Posts Tagged ‘Press Complaints Commission’

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

Friday, 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.

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The PCC got it right on Jan Moir complaint

Thursday, 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.

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PCC adjudication against Scottish News of the World inconsistent and a threat to press freedom

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

The Press Complaints Commission yesterday censured the Scottish News of the World. The paper had to publish an adjudication (which appeared on page 2) after an article which accused a seven year old child of anti social behaviour and criminal activity.

The child’s parents, and members of the local community provided evidence undermining some of the claims in the article – particularly that he had been expelled from a number of schools (he had not).

The PCC ruled against the newspaper on for a breach of the code on accuracy (clause one) and children (clause six).

However, the ruling was not straightforward. On the basis of the evidence available, I believe that the Scottish News of the World was unfairly censured and should have the right of appeal. Here’s why.

The PCC’s adjudication is only 127 words long – less than half the average length of recent adjudications. That means it’s difficult to identify all of the different factors in its decision. However, from the information that is available, the PCC’s adjudication appears to be inconsistent with previous cases.

The ruling against the accuracy of the boy’s truancy appears to be justified. The boy’s parents provided clear evidence to refute the claim and the newspaper did not. However, the ruling against the claims of anti social behaviour is less clear cut. Whilst the parents galvanised the support of 100 local people, the newspaper had a diary of his behaviour from local residents, letters from local politicians as well as three interventions from the police that summer. The PCC is not there to determine whether the newspaper was correct – just whether it had made reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of the article. On that basis, the Scottish News of the World appears to not have broken the code and its earlier offer of a right to reply would normally have been enough for the PCC – as it was in Peaches Geldof v Daily Star.

The second part of the PCC’s ruling deals with the fact that the case concerns a child. It is on this part of the code where the PCC’s ruling appears to be inconsistent with previous cases. Newspapers are allowed to report issues concerning children if there is a public interest in “exposing crime or serious impropriety”. In the case of Brian Souter and son v Scottish Sun the PCC rejected the complaint because criminal behaviour (the son stealing his father’s car) was not part of the child’s private life.

The Scottish News of the World further justified its coverage on the basis that it “had not named the child and taken care to obscure his identity”. Based on previous cases, this should have been enough to comply with the code. In A man v Northwich Guardian the PCC rejected the complaint on the basis that clause six was not intended to place “a blanket ban on publishing (childrens’) photographs or stories about them without their consent”. In two further cases the PCC rejected complaints because the newspaper did not publish information which was further detrimental to the child’s welfare (Carolyn Cunningham and Paul John Ferris v Daily Record) and because there was already information in the public domain (Ian Cooper v Cambridge News). The identity of the boy was clearly known by the 100 local residents who supported the complaint against the Scottish News of the World, so it is hard to understand how the newspaper revealed additional information (and the article is no longer available online).

That the case also took 15 months for the PCC to determine the outcome demonstrates that it was not straightforward. The PCC say that the average case is adjudicated within 35 days. It does not generally accept complaints that are made more than two months after publication of the article. The Scottish News of the World article appeared on 10 August 2008 and the adjudication appeared on 23 November 2009. So at the very least, this case took 400 days to assess.

This adjudication against the Scottish News of the World appears to be a threat to freedom of expression. If a newspaper cannot report a neighbour’s reports of anti social behaviour of a child (even if they pixellate the child’s face and try to obscure the identity) then many issues will go un-reported until they reach court. And one of the reasons for the introduction of anti social behaviour orders was the difficulty of bringing such issues to court.

The case may be more complicated than the adjudication reveals. It does make a passing reference to “the child’s medical condition”. But from the available information, the ruling is both at odds with the PCC’s previous decisions and a threat to the freedom of expression and the public’s right to know.

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