What should the Leveson inquiry recommend to improve the ‘culture, practices, and ethics’ of the British press?
The Phone hacking scandal has unearthed some terrible practices and unethical behaviour in the UK press. Here I ask: why did such bad behaviour take place? Was the Press Complaints Commission to blame? And What if anything should replace it?
Many see the freedom of the press as being married to freedom of speech and they defend it resolutely. But recently we have seen that freedom exploited to allow the impinging of other people’s rights. The phone hacking scandal shows how the press, and others involved with the press, have used that freedom as a license to invade people’s lives and break the law.
‘Capitalistic’ motivations
Richard Peppiatt, former Daily Star reporter, told the Leveson inquiry a Daily Star story could be written based solely on a tip-off from an unnamed caller with no corroborating evidence. He also said some stories were just made up. He blamed ‘capitalistic’ motivations for printing untruths as one of the pressures that journalists are feeling while working for businesses that are desperate to make money.
There is increasing pressure to write impactive stories with fewer staff. This inevitably means less time and money to invest in getting stories right.
Job security
Both Peppiatt and former Deputy Features Editor for the News of the World Paul McMullen said they had to produce stories to stay in their jobs. Peppiatt blamed, in his witness statement, the short-term contracts that journalists sign.
Ego and wealth
It could also be said that unethical behaviour has been encouraged by companies having too much money with which to indulge their employees’ egos. Paul McMullen said in his evidence to the inquiry that in his role at the News of the World he had an annual budget of £3.1m.
He said: “Piers Morgan very much set the trend. He was: ‘I want that story at all costs. I don’t care what you have to do to get that story.’ He wanted to be number one. He wanted to sell five million copies a week.”
Ethical standards fell by the wayside when records needed to be broken and high standards of world exclusives needed to be maintained.
Haste
Alastair Campbell, former Director of Communications and Strategy for Tony Blair, blamed sliding standards on journalists’ haste to produce news quickly. In his witness statement he said: “Speed now comes ahead of accuracy, impact comes ahead of fairness, and in parts of the press anything goes to get the story first.”
He referenced the Daily Mail’s coverage of the Amanda Knox trial in October 2011 when someone accidentally published a full report on a guilty verdict which included quotes from prosecutors saying: on a “human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail.” Campbell called it “absurd”.
These pressures are real and influence journalists today into giving less attention to ethical standards. But maintaining these standards in the press is what the PCC was set up to do in 1990.
The PCC’s origins
Let’s look at the foundation, principles and functions of the PCC so as to understand why unethical behaviour was allowed to thrive under its surveillance.
In 1990 a Sunday Sport photographer and a reporter entered a hospital dressed as medical staff. They took pictures of ‘Allo ‘Allo! actor Gordon Kaye and tried to interview him while he was ill with a brain injury. A Departmental Committee under David Calcutt QC was chosen by the Conservative government to assess what should be done about the press.
Calcutt’s report recommended the setting up of a new Press Complaints Commission in place of the old Press Council. It was given 18 months to prove that it could effectively curb the press’s behaviour. If it couldn’t, new statutory controls would be proposed.
The PCC’s committee was populated with national and regional editors which produced the Code of Practice for the PCC to administer. All publishers and editors committed themselves to abiding by the Code and agreed to finance the PCC. It survived the 18 months and has continued to this day with support offered by the Labour government in 2007 and the select committee in 2009.
On the one hand the PCC could be said to have been built on decent foundations. One could argue that people, particularly journalists, are more likely to respect the decisions of their peers rather than those of judges or politicians. The former PCC Chairwoman Baroness Buscombe said as late as March 2010:
“Self-regulation demands a degree of trust and integrity from all those who buy into it, and it works on the basis of good old-fashioned common sense. It allows freedom but demands active engagement and a degree of responsibility.”
The word ‘demands’ is problematic here when we consider that membership of the PCC is voluntary. How could it demand anything of members if they don’t want to be told what to do? They can simply choose not to be controlled as Richard Desmond did in 2007 when he refused to pay The Press Standards Board of Finance (Pressbof) who funds the PCC. Consequently the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, Star on Sunday and OK! magazine were no longer under the surveillance of the PCC. This is one of the foundational weaknesses of the PCC; it knows it only has power over those who want to be controlled by it.
Apologies up for ‘discussion’
This gives the PCC an inherent flaw of dependency on the media. This was evident when the Director of the PCC, between March 2004 to December 2009 Tim Toulmin, spoke to the inquiry. He referred to clause one of the PCC Code which states:
“A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published.”
Mr Toulmin said this was actually a matter for discussion with the Editor.
“Those conversations would go on and there would be a period of negotiation where we would try and make them publish it as prominently as possible often …There would be discussions sometimes, but yes, the editor had the discretion within that sort of concept of due prominence about where exactly to put it.”
Because of the PCC’s foundational weaknesses it cannot sufficiently employ the very rules it put in place
Membership
The membership of the PCC committee is also a weakness. It is made up exclusively of editors. The Editor of the Daily Mail and editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, Paul Dacre, is its chairman. If a newspaper is involved in a complaint, its editor doesn’t partake in proceedings. But no editor would want to set a precedent by seriously punishing their peers when it could be their turn next.
Lack of power
The PCC cannot impose financial penalties, issue sub-poenas or cross-examine witnesses. The current PCC Chairman Lord Hunt accepted this fact in his hearing. He said:
“I’ve come to the conclusion that we do urgently need a fresh start and a totally new body with substantially increased powers to audit and enforce compliance with the code; to require access to documents, to summon witnesses when necessary, and also to impose fines.”
Narrow remit
Another problem the PCC has is its narrow remit. Mr Toulmin wrote that the PCC was “given a general ’supervisory’ role over the press … It seems to me to be inappropriate to consider it a ’regulator’.”
This misunderstanding between what the PCC was set up to do and what it actually does, became abundantly clear with the phone hacking scandal blew up. The PCC conducted two reports into the matter, one in 2007 and the other in 2009 after a public outcry. Swimming out of its territory into the waters of investigation it found very little. Concluding in its second report that it had not previously been ‘materially misled’ by the News of the World.
With no power to sufficiently assess grounds for the Guardian’s allegations and no power to cross-examine witnesses, the PCC reports concluded very little of value. It eventually withdrew its second report.
Whether the PCC was obliged to get involved in the phone hacking scandal or not, the reason it was formed in the first place was to maintain the ethical standards of the press. In this it failed by letting the biggest ethical scandal in decades take place. And the continuous revelations are evidence of that fact.
Disregard in the business
Richard Peppiat described in his statement how the PCC was regarded in the Daily Star newsroom. He wrote:
“For me to have referenced the PCC Code to protest against this I would have been laughed out the door. That was the level of esteem the PCC held in the newsroom.”
Former business journalist for the Daily Mirror James Hipwell said in his trial over illegal share activity: “To the best of my knowledge, no one at the Mirror had a copy [of the PCC code] or had ever seen a copy.”
But back in 2003 Rebekah Wade, then the Editor of the Sun, said to the Select Committee: “Self-regulation is working … The threat of a complaint being upheld by the PCC is what terrifies editors.”
It is hard to believe editors were ever terrified by the PCC when Tina Weaver, editor of the Sunday Mirror and member of the PCC since 2008, said: “It clearly doesn’t have the power that is needed – that was made quite clear during the phone hacking lack of investigation.” She suggested “giving the standards arm greater teeth, with perhaps financial penalties.”
The figures
There are also question marks over how effectively the PCC works in dealing with complaints. In 2010 it received over 7,000 complaints in writing. But made rulings, or brokered resolutions, on fewer than 1,700 cases. In 2010 there were just 18 cases where the PCC ruled in favour of complainants.
In 2009 the PCC censured only 18 cases out of 37,000 contacts in writing. And in 2008 only 24 cases were adjudicated and upheld after 4698 complaints. With its power invested in it by the press, these statistics show that the PCC’s first instinct is to mediate rather than regulate and we know from the widespread phone hacking that this doesn’t stop unethical behaviour.
Dangerous implications for ineffective regulation
We have discussed how the phone hacking scandal revealed that the PCC does not act when complaints aren’t made. This becomes a serious issue when there are people like ex police officer turned ‘surveillance’ specialist Derek Webb on the News of the World’s books, who followed people for money.
He told the inquiry he could spend two weeks at a time abroad ‘observing’ people on holiday. He said he followed approximately 150 people during an eight year period working for the paper and around 85% of them were celebrities and MPs. Only 15% were people involved in drugs, addiction and crime. Webb said he had followed people for hours before being pulled off a job because it was the wrong person.
This shows that the News of the World was going on fishing expeditions with covert surveillance tactics. The PCC couldn’t act because people didn’t know they were being watched and they couldn’t complain.
Speed and efficiency
Rebekah Wade, the Editor of the Mail on Sunday Peter Wright and Editor of the Daily Mirror Richard Wallace have all argued that the PCC is functional and fast at settling complaints, particularly compared with the lengthy and expensive processes of the courts. Leveson’s recommendations must include the central principles of a fast and effective complaints handler.
The solution
The causes of unethical behaviour in the press come from pressures through money, ego, time and the natural human instinct for people to try and get away with as much as they can. Stopping this instinct was what the PCC was originally set up to do – but it failed. It’s time to look at a solution.
The Leveson Inquiry should recommend a new independent body that deals with complaints and regulates press ethics (whether these are complained about or not). It should be made up of people trained in media law and media ethics so that they can advise the press holistically. These people can be ex senior journalists and members of the legal profession.
The PCC should be scrapped because of its foundational weaknesses and the disregard with which it is considered in the industry. It is now toxic and if we can indulge ourselves by using a historical example, the PCC is like the League of Nations (1919-46).
The League was an international and intergovernmental organisation set up after the First World War designed to maintain world peace. But like the PCC it had little power because, amongst other things, it did not have an army.
Like the PCC, members left when they didn’t like being told what to do. It was eventually replaced by the United Nations which did have strength in an army and could impose painful sanctions.
The PCC Code needn’t be scrapped. It is well-written but more detail should be provided around what exactly determines the public interest. This should be debated and decided upon once and for all.
Clause three of the Code on privacy should also be better defined to explain exactly what is safe and unsafe to do. Accordance with this code should be compulsory and those who break it should be accountable to the independent body who can demand apologies and corrections.
Privacy law must also be revised, particularly in the light of how the press managed to avoid police detection for so long in their phone hacking.
The regulatory body should also be able to administer fines by law. But these fines should be proportionate to the size of the business. We do not want to punish organisations out of existence. It should also have the power to cross-examine witnesses so that it can get to the truth.
This body should be able to deal with complaints and unethical behaviour fast and effectively. It could be funded partly by public money and partly by the fines that it would enforce.
Paparazzi
I now come to my last point which concerns the paparazzi. They are responsible for a great deal of the harassment of people who are thrust into the public eye. To create a register for journalists is in breach of the freedom of speech; people should be allowed to assume roles where they can speak publicly. But there is not a complete freedom of action in this society. It is not a right for someone to climb over someone’s garden wall to take photographs. Nor is it right to lay siege outside someone’s home for days on end.
A register of photographers working in Britain should be created and those who conduct themselves unethically should be taken off that register. To buy pictures from those people should be punishable by law. It is impossible to regulate photographs taken abroad but this is outside the authority of British law. These measures would serve to clamp down on the unholy unethical torment that some people experience when they become ‘of public interest’.
In his evidence to the inquiry Richard Desmond said on ethics: “I don’t quite know what the word means but perhaps you’d explain.” He added: “We do not talk about ethics or morals because there’s a very fine line and everybody’s ethics are different.” In a new system only one set of ethics must matter, those of the code. And to break them should bring consequences that are a strong deterrent to others.