Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


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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