , but they do require something strong to make them think twice before publishing lies with virtual impunity..

You might find two pieces relevant on this subject that I’ve written. Take a look at this piece on the News of the World episode:

http://dasteepsspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/07/news-is-screwed.html

And this one on the demise of the incompetent PCC:

http://dasteepsspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/07/fall-of-another-flop.html

“In other words, there are ways of checking the power of the corporate press which do not involve extending the hardly disinterested power of the state into areas it really ought not to govern.”

We’re talking about criminal activity, illegal surveillance, illegal payments to the police, etc.

These are issues that should be the concern of the state – in defence of democracy.

The liberal knee-jerk is that the state is a threat to democracy; social democrats see it as an essential defender of democracy against the overweening power of corporate interests. The immediate threat to individual freedom comes from corporate power, not the state. The road to serfdom runs takes the scenic route through the deregulated market.

The state has been captured by the corporate sector and needs to be reclaimed by democrats.

One small step would be a simple bit of legislation making any apology for a story based on untruths having to be the same size as the story in question. Rather than an apology tucked away in three lines on page 94; if a headline is a lie then the apology for the lie must be a headline.
The PCC has been worse than useless in all of this. It’s a toothless, gutless, spineless shell of a body (and that’s being insulting to toothless gutless invertebrates). Why on earth is Paul Dacre allowed to be its Chairman, for example? The conflict of interest is ridiculous.
Let’s have a proper shakeup of the press – too long we’ve been a mediaocracy rather than a democracy. it’s high time editors everywhere remembered the purpose of the press.

“the state monopoly of Television.”

Making statements like this just renders the rest of the post ridiculous.

I did not like the tone of this article.

The problem is one of too much power being in too few ‘pairs of hands’ in the current set-up. Corrupt and bad practices are pretty much an inevitability.
Therefore, I believe the state does have a role to fulfil in regulating ownership of the press.
As a first basic premise, a free press has to be a diverse press not a tied press.

The BBC and other broadcast media are seem to be adequately regulated – why not simply extend the regulations on them to newspapers and their websites?

I would suggest that the majority of people feel, that those who put themselves in the public eye cannot complain if their private lives are invaded,…

Well, that’s a point of view.

… whereas the families of murder victims and dead soldiers do not court publicity.

Some actors, footballers and other well-known people don’t court publicity either, but it doesn’t stop gossip-peddlers from invading their privacy.

There have been failures at various levels here: the failure of the journalist to regulate his own behaviour, the failure of his employer to regulate the journalist’s behaviour, the failure of the PCC to regulate the papers, the failure of the Met to investigate wrongdoing, the failure of the IPCC to investigate the Met’s wrongdoing, the failure of the politicians to step up and make sure all these people and organisations are doing their jobs properly.

We already have plenty of laws and rules, I don’t think we need any more, except perhaps equal prominence (i.e. space and position), if not more so, given to apologies. We don’t need more rules, we need people to enforce the rules we already have, and if the current people who are supposed to do that aren’t doing that, perhaps they’d like to make way for people who will.

We do not need regulation of the press as such. What we need is the criminal law to be applied to these organisations when they breach it. Brooks admitted in front of a parliamentary committee that her organisation had paid police officers for information. She should have been arrested on the way out. Twice she refused to appear before a Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and issued threats against the members of the committee. That would have been a seditious libel if the offence had not been abolished in 2009. Parliamentary committees should be given the power to require witnesses to appear before them. If they refuse, well arrest them and they can appear in handcuffs.

News International is an out of control criminal organisation that does not believe the law should apply to them. They are more akin to a mafia outfit issuing threats against politicians than a reputable firm. The suspicion is that things are being kicked into the long grass until public outrage dies down. What is required is not a few foot soldiers to be prosecuted, but all the NI senior executives to be prosecuted for the corporate liability of their organisation.

I’m not sure I agree with this. Let’s assume that there should be limits on what the press can print, as indeed there are limits on what one can say in public – they shouldn’t be able to refer to a criminal suspect as if they are definitely guilty of the crime.

To enforce this, we seem to have three options:

1) Dealing with each transgression in court.
2) Getting the press to agree to abide by the decisions of a self-regulatory body.
3) Using an independent but state-run regulator.

The problem with the first option is that court cases can be expensive and drawn-out, and Fleet Street can afford good lawyers, so it’s very possible that people wouldn’t bother to chase up minor violations. What’s more, it could put small publications at risk of being shutdown due to a genuine error – or legally hounded to death by bigger rivals who have the deep pockets needed to pay court fees.

The problem with the second option is that there is an obvious conflict of interest. Even if the regulator does deal with minor transgressions, its penalties are likely to be weak – such as simply ordering the paper to print a retraction. I have more experience of the Advertising Standards Authority than other such regulators, and while the ASA generally seems to make the right call, the penalty for breaking the rules generally doesn’t go far beyond a stern “don’t do it again”.

The third option obviously raises the spectre of politicians controlling the papers. But as long as the people on the commission weren’t politicians, were selected by the house rather than the party in power, and were tasked solely with enforcing the rules, rather than meeting any Westminster-set targets, I doubt that this would be a problem. As a safeguard, any decision made by this authority could be challenged in court.

It just seems like the most sensible solution.

I presume that Reuben did not choose the headline for this post? The answer to any headline that ends with a question mark is typically “No”. Something like “Citizens versus state press regulation?” would have been more meaningful, interrogative and align with Reuben’s arguments.

—
The role of a press complaints investigator is to examine, in the civil world, whether a story meets “public interest” qualities. And I am all for “equal status/equal area” retractions in newspapers. But the real questions about NotW conduct are not about what happened in the civil world. The NotW storm is not about state versus private regulation of the press, the storm is about systemic criminality and the failure of organisations that are expected to control criminality. And the people conducting the NotW investigation are amongst the accused.

@21. Chaise Guevara: “Let’s assume that there should be limits on what the press can print…”

I’d start the other way, imposing no limits initially on what the press may print. Remember, also, that the NotW storm is not about what was published but how information was obtained.

If we allowed the press to report everything for a month — everything that happened in courts, every piece of internet gossip about politicians and celebrities, every bit of news — we’d have a pretty good idea of what the press should self censor. Court cases that involve young people or blackmail should be self censored. Tittle tattle should be ignored if only because it exposes the publisher to libel actions.

Which is pretty much where we are today. Where we are today is a pretty good place with (at least) one exception: nasty or invasive stories about ordinary citizens who can’t afford a lawyer.

We have to look after the “exceptions”, people who have done nowt wrong but seem interesting. I’d cite an example if it was possible without compromising my argument.

—
Had the NotW conducted an investigation into political fraud using the same methods, what would we have thought? Would we have accepted that illegally poking a nose into a voicemail box justified exposure of malpractice? The Telegraph paid for stolen data that revealed MPs’ expense abuse.

Investigative journalism is always going to be edgy. Investigative journalists hear company secrets from whistle blowers; it is the principle way that they do their jobs. But anyone who becomes a whistle blower breaks the law or breaks terms of employment.

I raise my glass to those law breakers.

The situation that exists now, is the press can just make stuff up, print lies, and present exceptions as the norm like the benefit cheats hysteria they’ve whipped up for instance, to further their owners social darwinist agenda. That is Geobbles style propaganda. That is unacceptable.

You can’t have a genuine democracy when the media has a licence to lie and misrepresent the facts.

There needs to be an indepedent body that monitors all the media and punishes Newspapers that lie, twist statistics, and present exceptions as the norm severley, with repeat offenders being shut down for good.

That is what needs to happen, but of course it never will because without the the ability to lie, spin and misrepresent with impunity via their media, the ruiling class would lose their ablity to shape perceptions, and they will never let that happen, because they know If they did the people would eventually get rid of them altogether.

@24. Bruce Wayne: “The situation that exists now, is the press can just make stuff up…”

Nope, if they make it up it becomes libel. The problem is to make it easy for ordinary citizens to sue for libel.

“There needs to be an indepedent body that monitors all the media and punishes Newspapers that lie, twist statistics…”

If Fascist Me ran the media, as an independent body, I would deny Bruce Wayne access to the internet. ‘cos he is stupid.

@25

Nope, if they make it up it becomes libel. The problem is to make it easy for ordinary citizens to sue for libel.

You do realise that doesn’t actually dispute Bruce Wayne’s assertion that “The situation that exists now, is the press can just make stuff up”. Apart from when the target in question has deep pockets.
Plus as far as celebs go they routinely prints lies and make shit up on the spot, in case you forgot that resignation letter from the daily star a few months back.

Cylux, I visit this site to learn and think. I disengage from sites that are unthinking.

@25 Charlieman

“If Fascist Me ran the media, as an independent body, I would deny Bruce Wayne access to the internet. ‘cos he is stupid.”

Not sure what point you’re trying to make with this personal attack. What on earth does my advocating an independent body to prevent the press from their deceitful practices have to do with fascism? If anything it would be the antithesis of fascism.

This is a really tough one, though, isn’t it? Fleet Street has developed huge, unaccountable power. You will have very part of your life, and probably your family’s life, pored over by them if you annoy them. This has distorted our politics so that only sociopathic Zeligs can make it into high office.

Yet we need a free press without government intrusion.

We know that salacious rubbish sells so the idea that the market has any improving influence goes against all evidence.

Sadly I suspect an independant ombudsman of some sort may be what we get. Probably the best hope for a better press is that the current crop of criminal bastards suffer so heinously that nobody thinks of doing the same as they did.

@27 Like I give a fuck what you do.

@25 Charlieman

“Nope, if they make it up it becomes libel. The problem is to make it easy for ordinary citizens to sue for libel.”

http://www.fivechinesecrackers.com/search/label/Daily%20Mail

Yep, they make stuff up and then print a little apology tucked away near the back of the paper in small print. Maybe you should make sure you’re correct before you go around calling other people stupid in future Charlieman?

Thank you Cylux.

@29

Yet we need a free press

Giz a shout when we something even approaching one. The current press we have is all bought and paid for by people pushing their own agenda, with the main aim toward making money, not informing.
Plus it’s funny isn’t it that the ones crying the loudest about press freedom are never the likes of the telegraph or the guardian or the independent, those papers that at least try to inform as part of their making money, but the tabloids, who will fight tooth and nail to tell the world about Ryan Giggs shagging about, but who will turn away the whistle-blower of the expenses scandal, who then had to try the telegraph.

There’s a long way between state censorship and the toothless PCC.

More, given that I don’t believe for a second that the NoTW was the only media organisation pulling this nonsense, self-regulation simply isn’t going to be taken seriously as a check on the press in the next decade or so – and it can’t be.

There needs to be an mandatory, independent regulator, which actually has teeth. It can still be funded by the press, not government.

Also, I support a law which states that press retractions have to be of the same type as the statement retracted. That is, if it was front page, the retraction was front page. If it was a TV news leading item, the retraction must be a leading item.

[33] Leon, what would you do if newspaper proprietors simply refused to abide by such a law? Especially if they could point to readers’ surveys which showed that the majority of their readers were perfectly happy with their current policy (or even no apology at all)? You may say that what papers print is a public matter, not one to be settled by some sort of private deal between owners and readers.

Let’s imagine that I’m libelled in to-morrow’s Daily Star. I’ve never bought it, none of my family has ever bought a copy, none of my friends past or present read it and there’s no sense in which my reputation, as opposed to theirs, is damaged. So why can I get a cheque out of them, always assuming I want the money so badly that I’m prepared to see various lawyers get ten or twenty times as much?

@ 23 Charlieman

“We have to look after the “exceptions”, people who have done nowt wrong but seem interesting. I’d cite an example if it was possible without compromising my argument.”

Agreed. And we can’t do that through traditional legislation (like you say, not everyone can afford lawyers), and the press obviously can’t be trusted to do so through self-regulation. Therefore…

@34

Let’s imagine that I’m libelled in to-morrow’s Daily Star. I’ve never bought it, none of my family has ever bought a copy, none of my friends past or present read it and there’s no sense in which my reputation, as opposed to theirs, is damaged. So why can I get a cheque out of them, always assuming I want the money so badly that I’m prepared to see various lawyers get ten or twenty times as much?

Buy ‘Flat Earth News’ and read it, seriously. That statement displays breathtaking naivety about how libelling or making false claims in the newspapers ultimately works. If one newspaper prints a story it immediately become stuff in the public domain which other newspapers can then report on, if the star makes up some cobblers about you being a paedo, then the Sun, Mirror, Express, Mail, and others can all repeat the story with only Richard Desmond’s group being able to be libelled. Everyone else can just say “My source was this nationally syndicated newspaper boss”.
Plus it’s not your friends and family you want to be worried about, it’s the people who recognise you in the street from your picture in the papers, the one’s likely to spit in your face or worse because of the lies they’ve read about you. I recommend that if you do read flat earth news that you skip straight to chapter 10 – Mail Aggression, it really is jaw-dropping what they often do get away with.

Recommendation for Flat Earth News +1.

I think I actually read it via a recommendation on this very website a while back, actually, and it’s well worth it for anyone slightly interested in the workings of the press..

@31. Bruce Wayne: “Maybe you should make sure you’re correct before you go around calling other people stupid in future Charlieman?”

The final paragraph @25 was ironic. Given that I have consistently argued for a light touch to resolving press abuse, it is hardly likely that I would wish to ban you from the internet. However, if I unintentionally offended you, my apologies.

@33. Leon Wolfson: “There’s a long way between state censorship and the toothless PCC.”

Indeed. And the constitution and authority for an improved ombudsman that cannot be used for authoritarianism are difficult to conceive. Then there’s the problem that the current PCC only acts after something is published. Few of us can afford lawyers and injunctions (assuming that we knew that a newspaper intended to publish something about us) so the damage will be done before we are able to seek redress. As you said, it is essential that apologies and retractions are equal to the offending article. And we have to make libel action affordable for ordinary people, not just the super rich who abuse the system to sue bloggers.

The empty vessels make the loudest noise now. With Lord Black, Pandora Maxwell and Chris Bryant on his back, Rupert Murdoch will finally get some sympathy: http://dasteepsspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/07/empty-vessel-makes-loudest-sound.html