So the Leveson enquiry has finally come to an end; after millions of
pounds, thousands of hours, and probably a small forest's worth of reports,
drafts, re-writes and commentaries, the Right Honourable Lord Justice Leveson
has delivered a two thousand page report in four volumes, which, if a glance of
the executive summary is to be believed, ultimately boils down to "the
press shouldn't do bad things."
..
I feel I should start this by actually offering a (rare) defence of the Leveson
Inquiry. It was probably an impossible task to deliver a report that would
achieve anything noteworthy. The problems with British press practices are so
systemic, so widespread, so completely beyond the reasonable mandate of a
government that has to pretend to be democratic, that there was unlikely
anything Leveson could do except make the recommendations he did, and then
smudge the whole thing over with fifteen hundred pages of waffle and committee minutiae.
The tradition of the Free Press is long and (in parts) even heroic. Since
1695 the British press has been free to print more or less what it wanted
without government interference. The idea was at heart a simple one - if the
great and mighty did stupid things that risked the welfare of the nation, the
Press would find out, print stories about it, and the masses would rise up in
rebellion against the incompetent overlords threatening the country.
Unfortunately the people of today don't really want information about the
political and economic events of the present time, they want to know about
celebrity gossip, TV shows, and who various pop stars are doing drugs with. The
Leveson Inquiry was set up because a murdered teenager's phone was hacked. At
root there was only one reason that happened - it sold papers. The blame for
that lies solely at the feet of every single person who ever bought a copy of a
newspaper that touts sensationalist or 'shock' news. Just as every country gets
the government it deserves, so to does every country get the press it deserves.
Ours hacks phones and prints topless pictures of our future queen. The logical
inference about our population is not difficult.
Even if we do accept that the blame for this issue lies with the public, not
with the Press, what about the recommendations themselves?
Politicians, the press themselves, various lobbying groups, have more or
less split into two camps. One group is standing by the idea of a Free Press.
They want to see a new, independent, regulatory body to oversee the industry,
possibly backed up by statute in a similar way to the FSA. The main argument is
that while the Press has done some bad things, other investigations, like those
in to MPs expenses and the Hillsborough disaster, have brought to light cover
ups and abuses which would otherwise have remained hidden.
The opposing group claim that anything short of full scale legal regulation
is bowing to the pressure of the press barons, and a heartless abandonment of
the victims of phone hacking or other press intrusion.
Those backing the second option, of full on state legislation, seem to be
living in fairy-cuckoo land (or probably more precisely are riding the wave of
interest in this subject for personal and politic gain). Here are a few points
to consider;
1.) Legislation is supposedly meant to transfer some of the decision making
power in the media from the journalists to politicians - however, a recent poll
has shown that politicians are jointly the most dis-trusted group of people in
the country - the other? Journalists. Transferring power to government only
makes sense if you think the government is trustworthy. People don't.
2.) Many of the actions that have been deplored in recent months (phone
hacking, intercepting emails etc.) are already illegal. Punishing those responsible
is now a matter for the court system. If victims, or lobby groups feel let down
they should be chasing the legal system not the press.
3.) What does state regulation even mean? Is there some suggestion that a
newspaper would have to run its stories through some kind of government
watchdog before publication? Is that not the definition of censorship? How can
this be expected to achieve anything except a media completely controlled by
the government?
4.) If a more 'softly softly' approach is taken, with regulation
defining what can, or can't, be published, how will this be administered? Again
who is to determine what a valid news story is and what is just gossip? If
people want to buy gossip what right has an elected government got to ban that?
5.) The Leveson Inquiry more or less blanks the issue of the internet. UK
legislation would only have the force to cover articles published in the UK.
With an increasing share of news reporting taking place online what good would
regulation do anyway?
6.) The expansion of regulation has seen Health and Safety become a by-word
for bureaucratic meddling, has seen hundreds of thousands of speed cameras
sprout across the countryside, without an obvious benefit, has led to drug
safety administration that takes over a decade to sanction new medicines. Why,
exactly, do people thing more regulation is going to solve things in the media?
..
Anyone still unconvinced by the whole issue, I suggest they read to the
Discworld novel "The Truth." After setting up the city's first
newspaper, aspiring editor William de Worde finds himself being out-sold by a
rival publication that leads with the headline "Man stolen by Dog."
Also, next time you meet someone calling for the Leveson recommendations to
be implemented in full, ask them what recommendation 51 (b) is.
On the off chance they know the answer (That sections 44 to 46 of the Data
Protection Act 1998, with special application to journalism is repealed), ask
them what section 44 of the Data Protection Act actually means.
/Z
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