Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 26)
TUESDAY 6 MARCH 2007
MEDIAWISE
TRUST AND
NATIONAL UNION
OF JOURNALISTS
Q20 Helen Southworth: With reference
to webcasts and television, what is the impact of the globalisation
of the information trade on self-regulation, if you have journalists
coming from all over who are working for people all over or freelancing?
Professor Frost: It is clearly
going to make it much more difficult. As more and more newspapers
expand and as media converge it becomes much more difficult to
tell which is doing which. But I still think we are talking about
10 or 15 years as a minimum, before that becomes a serious problem
for us, to reconsider how regulation operates in this country.
Professor Jempson: I do not agree.
It is quite clear already that a story that gets published, say,
in a British newspaper and is then put out on the Internet, takes
off in all sorts of bizarre ways. In a case we dealt with where
The Sunday Mirror had accused a Christian worker in Montenegro
of being a child trafficker, that story appeared on to the Internet,
was picked up as gospel and then reappeared in all sorts of new
forms: on websites attacking the UN; on right-wing organisations
in America which were trying to make a point about Roma selling
their children. Stories which are thought to be valid because
they have been published in a British newspaper then get picked
up and used as evidence. We found in one case that a story about
gun-running ended up as evidence in an intelligence report which
was also available on the Internet. I think there are lots of
complicated problems about how you use the law to correct things
which have begun as a simple story, have been put on to the online
version and then picked up and turned around by other organisations
all around the world. I think there are some really complicated
legal issues there.
Q21 Helen Southworth: If something
has gone into the public arena on the Internet, what impact would
that have on print journalism, for example? Does it have one?
Professor Jempson: Of course.
We have had lots of examples where there is an injunction preventing
something being published but then it appears—in whatever
form it is out there -on the Internet and, once it is there, everybody
can see it, so what is the point of stopping it being published
here? The whole opening up of the Internet changes the nature
of regulation completely and nobody has really thought it through
yet.
Q22 Alan Keen: You mentioned that
journalists are pressurised, that they need to make money for
their paper. First of all, we think of the editors and journalists
who get well paid and get bonuses, but what about the people who
make their money through their shareholdings. Rupert Murdoch identifies
himself very clearly with his newspapers: the public understand
he is The Sun and The Times. With some of the other
newspapers, we do not really know who is making the money from
the shareholdings. Do you think it would help if they were identified
more closely with newspapers, if in fact they had to appear in
them or on them as identified people who presumably would have
some moral code for what their newspapers produce?
Professor Jempson: Some of them
might think their privacy was being invaded if you told people
that they had shares in a particular newspaper, for instance—which
would be ironic. I think it would be quite a good idea if the
public knew more about the ownership pattern, especially since,
increasingly, people are not aware, for instance, at a local level
that the same people may be pumping out the news on radio, on
television, in their local newspapers, as well as in the national
newspapers. People really do not know the sources of news. I do
not think most people are that interested in the minutiae but
I think the information needs to be there and then we can begin
to ask questions about the implications of some of these cross-ownership
schemes. What difference does it make if the control of your local
newspaper, your local radio station, your local TV station and
commercial TV stations are all in the same hands? What does it
tell us about the limits of the amount of news we get and what
things are not being told to us?
Q23 Alan Keen: You have mentioned
a number of points this morning on the PCC. Could you summarise
what changes you would like to see.
Professor Frost: We would want
the conscience clause for journalists. That would, as I say, move
the debate on and give them a chance to feel slightly more secure.
We accept that would not change absolutely everything but it would
change the picture a bit. We would like to see self-regulation
continue with the PCC but for the PCC to take complaints from
third parties and, more importantly to have penalties. So: to
adjudicate far more often and, if necessary, to have penalties.
As I have said, 22 cases were adjudicated last year; five were
upheld. That means that on that kind of figure only five would
risk any penalty. My own personal view on at least two of those
cases is that it would only require a token penalty. We are not
talking about fining large numbers of papers but if that penalty
was available, if there were far more adjudications which were
looking at what was happening, there would be a real debate about
ethics within the industry and a real feeling that there are limits
which should be adhered to at appropriate times.
Mr Dear: Let us make it clear,
we are against any privacy law, any statutory intrusion in privacy.
I do not think that question was answered properly before. We
want self-regulation but we want more effective self-regulation.
That requires a system of penalties to be in place—not that
you would use penalties all the time but so that they are there
as a backstop for those who are persistent offenders in breaching
the PCC Code and so on. We want a balance drawn on individual
rights, for journalists to be able to refuse those assignments
that clearly breach PCC codes of practice. Alongside that—and
I know it is not the remit of this Committee—improved Freedom
of Information legislation would allow journalists to be able
to carry out the kind of investigations that are vitally important
in a more open and transparent way.
Professor Jempson: One of the
things which is mentioned in our paper is the idea of an Ombudsman,
somebody who can act as both a backstop for print and broadcast
regulation but also who could be intervening if, for instance,
Parliament decided to try to limit the freedom of the Press. I
agree that there needs to be thought about compensation as part
of the penalty system. And, perhaps most importantly of all, we
need a much bigger public debate about the nature of the regulation
now and possibly the need, if there is going to be any statutory
legislation for a right of reply. If we do not need privacy legislation,
we might need a right of reply.
Q24 Mr Hall: The National Union of
Journalists has submitted suggestions that the newspaper industry
and magazine web pages that are news-related should still be regulated
by the Press Complaints Commission and that all web pages should
be regulated by Ofcom. Does that not add another wave of confusion
to all of this if we go down that route?
Professor Frost: I do not think
it does. The way that quite a lot of these newspaper websites
work at the moment is that they are getting video clips and audio
clips from other sources. The Sun, very famously, recently
had the flight video in the Iraq case—very, very useful
to support what they ran in their own report and entirely appropriate
in my view. But most of what is going on on their site and most
of what goes on on other newspaper sites is coming from the standard
news service and to try to consider two different types of regulation,
two different types of rules that would apply, makes things unnecessarily
complicated in our view. Certainly in the next 10 years of development,
to leave it with the PCC, a properly run PCC of the sort we are
recommending, would mean that the control is with them. But whether
that was in partnership with Ofcom and whether Ofcom had some
oversight, as it does in other ways [...]. For instance, Ofcom
subcontracts out regulation of advertising to the Advertising
Standards Authority, and it may be possible to do something more
akin to that. There clearly need to be links but there are difficulties
involved, we think, in having two types of regulation. Many journalists
and editors find it quite difficult enough to cope with one set
of regulation, never mind two or more at the same time, and so
there are difficulties with that.
Mr Dear: The problem you would
have for the individual journalist is that very often they will
write a story and the same story will be used in two different
formats and will therefore be subject to two different sets of
standards, codes, regulatory frameworks. It is a huge problem
going forward, as this happens more and more, as to how we deal
with it. For now, we think the case is not there for a single
regulatory body to cover the whole lot because of those particular
difficulties for individual journalists and editors putting together
a story.
Q25 Mr Hall: In part of your evidence
you said there should be this concept of penalties. We have had
figures mentioned today of £100,000 for a news story and
£250,000 for a photograph. What kind of penalties would make
a difference?
Professor Frost: I do not think
they need to be huge.
Q26 Mr Hall: What would be the point
if they were not huge?
Professor Frost: I was going on
to say that it depends on the paper. The PCC has always said about
penalties—quite rightly—that a penalty that would
be suitable for a newspaper like The Sun would wipe out
a small paper like the Accrington Observer for instance.
We need to find some way of ensuring that a reasonable penalty
for a small weekly paper is also capable of being a reasonable
penalty for a big national paper that has multimillion pound budgets.
We believe there are numbers of ways of doing that. We have suggested
one in our evidence. We are not particularly wedded to that particular
way of doing it; it is just an example of a way of doing it to
ensure there are penalties that would be sufficiently severe for
the individual newspaper or magazine involved for them to take
that adjudication seriously. We do not anticipate that hundreds
of newspapers or magazines would have that kind of penalty brought
against them each year. As I said before, I would expect it would
be two, three, four, five newspapers, but the fact that that penalty
is there, that it could be reasonably severe—the PCC would
be able to look at the methods used, the consequences and decide
what is an appropriate penalty—would seem to me to raise
the ante a bit and make people take things a little more seriously.
Chairman: Thank you very much. We now
need to move on to our next session. I would like to thank you
very much for coming.
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