House of Commons - Culture, Media and Sport

Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Written Evidence

APPENDIX 14

Memorandum submitted by Mr Claude-Jean Bertrand

Having been acquainted with the range of your inquiry, which includes the Press Complaints Commission, I believe I can make a useful submission, as a non-British academic specialist of media ethics, an observer of world press councils and other non-governmental[1] "media accountability systems (M*A*S)" for about 30 years, as the author of two books[2] on the topic, and now the webmaster of a site dedicated both to serving world press councils and to providing the general public with information on media ethics and M*A*S .

MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS (LIST ATTACHED)

While a free market and State regulation are both indispensable to insure good media services to the public, either can be abused, both are dangerous. A third force must supplement them, which has proved to be harmless: media ethics and M*A*S. The two can improve media quality, by moral pressure only. They can also help news professionals listen to the public and render accounts to it. Thus can journalists obtain the public's trust and the support they need to resist economic and political influence.

PRESS COUNCILS (PCS)

Press councils are probably the best M*A*S for at least five reasons: they are permanent NGOs; they gather the three major actors in social communication (media owners, journalists and members of the public[3]); even though most are created at national level, they can also develop at local (as in the US) or regional (as in Canada) levels; even though most concentrate on processing complaints, they can become multifunctional; lastly, they can co-operate with any number of M*A*S around them.

Just as I very much regret that France is (with Greece) the only country in the European Union never to have seriously considered having a press council, I find it extremely fortunate for the UK that it has had a press council for 50 years now, in various shapes.

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) seems to me to have unique features that insure its efficiency: it is strongly supported by most of the press; it is well-funded[4]; it seeks conciliation instead of punishment; it sees its mission, not as merely shielding the news media from government intervention, but as encouraging "quality control" in the British press and as spreading the message abroad.

ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENT PRESS COUNCILS OF EUROPE (AIPCE)

The AIPCE was organised in 1999, on the initiative of the PCC. Its members[5] now meet every year at a conference and keep in touch the rest of the time. The aim of the AIPCE is to help councils exchange experiences, discuss matters of mutual interest, prepare joint projects. A World Association of PCs (WAPC) did exist before but European PCs kept away from it because it accepted as members self-styled "press councils" that were nothing but censorship commissions (like the Supreme PC of Egypt). That policy caused much harm to the concept of "press council".

THE INDEPENDENT PRESS COUNCIL (IPC) WEBSITE

The acceleration of globalisation and the spread of the notion of media accountability[6], led me to the idea of a website, which I suggested at the 2001 meeting of AIPCE in Dublin. The PCC made it possible for the site to become operational in October 2002.

The IPC site (www.presscouncils.org) has two purposes: one is to stand as a link between genuine PCs around the world (between 50 and 70 depending on the definition[7]), to provide them with information about one another and enable them to keep in touch easily, exchange assistance and debate issues[8].

Its other purpose is to offer scholars, students and enlightened citizens, free access to a mass of information on media ethics and M*A*S, especially PCs. At present, they can find a list of world PCs with addresses, a growing list of 130 codes of ethics, plus links to major institutions involved in media ethics, a bibliography and a calendar of events. In the planning stage are an anthology of basic documents, a news section, a public forum.

CONCLUSION

The PCC seems to me to be doing a remarkable job of policing the British press, though I am not sure that the entertainment sheets called "the tabloids" should fall within its terms of reference. It has helped create an environment in which media coverage and media criticism are on the rise. This, according a recent world survey I have done, is quite exceptional.

Besides, the PCC has done and is doing a remarkable job at propagating the notion of "social responsibility of media" and of "media accountability systems", both in Europe and to other regions of the planet, in association with the Commonwealth Press Union.

Annex

MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS

Non-governmental means of inducing media and journalists to respect the rules of ethics set by the profession. Here is a list of about 60 of them, but more can be invented. The most obvious classification of the M*A*S is into three groups by the nature of the M*A*S : documents, printed or broadcast/people, individuals or groups/processes, long or short.

A TEXT OR A BROADCAST PROGRAM

— A written code of ethics, a set of rules which media professionals have discussed and/or agreed upon—with, preferably, input by the public. And which is made known to the public.

— A correction box, published, very visibly. Or time taken to correct an error on the air.

— A regular "Letters to the Editor" column/program, including messages critical of the newspaper/magazine/station.

— Other means of public access, like an on-line message board or a forum for immediate feedback.

— A guest column where a non-media person expresses an opinion different from the media's position.

— An accuracy-and-fairness questionnaire, mailed to persons mentioned in the news or published for any reader to fill out.

— An occasional "Letter from the editor" or a sidebar, explaining some editorial decision.

— A newsletter to readers, inserted or mailed, to keep them informed of what goes on at the newspaper or station.

— A regular media column, page, section in a newspaper, newsmagazine, trade review—or a program on radio or television, that does more than just mention new appointments and ownership changes.

— An alternative periodical or station, which publishes facts and gives viewpoints that regular media ignore, including criticism of the said media.

— "Darts and Laurels", a page of short stories in criticism or praise of some media action, such as most journalism reviews have.

— A "journalism review", on paper or the air or the Web, devoted principally to media criticism, exposing what media have distorted or omitted, and whatever other sins reporters or media companies have committed .

— An article, report, book, film, TV series about media, informative about media and, to some extent at least, critical.

— A petition signed by hundreds or thousands to put pressure on media directly or via advertisers or via some regulatory agency.

INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS

— An in-house critic, or a "contents evaluation commission" (like the shinsa-shitsu set up by Japanese dailies in the 1920s), to scrutinize the newspaper, or monitor the station, for breaches of the code—without making their findings public.

— An ethics committee or a "staff review group" (a rotating panel of journalists) set up to discuss and/or decide ethical issues, preferably before they occur.

— An ethics coach operating in the newsroom, occasionally, to raise the reporters' ethical awareness, to encourage debate and advise on specific problems.

— A media reporter assigned to keep watch on the media industry and give the public full, unprejudiced reports.

— A whistle-blower who dares to denounce some abuse within the media company.

— A consumer reporter to warn readers/viewers against misleading advertising—and to intervene on their behalf (as the "Action Line" teams common in the 1970s).

— An ombudsman, paid by a newspaper or station, to listen to complaints from customers, investigate, obtain redress if need be and (usually) report on his activities.

— A Complaints bureau or Customer service unit to listen to grievances and requests (like that of the BBC in Britain).

— A disciplinary committee set up by a union or other professional association to obtain that its code be respected—under pain of expulsion.

— A liaison committee set up jointly by media and a social group with which they may occasionally clash (eg the police or some ethnic minority).

— A citizen appointed to the editorial board; or several invited to attend the daily news meeting.

— A local press council, ie regular meetings of some professionals from the local media and representative members of the community.

— A national (or regional) press council set up by the professional associations of media owners and of journalists, which normally includes representatives of the public—to speak up for press freedom and to field complaints from media users.

— A watchdog agency set up by a media-related industry (like advertising) to filter contents—and ask that some not be made public, for ethical reasons.

— A militant association dedicated to media reform (like FAIR in the US) or to helping persons with grievances against media (like PressWise in Britain).

— An NGO that trains personnel, and provides free services to media, in emerging democracies (Eastern Europe) and under-developed nations.

— A citizen group (like a labor union, a parents' association) which, for partisan and/or public interest reasons (eg the welfare of children), monitors the media.

— A representative group of journalists in the newsroom, endowed with some rights, as allowed by law in Germany or required in Portugal.

Le Monde

Reluctantly, I also place in this category three types of institutions that some experts would rather leave out of the M*A*S concept altogether. To the extent that they do not take orders from government, to the extent that their purpose is to improve media service to the public, it does not seem possible to leave them out completely. They might be called para-M*A*S.

— The regulatory agency, set up by law, provided it is truly independent, especially if it takes complaints from media users: like the Italian Ordine dei giornalisti (Order of Journalists—see p. 00) or the French Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (the equivalent of the FCC in the US). Two very different types of institutions.

— The international broadcasting company, public or private, using short wave radio or satellites, that makes it difficult for national media to hide or distort the news, like the BBC World Service or CNN.

— The non-commercial broadcasting company (like NSK in Japan or ARD in Germany), whose sole purpose is to serve the public and which, by its mere existence, constitutes implicit criticism of commercial media.

PROCESSES

— A higher education, a crucial M*A*S. Quality media should only hire people with a university degree, preferably (though this is controversial) one in mass communications.

— A separate course on media ethics required for all students in journalism.

— Further education for working journalists: one-day workshops, one-week seminars, six-month or one-year fellowships at universities. Such programs, quite common in the US (like the Knight fellowships at Stanford), are very rare elsewhere.

— A "media at school" program to train children from an early age in the understanding and proper use of media.

— A "media literacy" campaign to educate and mobilize the public.

— An in-house awareness program to increase the attention paid by media workers to the needs of citizens, especially women and cultural, ethnic, sexual or other minorities.

— A listening session: once a week or irregularly, editors man the phones to answer calls from readers, as is done at some Brazilian papers.

— An internal study of some issue involving the public (like a newspaper's relations with its customers).

— An ethical audit: external experts come and evaluate the ethical awareness, guidelines, conduct within the newspaper or station.

— A regular opinion survey, commissioned by the media, to get feedback from the person-in-the-street; also a questionnaire on a newspaper or station website.

— A nation-wide survey of public attitudes towards all or some media (eg towards public broadcasting).

— International cooperation to promote media quality and accountability, like the European alliance of press councils or the Ibero-American Federation of Ombudsmen.

INTERNAL, EXTERNAL AND COOPERATIVE

Another classification of M*A*S depends on who is involved: some M*A*S function inside the newspaper or broadcast station exclusively; some exist outside of it and escape its control; others require that media and non-media people work together. Those boxes, however, are not air-tight: they allow variants of one M*A*S to slip from one into either of the other two.

The internal M*A*S constitute self-regulation proper, quality control in the narrow sense. External M*A*S prove that accountability can be applied to the media without their acceptance; their aim is not reparation to aggrieved individuals but benefit to the public as a whole. Cooperative M*A*S are certainly the most interesting since they imply that press, professionals and public can join together for quality control.

Internal M*A*S

Media page/program Ethics coach

Letter from the editor, sidebar Internal memo

Newsletter to customers Awareness program

Correction box Code of Ethics

Media reporter Whistle-blower

Consumer reporter Ethics committee

In-house critic Disciplinary committee

Evaluation commission Newsroom committee

Filtering agency Company of journalists

Internal study of issues

Readership survey [Public broadcasting]

Ethical audit [International broadcasting]

External M*A*S

Alternative media Non-profit research

Journalism review Opinion survey on media

"Darts and laurels" Media literacy campaign

Critical book/report/film Media-at-school campaign

Media-related website Consumer group

Petition to pressure media Association of militant citizens

Public statement by VIP Media-serving NGO

Higher education

Required ethics course [Indep. Regulatory agency]

Co-operative M*A*S

Letter to the editor Club of readers/viewers

On-line message board Local press council

Ombudsman Annual conference

Complaints bureau National press council

Listening session by editors Liaison committee

Accuracy and fairness question Media-related association

Paid advertisement International cooperation

Encounter with public Training NGO

Panel of media users Continuous education

Citizen on board Prize or other reward