It’s the lack of hope that’s getting me down

March 9th, 2010

Football moves on so quickly that it’s extremely rare not to have anything to look forward to. But this season has been so grim, so lacking in hope that the only thing to look forward to is it having ended. And it’s been so bad that even after that, pre-season won’t provide anything to get excited about.

I can stand losing games. Even nine of them. It’s the good goals, the sharp tackles, the strength in adversity that I remember. Being robbed by bad referees, luck opponents, even beach balls has it’s own romanticism.

I can stand having bad years – we all do – and progress isn’t ever linear. As long as there’s some chink of light. Back in the early 1990s it was the emergence of Robbie Fowler. Pre Rafa it was Steven Gerrard carrying the team – a super-human effort that yielded more than we deserved.

Any even in bad years there’s always the cup competitions. You don’t need to win the cup necessarily, just win some high profile games in auspicious circumstances and have a memorable trip as a fan or a buzzing Anfield night under lights.

This year there’s been nothing. The good wins (Manchester United and Spurs at home) have only ever felt like a comma in a harrowing read. Great players haven’t performed and squad players have been diminished to mice. Recoveries from injury have only been accompanied by more injuries. The end of a tough run of games has been met only by slip-ups in 3 point bankers (eg. Wigan away).

And at the end of this 10 month torture of pulling nails against a blackboard, pre-season will see other sides spend lots of money as we struggle to not get weaker. And all the time supposed Liverpool ’supporters’ will churn out the views of media pundits who support other teams an enjoy the ratings uplift from any article that criticises LFC.

All around me I see Arsenal fans who know that they are not good enough ad likely to fall short at the end of the season. But even after five barren years they get close enough to still have hope. How I envy them now.

It doesn’t take much to give me hope. I’d rather believe in the tiny glimmers than require a mountain of hard fact for the scales of cynicism to fall from my eyes. But we’re dangling off a cliff with nothing to hold on to. At least if we’re knocked out of the cup this week, we won’t have to endure another couple of games.

So thanks for asking how I feel this morning. You didn’t really want to know, did you?

Posted in Liverpool FC | No Comments »

Andreas Whittam Smith: right and wrong on press self-regulation reform

February 26th, 2010

Andreas Whittam Smith would not welcome my views on his article about the reform of press self-regulation. He has already dismissed the views of anyone who isn’t a newspaper editor as a ’stray passer-by’ with “little to contribute”. However, his article in the Independent isn’t totally wrong.

He believes that newspapers “have weakened self-regulation by under-resourcing it”. Like the select committee and Nick Davies, Whittam Smith is critical of the lack of involvement of ordinary journalists in the Press Complaints Commission. Mr Whittam Smith also believes that the PCC’s remedy is not used correctly. He takes aim at the prominence of adjudications:

“To make an editor print an apology in exactly the same position and with exactly the same weight as the offending article would, I know from how I used to feel when the subject came up, cause almost unbearable anguish. The humiliation of it!”

But Whittam Smith is misleading on some aspects of reform of press self-regulation. He opposes fines, which is a reasonable position, but marshalls misleading language for his argument. Whittam Smith writes that “with money at risk, newspapers would want to be represented by lawyers at hearings”. This is undoubtedly true but obscures the fact newspaper’s legal teams already deal with the PCC.

Whittam Smith believes that fines would be unfair because some newspapers are wealthy and some are less so. But if you don’t pay for a TV licence the fine is not altered according to your personal wealth. The Media Standards Trust argues for a different principle: that the fine should be different according to the seriousness of the offence, rather than the wealth of the offender.

He also argues that fines would require statutory regulation because some newspapers would refuse to pay. That’s not the case. As the Media Standards Trust’s submission to the PCC’s governance review made clear, there are other bodies which fine their members without statutory backing. The newspaper would be bound by the terms of the contract of membership to pay the fine. If they refuse, they have breached that contract. They would always be free, though, to leave the PCC. But that’s the essence of self-regulation.

Andreas Whittam Smith is wrong on two fundamental issues. Firstly, he sees the principle of self-regulation as analgous to a City private members club, where the incentive is that one is reluctant to be dismissed. That hasn’t worked for the City and that’s not sufficient incentive for the modern newspaper industry that’s competing for readers globally and is facing economic pressures from amateur journalism. Self-regulation must become a badge of honour, a competitive edge; a set of standards which gives readers (the customer) something to know that they can value what they read.

Secondly, he writes of the relationship of a newspaper with its readers as follows:

“Newspaper editors don’t have a lot of time for what lay people may think of their methods”

If he is right, perhaps Mr Whittam Smith has highlighted why newspaper readership has collapsed and newspaper groups aren’t confident that if they charged for their work anyone would pay. Perhaps newspapers need to be run by people who care more about their customers, what their customers think of their product and can make a persuasive case for claiming special privileges for their work.

Tags:
Posted in Media | No Comments »

The PCC got it right on Jan Moir complaint

February 18th, 2010

I believe the Press Complaints Commission was right to not uphold the complaint by Stephen Gately’s partner about Jan Moir’s vicious, nasty and spiteful ‘opinion’ piece about the death of Stephen Gately. As I previously suggested by the standards the press sets itself, the judgement is consistent with the code and the freedom of expression.

However, the PCC now faces a huge challenge to rebuild public confidence in a judgement that is likely to be unpopular and misunderstood. It’s not the PCC’s fault that it received more complaints about that article than it had received over the previous five years. But many of those who complained will be dissatisfied by the process. And this case does pose challenges for the PCC to address, partly through its governance review.

The Editors Code itself needs further thought. That newspapers are free to offend should be beyond doubt. But the code allows discrimination against groups rather than individuals. This is out of step with the law, the definition of racism post-Macpherson, and societal norms. It’s also a bit silly. The code’s distinction is equivalent to allowing me to write ‘all newspaper editors are liars’, or ‘all Daily Mail journalists are homophobic’ as long as I don’t single out individual journalists.

The process by which the code can be amended has been opened up in recent years but still lacks transparency, independence and accountability. By enabling the public in to the process, the code committee recognises the importance of the code in instilling public confidence in the standards of journalism – surely a vital part of any economic recovery for the sector. But no member of the public can sit on the committee, the consultation takes place in secret and the rationale for revisions is not made clear. Until last week, the PCC still distributed the press releases for this apparently independent body.

The PCC’s lack of clarity on who is an eligible complainant meant – in this case – that it required a complaint from the grieving Andrew Cowles – for the investigation to proceed. Otherwise the complaints of 25,000 others may have been rejected. One can only imagine how the Daily Mail would have reacted if complaints by its readers about Celebrity Big Brother had been rejected because they weren’t Shilpa Shetty.

The PCC’s decision-making processes also require reform. It’s odd that we don’t know which members of the commission were present to consider the Jan Moir complaint. We’re told that despite being a member of the commission, the Mail on Sunday editor wasn’t involved in the decision. The PCC said:

“This is in line with the PCC’s normal procedures when a title edited by a Commission member is subject to a PCC complaint.”

For the avoidance of doubt, the editor of the Mail on Sunday is not the editor of the Daily Mail. Should we therefore conclude that the PCC’s normal procedures mean that the editor of the News of the World is not involved in complaints against the Sun? And with no formal minutes published, how could we find out?

With a commission that meets in secret we don’t even know when the decision was made, let alone what case was made in the prosecution or defence. The PCC argues that one of it’s benefits is that it avoids the costs of lawyers. But we may never know if Andrew Cowle’s complaint (made through a team of solicitors) was challenged by the Daily Mail’s lawyers.

We don’t know how much the Daily Mail pays for the PCC (the funding is passed through intermediaries) or whether the PCC has sufficient resource to run a system which attracts this volume of public concern.

Baroness Buscombe was brave – and right – to come out and defend the decision in other media. And hearing her defence may go some way to instilling confidence in the judgement. But I was concerned by her argument that the context of the piece was important, particularly that it had appeared in page 37. It did, of course, but there was also a banner on the frontpage drawing attention to the article. So what if the case had gone the other way? Would a ruling four months after the event have made an impact? Would an apology on page 37 – or in Moir’s column – been enough?

The PCC’s governance review – although tightly defined – is the opportunity to address these issues. Unfortunately, the submissions it has received are still awaiting publication. If this opportunity for reform is missed, confidence in self-regulation of the press will be diminished.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Media | No Comments »

« Older Entries