Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
TUESDAY 6 MARCH 2007
MR ROBIN
ESSER AND
MR EUGENE
DUFFY
Q100 Philip Davies: Do you think
that lots of people think, "It's not worth taking on the
might of these big newspaper groups. They've got limitless resources.
I couldn't possibly take these people on", and so they just
sort of accept it—and you take advantage of that?
Mr Esser: The whole strength of
the PCC is that it is there for ordinary citizens; it is free
and it is fair. Up to the point that self-regulation was adopted,
you either had to have the resources to go to court or, as you
say, you gave up. Ordinary people now have the ability to complain.
Q101 Philip Davies: Can you tell
us briefly about apologies and corrections, where you do accept
that something was not true? Lots of the public think that papers
are quite happy to make a big splash about something and, when
it is found not to be true, print the correction hidden away somewhere,
deep into the paper. Is that perception justified? What is your
approach? Do you give the same prominence to the apology that
you did to the story in the first place?
Mr Duffy: This is clearly a difficult
area for every newspaper. Certainly in the case of the Daily
Mirror we were the first newspaper[12]
to introduce a correction column; it is For the Record and, each
day, we will put in there any factual errors that we have made
in the paper. Clearly there is an issue if there has been a front-of-paper
story which has led to a retraction or a correction, but what
you also have to bear in mind now is that, when we do print a
correction, there is often some form of compensation to the aggrieved
party involved. Certainly[13]
any corrections we put in the papers are agreed. Their placement,
the wording and the terms of the settlement are agreed with the
aggrieved parties.
Q102 Philip Davies: What if you made
a false story about somebody a front-page splash and they said,
"I want the front-page splash saying that the Daily Mirror
got this wrong"? What would you say to that?
Mr Duffy: It would become a difficult
issue and we would arrive at an amicable solution.
Q103 Philip Davies: The point is
you would not do it, would you?
Mr Duffy: There have been front-page
apologies. Certainly one in my time, and I think in other newspapers,
we have had to carry front-page apologies.
Q104 Philip Davies: We have talked
a lot about Kate Middleton earlier today. Hopefully, to finish
off that particular part, why was it that your papers were seemingly
happy to allow the media scrum to take place in relation to Kate
Middleton? Why was it that you had to wait for the Sun
newspaper to do something about it before your newspapers followed?
Mr Duffy: I think that the News
International position in relation to Kate Middleton cannot be
presented as black and white as they are painting it. If Kate
Middleton were to drive down the road, using her mobile phone
at the wheel, and a paparazzo were to take a photograph of it,
that would clearly be in the public interest because she is breaking
the law. Would the Editor of the Daily Mirror publish that
picture? Probably yes, because she was breaking the law; but he
would certainly question the photographer providing the picture
on the circumstances he was in when he actually took it.
Mr Esser: Obviously, you cannot
prevent a media scrum, because you are talking about a large number
of photographers these days who are freelancers, who are working
for foreign publications and, very often, are not even nationals
of this country. This has arisen over the years, as the large
banks of staff photographers have largely vanished from Fleet
Street. The scrum was not only made up of paparazzi but also of
freelance photographers and television crews. However, the difficulty
really is in defining what is a paparazzo. He is a photographer
who is employed by the Press Association to go and take a picture
of an event in your constituency—okay today—and then,
when sent tomorrow to take a picture of Kate Middleton is classed
as a paparazzo. The definition is extremely difficult to come
by. It is also true that the foreign markets for such pictures
are very considerable. I think that it is a tribute to the influence
of the PCC that they are able to control and to disperse these
scrums when they arise.
Q105 Philip Davies: Do you think
that British national newspaper editors have no responsibility
at all for what happened? It was all freelance photographers supplying
foreign newspapers, and that the British media has absolutely
no blood on its hands when it comes to paying huge amounts of
money for photographs like that?
Mr Esser: That is not what I said.
I did mention that there were at least three television crews,
all from British-based stations, all controlled by Ofcom and not
by the PCC. There were several members of the public taking pictures
on their mobile telephones, who are not controlled by anybody.
Without doubt, if you entirely banned all pictures from the paparazzi,
the paparazzi would be free to behave in any way they wished.
As it is at the moment, every editor will make very careful checks
on how a picture is taken, where a picture is taken, and it must
conform with the strictures of the PCC Code. That gives the PCC
an influence over the paparazzi which otherwise they would not
have.
Q106 Mr Hall: In earlier evidence
we were told that in the Goodman case the journalist had access
to liquid funds, which he did not have to account for when he
used those funds to pay for stories. Is that standard procedure
in the print media?
Mr Esser: Not in the Daily
Mail.
Mr Duffy: I do not have as much
money as him, and we definitely do not have pots of cash lying
around.
Q107 Mr Hall: Under the Code of self-regulation,
what regulations are there about paying for stories then?
Mr Duffy: The Mirror Group titles
would pay for stories, firstly if there is a public interest justification
there. Somebody who has an exclusive human interest story to put
in the paper—we would be there, bidding for it. There is
no problem, I think, in most of the stories that we publish in
actually paying cash for those stories.
Q108 Mr Hall: Does that apply to
the Mail as well?
Mr Esser: Obviously, each case
you judge on its merit. For instance, there are many books that
are written that contain very good information and we pay for
the serialisation of the book—at one end of the scale.
Q109 Mr Hall: That is not what we
are talking about though, is it?
Mr Esser: At the other end of
the scale, if somebody rings up and has a jolly good tale then
we would pay him a fiver.
Q110 Mr Hall: Is there any sort of
transparency in the amount that newspapers pay to their sources?
Mr Esser: Transparency?
Q111 Mr Hall: Yes.
Mr Esser: It is all returnable
to the Inland Revenue. We do not pay cash sums to people anonymously.
What is paid is declared to the Inland Revenue.
Q112 Mr Hall: The actual individual
amounts of money that are paid to informants and people that provide
information—I would think that is confidential to the newspaper,
is it not?
Mr Esser: Yes.
Q113 Mr Hall: Should that be covered
by the Code of Practice?
Mr Esser: I cannot quite see how
it would be, or should be. I think that the commercial operations
of any firm should remain confidential to it.
Q114 Rosemary McKenna: Do you accept
the figures given for individual publications' transactions with
a private detective given by the Information Commissioner in his
report, What price privacy now?
Mr Esser: I cannot possibly comment,
because we have not seen them. I could not comment, therefore,
on either the figures or the individual transactions. They have
not been shown to us. What I can say, however, is that, following
that report, we made very vigorous moves to make sure that our
daily practice conforms with the Data Protection Act. We not only
issued verbal reminders to all our staff—
Q115 Rosemary McKenna: Can I check
that you are saying you have not seen this report?
Mr Esser: I have seen the report,
but I have not seen the invoices.
Q116 Rosemary McKenna: The figures
in the report?
Mr Esser: I have seen the figures,
but I have not seen the invoices. So I am saying that I cannot
comment on the individual ones.
Q117 Rosemary McKenna: No, I am just
asking you about the report. Do you accept the figures in the
report, not the invoices?
Mr Esser: I imagine that the Information
Commissioner is correct in his mathematics.
Q118 Chairman: Why have you not seen
the invoices? Ninety-one journalists employed by the Mail
were employing those services. Surely you could ask the 91 journalists
to show you the invoices?
Mr Esser: They occurred five years
ago. Many of the journalists are no longer working for us. We
have millions of invoices and we process over 100 news stories
a day; that is a third of a million stories a year at the Daily
Mail. The figures? I do not dispute the figures.
Q119 Chairman: But 91 of your journalists
are listed as employing the services of somebody who has been
convicted of breaking the law for illegally authorising databases.
Have you said to those 91 journalists, "What were you employing
this man to do for you?"?
Mr Esser: As I said, many of those
journalists, or some of those journalists, are no longer working
for us and there is no way in which they can remember what happened
five years ago. However, I would point out, as the Information
Commissioner has said, that not one of them has been accused or
charged or found guilty of any offence.
12 Footnote by Witness: first tabloid newspaper. Back
13
Footnote by Witness: To clarify: corrections are agreed
more often than not. Back
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