Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
TUESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2003
MR PAUL
DACRE, MR
ROBIN ESSER
AND MR
EDDIE YOUNG
160. Therefore the temptation for you to deal
in prurient interest is pretty overwhelming, I would have thought,
in fact it would be fair to say that the Daily Mail is
a complete master at it?
(Mr Dacre) I would not accept that and it would not
be fair to say that.
161. Well, as I am your target market and I
read you pretty much every day along with most of my female relatives
and friends—
(Mr Dacre) Well, in that case you must be guilty of
prurience yourself!
162. Nevertheless, I think it is an observable
point. So you do have an interest in invading people's privacy
because of the fact that that is basically how you sell; your
newspapers?
(Mr Dacre) I would not deny that we have a fairly
sophisticated celebrity journalism and that we have a lot of human
interest stories. A lot of that celebrity journalism is created
by the celebrated industry itself. It is in their interest to
create interest in them. That is how they become famous and make
very, very considerable fortunes and enjoy very, very high standards
of living. If I was prurient to an unacceptable level people would
not read the Daily Mail. If you trust in the basic decency
of people, which I do, and we have more AB readers than any newspaper
in Britain and more ABC readers than the Times, the Independent,
the Guardian and almost the Telegraph put together.
I trust their decency. If I take things over the limits they will
not buy the paper. Why should they if they are decent people?
Like you, if I may say.
163. But potentially the answer to your last
question though was that when it comes to a celebrity therefore
anything goes because that is how they make themselves rich and
famous?
(Mr Dacre) Not at all. No, they are entitled to exactly
the same protection of the PCC as a so-called person not generally
in the public eye. You would be quite astonished at the extent
to which celebrities connive with paparazzi photographers, freelance
photographers, to invade their own privacy, to restore their own
flagging standing in the public's eyes and I would ask you to
bring a degree of cynicism into that. Last week—I do not
think it is revealing any secrets, I think it has been published—at
the PCC we had the case of a well known Coronation Street star
who has spent a lifetime charging the press for intimate pictures,
intimate snatched pictures of her, information about her, charging
very heavily for that but actually one day a Sunday newspaper
chose to take a picture of her in her garden from a vantage point
with a long lens and she complained about it and the PCC found
in her favour and censored the newspaper.
164. But despite the fact that there may well
be complicity—and I doubt that I would be very shocked actually
at the lengths people go to—there are nevertheless occasions
when it is not relevant what might be of private prurient interest
about someone who is in the public eye and when the genie is out
of the bottle and that piece of information is published their
reputations could suffer and if nothing else they will also be
deeply humiliated and embarrassed perhaps. Therefore, what do
you really have to fear about a privacy law, bearing in mind that
you are sitting here telling us today that you would not actually
do something purely out of prurient interest, you would do it
when there is a public interest defence? What do you have to fear?
(Mr Dacre) What I have to fear about a privacy law
is that I believe it would destroy the PCC effectively. It would
destroy the goodwill and the consensus, which are the prime engines
of the PCC, and I keep repeating we are about ordinary people.
As I understand it, this is the remit of this Committee, about
ordinary people. You destroy the PCC and you will destroy the
most effective barrier to defend the privacy and the rights of
ordinary people that we have. At the moment we respect and it
is ingrained into every journalist that ordinary person's rights
must be respected in the PCC Code. You have a privacy law and
that will go by the way, I am absolutely sure of it, because the
goodwill, the consensus relationship between the PCC and the journalist
industry will be destroyed.
165. But would it necessarily change what is
put in the paper?
(Mr Dacre) Yes. I think, I am afraid, cynically—and
I hope to exclude the Mail—that more ordinary people's
lives would be intruded upon because only the rich and the powerful
would be able to afford the lawyers to take advantage of your
privacy law. Do not fool yourself. Ordinary people will not be
able to. They will not be able to get no win, no fee; insurance
premiums will prevent that. Can I just give you the example of
Naomi Campbell? I do not know whether you have discussed this
already but it is a fascinating kind of parallel for all this.
Naomi Campbell goes to court over her privacy being invaded. The
case takes eighteen months to reach fruition. It cost her three-quarters
of a million pounds eventually. In it her whole private life was
put on parade, which is what would happen with a privacy action.
Newspapers, combative newspapers, would have a right to bring
all that up. Her whole private life was put on parade in that
case. In the end she lost. It had created a confrontational situation
between her and the newspaper. The newspaper is still taking the
mickey out of her remorselessly in the most combative way. If
she had gone to the PCC it would have taken thirty-one days, it
would have been free, it would have cost nothing, it is all private
and confidential and she would have probably won her case. So
it is always useful to kind of crystallise it in that way.
166. So you are clearly a big enthusiast of
the PCC but bearing in mind—
(Mr Dacre) Well, because I believe that if we do not
regulate ourselves that regulation by a government would politicise
the regulation and I think that would be very dangerous, particularly
under this present Government, which seems to want to control
everything.
Miss Kirkbride: I do not want to agree
with you too much because that is clearly very dangerous but bearing
in mind that some people feel that it fails on occasions what
about suggestions that have been made that we should have like
for like, that where you get it wrong, where you humiliate someone,
embarrass someone, the same prominence is given to the story that
corrects the unfairness that was perpetrated as opposed to the
sort of back page two lines because there is not like for like?
Would that be a fair way forward of beefing up the PCC?
Chairman: If the person wanted it.
Miss Kirkbride
167. If the person wanted it, quite right.
(Mr Dacre) I think that is a very good point because
quite often they do not.
168. But they might?
(Mr Dacre) Well, when we carry corrections we often
carry it on the same page and with some prominence.
169. On the front? Have you ever done that on
your front page?
(Mr Dacre) As it so happens, the Mail on Sunday
did want to do that once, yes. It is not something I would like
to encourage but they did do it once, yes. There is the one I
have already showed you, the Evening Standard one. It is
a right hand page early in the book.
170. What about you turning up as an editor
to defend what you have done when you are being hauled in front
of the PCC? Why should it all be done in letters and a bit sort
of behind the scenes? Why should you not be arraigned as an editor
to justify what you have done? Would that be helpful?
(Mr Dacre) Before the PCC?
171. Yes, should you?
(Mr Dacre) Well, I have to write for letters, as you
say.
172. I am sure Mr Esser does it for you.
(Mr Dacre) Well, I have a very good team around me.
I suppose that could be explored. I think it would make things
much longer and much more labourious and, as you know, the idea
is to do these things efficiently. But I am totally at the call
of the PCC. They can write to me about anything, and do bear in
mind I sit on the Commission as well, although I am not allowed
obviously to sit when my own newspapers come up.
Ms Shipley
173. Child abuse. I have done a lot in Parliament
to do with child abuse and I am actually grateful for the media
coverage and for the tabloids for putting it high on the agenda.
There is a lot of really good coverage and allowing ordinary people
to talk about it. It is now an issue, child abuse, in all its
many horrible forms. So I think the British press is doing a very
good job and I am over in Europe doing bits and pieces as well
and the British press is out there at the front breaking down
those barriers of silence around this topic. So literally three
cheers for the press on that. However, really seriously there
is an area of danger, real, serious danger should you name people
before due process of the law has been gone through for obvious
reasons, the lynch mob mentality, the person may be innocent and
have their lives well and truly destroyed and all their family
around them in a way that even with your apologies on the front
page would not be able to put back together again. Let me just
finish, please, because I really value your opinion on this as
a senior newspaper person. How do you make the judgment between
that and protecting the children? I do not want you to go into
what the PCC does, I really want to know how you, as a newspaper
person, make those judgments because it is so serious.
(Mr Dacre) Obviously one gave this quite a lot of
thought during the News of the World's name and shame campaign
and I was one of those who was not overly critical of the News
of the World because I was very worried about the danger implications,
I genuinely was, the lynch mob thing and I think you would be
a fool if you were not worried about that. My limited experience
of this area—and you are obviously much more experienced
than I am—the News of the World was articulating
the terrible fears and worries of people who live on giant council
estates who do not have political representation, who do not have
access to newspapers and lawyers and this is clearly a problem
that does afflict the children on those estates much more probably
than it does in middle class suburbs. The News of the World
is predominantly a working class paper and I thought in that sense
its actions were defensible. I cannot give you a blanket answer,
I really cannot. I think I would be very loathe to identify anybody
who was suspected of child abuse. If, however, he was arrested
by the police I would have no compunction about it because I think
that justice must be open. I do not know who was referring to
Matthew Kelly earlier. That was terribly regrettable. This man
has been maligned and blackened. However, that one abuse does
not get round the fact that justice must be seen to be open. What
would you prefer, cars rolling up in the middle of the night and
them just being bundled in the back and you do not hear of them
for two weeks? Well, frankly that is not the kind of justice system
I want. We must know about this.
174. I am kind of feeling my way around this
because I come down heavily on expose them, expose them. But there
is a danger in expose them, expose them, because the backlash
when it goes wrong is enormous and the Matthew Kelly example has
done damage to those who wish to protect children because it has
devalued allegations—
(Mr Dacre) But what is your answer to that?
175. Well, I am actually looking to you and
all the other witnesses who come in front of us to explore what
that answer is. It may be that the answer is to do with the proportionality
legislation which exists in other areas, which are not used at
the moment as I understand in the area we are now discussing.
You are arguing for the PCC and for not having more legislation,
not having more controls, and when I am thinking round this I
am literally pulled both ways but I do think you, as a senior
newspaper person, and others in those very senior positions with
something like this are going to have to lay aside some of what
you have already said to us to address this because I think this
particular subject area, in the same way as the celebrity ones
and others, is liable to bring in the sort of public reaction
which nobody would want. So how will you progress from here in
your thinking about this, because this is going to come up month
in, month out, year in , year out because you are doing a good
job opening up the subject?
(Mr Dacre) I think the honest answer is we all need
to think about it a lot more. If you go back to Matthew Kelly,
we have put on our front page the fact that he was innocent today
and we actually put the headline "Pilloried".
176. But do you see my point that although you
must do that for Matthew Kelly as an individual, that in itself
is quite damaging because then the public is thinking, "But
we thought he was," and the whole thing about protecting
children is to do with getting the right legislation, the right
protections, the guilty people locked up?
(Mr Dacre) Ms Shipley, I cannot give you a simple
clean answer. All I know is that justice must be seen to be open
and if the police arrest someone a newspaper must have the freedom
to report that.
177. So how would you then within the PCC be
asking the PCC to look at this? Because the guidance is not good,
you know that.
(Mr Dacre) I know that, but we are all grappling with
this area, are we not, politicians as well?
178. But how exactly would you within the PCC
set out to grapple with this because I would like to know and
I would like to be part of it as somebody who is trying to legislate,
and indeed I have—
(Mr Dacre) I think, and I am on very hesitant ground
here, that the Commission would take the position that a suspected
paedophile until he is charged or arrested has exactly the same
rights as anybody else and his privacy presumably would be exactly
the same as Naomi Campbell's privacy and that, from my limited
experience because these cases do not come up that often, has
been the response. Certainly with prisoners and certainly murderers
even the ruling of the PCC is that they must be given the same
rights.
Rosemary McKenna
179. I have to congratulate you on your defence
of the PCC and the Daily Mail. It is certainly not a picture
that is painted by the correspondents who have communicated with
me as a member of this Committee and who have many, many complaints
about both, particularly the recourse that they have through the
PCC. One case that was made was, for example, in 1998 your annual
report said that there were 82 unresolved cases that got to the
actual Commission out of 2,862. The suggestion was that many people
had given up because they lost hope because of the tortuous process
that people have to go through. They want a quick resolve of an
issue but because of the tortuous process that people who make
a complaint have to go through and get no satisfaction many of
them give up and many of them do not have the resources. I am
talking about ordinary people, I am not talking about celebrities.
(Mr Dacre) All the complaints to the PCC?
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