Examination of Witnesses (Questions 53
- 59)
TUESDAY 6 MARCH 2007
MR LES
HINTON, MR
ARTHUR EDWARDS
MBE, MR PAUL
HORROCKS AND
MR BOB
SATCHWELL
Chairman: For our next session, I welcome
Les Hinton, who appears wearing two hats: that of Chairman of
the Editors' Code of Practice Committee and as Chairman of News
International; Arthur Edwards, the Royal photographer of The
Sun; Paul Horrocks, who is President of the Society of Editors
and Editor of the Manchester Evening News; and Bob Satchwell,
the Executive Director of the Society of Editors.
Q53 Janet Anderson: I wonder if I
could put this question to each of the four of you, please. The
press notice announcing the Committee's inquiry linked it quite
clearly to the Clive Goodman case and the trade in personal data
identified by the Information Commissioner, and the treatment
of public figures by photographers working on behalf of the press.
Would you accept that the events that triggered this inquiry raise
serious issues and that there is a valid role for politicians—such
as those of us on this Committee—to consider whether the
present system of self-regulation is the right one?
Mr Hinton: Unarguably you are
right to participate in a debate about whether the self-regulation
is sufficient, is proper.
Q54 Janet Anderson: Do you think
that the recent events—
Mr Hinton: The recent events relating
to [...]?
Q55 Janet Anderson: The Goodman case
in particular.
Mr Hinton: Any event that involves
the conduct of the press and our present system of self-regulation
is open—in whatever circumstances, frankly, politicians
judge—to be open for discussion with us and for debate.
Mr Edwards: Yes, I think so too.
Self-regulation, if it is going wrong, then someone has to come
down and make sure it works. Coming here today and sorting it
out—I think that is the way to do it, yes.
Q56 Janet Anderson: Mr Horrocks,
you said in your evidence, "The problem with privacy issues
is that politicians can easily whip up a storm among the public".
Do you think that we are doing that today?
Mr Horrocks: I think there is
a danger of that. I see nothing wrong with the debate, but the
fact is that it is all too easy to focus in on one case. As I
think I said in my statement, one bad apple does not mean that
the whole barrel is rotten. I do not believe that there is widespread
bad practice, and I do believe that self-regulation, the role
of the PCC and the Editors' Code, by and large, is strictly adhered
to. I know that in my own newspaper we regularly discuss adjudications
and we regularly go back and back-check our information, to see
whether or not there is a potential breach. So the PCC and the
Code are highly regarded and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise.
I was a little disappointed, when I heard some of the earlier
evidence from Mike and Chris that people are coerced into breaking
the Code. That is just not my experience. I have been a journalist
for over 30 years; I have been the Editor of the Manchester
Evening News for 10 years; and I was on the PCC as a commissioner
for four years. It is not a common problem, in my experience,
that people are being forced into breaking the Code or are pushing
beyond the boundaries of what the Code and what the law say you
can do. Sure, it is perfectly acceptable to go close, but there
must be an overriding public interest were you to consider breaking
the Code, and that would then be down to the editor to determine
whether those circumstances were correct.
Q57 Janet Anderson: You specifically
mention that in your e-mail to your staff about the use of phone
tapping and so on, where you say, "The only exception to
this would be in the case of a story which had exceptional public
interest and even then such action would have to be sanctioned
personally by the Editor". Are you able to give us an example
of where that was the case?
Mr Horrocks: If you were carrying
out an investigation into corruption, if you were doing an investigation
into wrongdoing, into misdemeanours in public life, misleading
the public, those are the sorts of public interest tests that
I would want to see applied to our journalism, to make sure that
the bar had been set at the highest standard. We are not talking
here about tittle-tattle; we are not talking about the lifestyle
and the private lives of celebrities. We are talking about serious
wrongdoing, corruption, misleading and crime. If we are investigating
those subjects and that subject matter, then I think that there
will be and can be occasions where a justifiable breach of the
Code could take place.
Q58 Janet Anderson: You have never
had a case, for example, where you have thought that to break
the Code was in the public interest, but the journalist or the
reporter you were asking to do this disagreed with you?
Mr Horrocks: That can be debated.
I do not recall in my experience ever having to have that discussion.
When we embark on those types of investigation, it is as a result
of debate and everybody being content with the route that we are
following. We do not say to journalists, "You must do this
because I say so". What we do say is, "We believe that
this investigation will be in the public interest. Therefore [...]".
Maybe if you were buying drugs—for argument's sake—for
a particular reason for an investigation, you would not go along
and say, "I'm a reporter from the Manchester Evening News
and I want to buy some drugs from you", because clearly that
will not work. So you may have to masquerade as somebody else.
That potentially is a breach of the Code.
Mr Satchwell: This inquiry by
this Committee not only is quite reasonable and correct, but is
welcome. The point I would make is that too often there is an
emphasis on the misdemeanours and the things which go wrong with
the media and within the PCC system and self-regulation as a whole.
The danger is that, because you get a spectacular case involving
a big celebrity, a film star, a pop star, a politician or a footballer,
there is a level of interest and concern raised which does not
reflect the reality. Surely the protection which needs to be there
about privacy is about ordinary people? By and large, the media
does not have any interest in ordinary people, unless they are
doing something which deserves to be enquired into. The point
I would make is that I would hope that this Committee, particularly
given your remit, would also look at the achievements of the media.
It is not all bad. It does things which are good and very rarely
gets a pat on the back. In Les Hinton's case, the News of the
World had a problem with a reporter on a Royal story and yet,
a couple of weeks later, The Sun goes and exposes a case
to do with friendly fire in Iraq, which everybody thinks was well
done. That is done by a paper from the same stable, but very little
praise comes out; very quick to criticise but not very quick to
praise. Similarly with the effects of the system that has been
brought in for the last 15 years, and the work of the PCC. I do
not think that there is any real argument that the behaviour of
the press has improved, and that has been to do with the fact
that the PCC has been there. I am not saying that it is perfect,
and of course it could be developed and improved, but no one seems
to recognise the achievements of the system.
Q59 Janet Anderson: Could you give
us an indication on what is an editor's dream story or dream headline?
Do they have a kind of list of priorities? What sells more papers
than anything else?
Mr Satchwell: It used to be a
Royal story, with a nice cuddly Labrador dog, and a diet thrown
in! There are all sorts of stories which are dream stories. With
any story it depends on the publication and the nature of that
story. Obviously, a story which is soft and about celebrities
will sell but, similarly, so will a very serious story about the
misdemeanours of government or the police or whatever. I think
that it is impossible to say what is the best story.
Mr Hinton: For the public, there
is probably a rule of thumb that the biggest stories are the stories
the subjects of which want least to be revealed, in the case of
the policy of the Government. The best story I can think of, if
you could keep it exclusive, would be the Second Coming.
|
