Examination of Witnesses (Questions 249-259)
TUESDAY 4 MARCH 2003
NUJ AND NCTJ
Chairman
249. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming
to see us this afternoon. You have been listening to some of the
evidence we just heard from the previous witnesses. You exist
to represent journalists, to protect them. To what extent therefore
do you believe you should have a role in maintaining a level of
ethics among journalists and among proprietors?
(Mr Frost) Certainly amongst journalists
we feel we have a very strong role. We have an Ethics Council
which was set up after we became very concerned about the way
the Press Council was going. We were on the Press Council from
its inception, as I am sure you know. We have had a code of ethics
since 1936, it has been changed over the years and developed and
we take that position very strongly. If I may pick up the point
Mike Jempson made earlier, things over the last 20 years have
been very, very difficult for us, where we have been derecognised
as a union, where we have not been able to represent our members
in work places and that meant frankly that one of the first things
which went was our support for our members in those workplaces
for ethics. Where maybe 20 years ago we were able to go to editors
and say it was not on, it was not acceptable, we have no longer
been able to do that. I may also say that over the last 15 years
or so, our contact with proprietors has become more and more minimal.
Certainly our view is that one of the reasons the Press Complaints
Commission was set up so quickly, was that the proprietors saw
it as an opportunity to get the NUJ off the Press Council, as
we had returned to the Press Council because we believed the Press
Council was just about in a position to start being more useful.
250. When I first came into journalism on a
national newspaper I was faced with a Catch-22 situation, namely
that I could not be employed by the Daily Mirror unless
I was a member of the NUJ and I could not be a member of the NUJ
unless I had a job in journalism. It took quite a lot of ingenuity
to solve that. The fact is that the Daily Mirror then was
a union shop. Was all that smashed at Wapping or was it on its
way out anyhow?
(Mr Frost) I have to say I was not aware that we ran
a closed shop anywhere. We ran 100% post-membership shops, certainly
in my professional lifetime, but yes, that started to disintegrate
during the 1970s and frankly by the time we got to Wapping it
was already gone as far as we were concerned.
Mr Doran
251. You heard the discussion we had with the
previous witnesses and in all of the evidence we have heard there
seems to be a lack of professional standards. In your various
positions you have responsibility for this either as the union
representing journalists or as the training organisation for journalists.
The problem seems to consist of two things. One is the relatively
weak position of the union and I can accept that as a trade unionist
myself. The other is the pressure under which editors now seem
to operate in a highly competitive market. How do you resolve
that?
(Mr Frost) I do not know that we have. We have done
the best we can with our Ethics Council. Our Ethics Council goes
out to colleges which teach journalism, so, like Mike Jempson's
PressWise we are going out, at the union's expense, to talk to
people who are going into journalism and attempting to talk through
ethics with them. Our ability to engage with ethics in the workplace
now is almost minimal and we are totally reliant on union meetings,
branch meetings, our annual conference and, in common with most
unions, not every member attends those kinds of meetings.
(Mr Bennett-England) It is very much the case that
what you do not teach in college these days, people do not have
much of a chance to learn as soon as they join the workplace,
where they are obviously under great pressure in journalism and
some of the smaller provincial papers may only have two or three
staff, so it is very burdensome. Within the training of journalists,
which is a pre-entry scheme mostly, we do teach ethics, we teach
them the Press Complaints Commission's code of conduct, they have
a copy, the PCC come to talk to the students directly at colleges
and participate in other ways with all sorts of hypothetical stories
and how they would react to them. From the very beginning today,
most journalists would have inculcated in them early in their
training the need for ethics and be aware of things like privacy.
When they are on a newspaper the deed is often done before they
have had a chance to think about it. It is a really thorough system
and in fact we started it in 1993 after the last inquiry, so ten
years' ago. We recruit about 500 journalists a year, so 5,000
journalists are now working in newspapers who have been brought
up with a great awareness of the code of ethics. I also represent
the Chartered Institute of Journalists and we, like the NUJ, have
our own code of ethics too. It is dealt with very thoroughly and
we do have a very good relationship with the PCC in that respect.
252. Just the way you have answered that question
causes me a little concern though. We have had quite a lot of
evidence submitted by individual newspapers and quite a lot of
that has focused on the training of journalists and they have
all mentioned the fact that over the past ten years training has
improved, that the PCC code is part of the training and I understand
that. It does seem to me that what they are saying is that the
PCC code is now the ethics code and I should have thought that
the ethics code for an individual journalist should be a lot wider
than what seems to me a fairly narrow document which would guide
an editor rather than an individual journalist.
(Mr Bennett-England) I do not think it would be restricted
to the PCC code. Most of the people on training courses are not
actually in the industry yet, they are trainees or they are students
rather more than trainees; they are very often trainees when they
start off with newspapers for a year or two. The experience they
have in the workplace makes them need to know more than they would
have known perhaps from the PCC code. Every day throws up all
sorts of examples which may bring new challenges for them, so
I would say not only the code of ethics but everything to do with
journalism is learned on the job, you learn as you go along.
253. You seem to be accepting the point I am
making that you learn on the job and therefore you learn more
about what is required of you as a journalist in practice. My
concern is that the PCC code is the sort of banner for the code
of ethics and the code of ethics needs to be a lot more than just
that. If that is what the industry is defending, then I feel a
little concerned.
(Mr Bennett-England) There is no doubt that it needs
adding to quite a lot. It is a question of time in a short course.
Most trainees are on a one-year pre-entry course, except degrees
which are staggered.
(Mr Frost) There are many degrees now and quite a
lot of the training is done on degree programmes where the course
is much wider and they have more time to teach ethics and the
things which go with that.
254. Do you accept the point I am making from
the NUJ point of view?
(Mr Frost) Absolutely. Certainly if we look back at
the training of journalists 12 years ago, when the NCTJ pre-entry
one-year courses were the only types of course, the amount of
time available to spend on the training of ethics was tiny, perhaps
a couple of afternoons during the course. Now courses tend much
more to be degree courses there is much more opportunity to teach
that, so there is a wider base, but they still need to learn that
in the workplace as well, otherwise it becomes purely the education
part and people tend to forget that and go on to what they see
as being the job.
(Mr Toner) May I come back to the Chairman's earlier
point. Journalism is not a profession, it is a trade and we are
trying to introduce ethical standards on the shopfloor that the
employers are not prepared to live up to. If you compare the NUJ
code of conduct with the PCC code of conduct you will find that
the NUJ code is much wider, more detailed. There is a tension
there between the individual journalists who would often like
to behave more ethically than his or her employer is prepared
to allow. I suppose that is what you have identified.
255. We put in place statutory provisions to
allow you to represent employees even where you do not have recognition.
Do you have many cases involving people being disciplined for
refusing to do jobs on ethical grounds?
(Mr Toner) No, it is not something which has come
up very often.
256. Did it come up a few years ago when you
had recognition?
(Mr Toner) Yes, there were cases a few years ago.
257. Are you saying there are fewer cases?
(Mr Toner) Yes, there are fewer cases now because
recognition in most places has just started to come in again over
the past year now.
(Mr Frost) I was Father of Chapel for a number of
years during the 1980s and certainly issues like that used to
come up; they no longer come up. I am a member of NEC now and
in talking to FoCs and branch officials it is not really coming
through, but it used to. It tends to be dealt with very quickly
at a local level. What often happens, particularly because a number
of journalists are young, in their 20s or early 30s, particularly
in their first jobs, is that they are nervous about saying to
the editor that there is a professional problem. All too often,
I would find that if you told the editor there was a professional
problem, the editor would discuss it. If it never gets to that
stage, editors do not have the opportunity to discuss the issue.
(Mr Bennett-England) One has to remember that my own
council is basically training for the regional and provincial
local press and it is a very traditional way into journalism.
You get your spurs and then you go on to Fleet Street—or
up to Fleet Street, as the case may be. There are one or two London
courses, which are a bit elitist, which probably are not the training
system they boast. They go straight onto newspapers and therein
lies the danger, because a lot of the national tabloids are the
most guilty and, far from being a good example to young journalists
who are training there, they are often quite the reverse. They
do not know very much about ethics because they have not had the
time to learn. When you are working on a local newspaper, all
the time you are there, every day, the chances are you will come
across something and discuss it with your colleagues as you go
along. That thorough training on local papers to begin with obviously
enhances the journalist when they get to Fleet Street.
John Thurso
258. Before I ask the principal question I wanted
to ask, talking about numbers and closed shops and things like
that, how many journalists practising on the tabloids would be
members of the union? Presumably it is no longer 100%.
(Mr Frost) No, certainly not on the national tabloids.
Generally we would say that 60% to 70% of journalists working
in mainstream news media are NUJ members, but we would have to
say it is much lower on papers like The Sun; not so much
The Star; the Daily Mirror is mixed.
(Mr Toner) Another journalists' union is involved
in the Daily Mirror, which does actually have recognition.
259. The point is that whereas 10, 15, 20 years
ago you would have had considerable influence, that influence
is much weaker now. What I want to come back to is exploring the
issue of how we deal with the conflict between the individual
right to privacy on the one hand and the broad right to freedom
of expression on the other, which you addressed in your paper.
You said "Self-regulation of privacy as seen under the PCC
clearly does not work". I am picking my quotes so correct
me if you think I am not expressing what you are saying. Later
on "A self-regulatory body that is so tightly focused on
editors is bound to be seen by many as being in the interests
of only those who own or run the media". One gets the feeling
one is building up towards possibly a privacy law. "However,
the NUJ does not believe a privacy law would provide the support
the public deserves without damaging the right to freedom of expression".
Can you perhaps say how you would like to deal with the first
two quotes I used without coming up with going into the law which
was the third one?
(Mr Frost) I can certainly pick up the second one;
partly because I cannot remember the first one, I am afraid. Which
was the first quote?
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