Examination of Witnesses (Questions 740
- 749)
WEDNESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2007
Professor Richard Collins, Professor James Curran
and Professor Stewart Purvis
Q740 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
As an ex-editor of Channel 4 News and indeed your position at
ITN, would that concern you?
Professor Purvis: For the eight years or effectively
the decade that I was running ITN, I tried to manage the ownership
of ITN which was a crazy thing to do with hindsight and I attempted
to manage Parliament's legislation in some ways, unknown to the
owners of ITN at the time, because I was trying to prevent a proprietor
running ITN. In the end, I think that it was surprisingly successful,
but we have come to a point now where ITV has consolidated. Remember,
this was a background where there were 13 ITV companies and no-one
knew who the winner would be, if you like. That is one of the
reasons why I did it. Now, I think that the reality is that ITV,
certainly in England and Wales, is a coherent force run by an
experienced broadcaster in Michael Grade and the last set of legalisation
cleared the way. In fact, ITV has never bought ITN even though
it has been allowed to since 2003. I do not think that it would
have an enormous effect. It is arguable at the moment that it
is almost de facto. Certainly ITV News is de facto
run by ITV anyway though it is done by ITN employees. I think
that there are other issues that might arise from a change of
ownership and I do not think that it would have an enormous effect.
I do think that a little bit of distance between a news room and
a corporate office is a good thing but since pretty much every
other broadcaster in the world combines the two operations, it
would be difficult to argue that it was not workable.
Chairman: Given the discussion about
agendas, Professor Collins is interested in professional codes
of conduct.
Q741 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Professor Collins, I think that this takes us back to something
you touched on in response to a question from Baroness Thornton
about where the issue of regulation could be concentrated. We
have heard from one or two editors of newspapers predominantly
about the way in which they manage their own regulation. For instance,
some of them have readers' editors who, particularly in the case
of The Guardian, are alleged to be unsackable, people whose
independence is the flag under which The Guardian's standards
are flown. Do you think that the quality of news journalism in
this country can be managed through that kind of self-regulation
and how can that be encouraged, should it be encouraged further,
and do you think that this kind of strategy such as having a readers'
editor is a good example of self-regulation?
Professor Collins: Yes, I do think that the
Readers' Editor is a good initiative. I think that The Guardian
is the only news institution in the UK that does it, but it exists
in other authoritative news organisations like Le Monde,
De Volkskrant in the Netherlands, The Washington Post
and so on. I think that the history of particularly press self-regulation
in the UK has been a pretty miserable one. I do not dissent from
the general view of the Press Complaints Commission as a rather
ineffective representative of consumer and reader interest. But
I think that we are moving into a sector structure where this
is one of the few areas of hope and of opportunity. Professor
Purvis is now a journalism educator and I think that this is something
that is important and is less developed in the UK than elsewhere,
particularly in the United States. I think it is very striking
that, if you read quality American newspapers such as The Washington
Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
you will see more sources cited in an article than is customary
even in the quality papers in the UK, and I think that is one
of the core must-haves that journalism students in the EU must
learn. There is also the institutionalisation of fact checking
in the United States. There are forms of habitual conduct that
exist and function perfectly well in other news markets that we
might learn from.
Q742 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
May I stop you there on the issue of sources and this is prurient
interest on my part. The conventional wisdom about journalism
is that sources are protected very heavily. I would understand
you to mean by "sources", sources that are in the public
domain.
Professor Collins: Yes.
Q743 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
There is potentially quite an interesting tension there, is there
not?
Professor Collins: I agree. On this issue, it
is unfortunate that we do not have Professor Franklin here because
he has recently carried out some interesting research about the
extent to which journalists rely on PR handouts and so on. When
I was using the term "sources", I was talking about
the number of sources that tend to be referenced in an article
or in the coverage of a particular item. I think that, in the
quality press in the US, it is striking how journalists will lean
over backwards to cite more and different sources. I think that
journalism education is one thing. There are interesting codes
that have been formulated and put into practice and the readers'
editor is one way of institutionalising the living by those codes.
I think that one comes back to two things: one is that we have
not had a history of strong journalism education or of adherence
to professional codes in the UK—how do we get it?—but
also I think that there is a real importance in having a measure
of irresponsibility in the media and the thought of a relentlessly
responsible press is rather a chilling one. As well as being a
Professor at the Open University, I am Visiting Professor at a
university in Johannesburg and there is a very interesting issue
in the South African media at the moment where two journalists
on The Sunday Times Johannesburg may have unlawfully acquired
the medical records of the Minister of Health which may suggest
that she, an alcoholic, jumped the queue for a liver transplant.
It may be that these journalists have acted unlawfully and irresponsibly.
On the other hand, I, at least, would be very uncomfortable to
enjoin a media structure that did not say that this kind of activity,
on balance, is in the public interest. Irresponsibility is important
but I think that adherence to codes—and, one of your colleagues,
Baroness O'Neill, has done some interesting work on elaborating
these which I think is worth having a look at—is an interesting
way to go and the Government can exert some power. The Government
are putting a considerable resource into the broadcasting area;
they might think about using some of that resource to sustain
some of the interesting online journalism initiatives that are
very fragile; they may make a condition of receiving public funds
adherence to such codes. The Government—and this perhaps
echoes rather naughtily one of the themes Professor Purvis has
referred to—is probably the biggest advertiser in the UK.
If the Government were to say, "We want to encourage the
truthfulness of British journalism; we want to encourage it to
improve in certain respects and we might take adherence to these
codes into account when dispensing advertising finance",
there are obviously real dangers there and UK practice is cited
by authoritarian governments overseas—UK content regulation
is often pointed to by countries such as China, "You do,
why shouldn't we?" This is dangerous territory but I think
it is something that is worth thinking about, worth consulting
about and worth engendering a public discussion about.
Q744 Bishop of Manchester:
I would like to pursue this a little more in terms of the legislation
which is provided. You will know that several on this Committee
were involved in the progress that led to the Communications Act
in 2003 and we have the Enterprise Act in 2002. I am very interested
in the balance which you have just been describing. I wonder to
what extent you feel that that legislatory provision sufficiently
secures that public interest.
Professor Collins: I think that one of the positive
things in UK law and regulation in recent years has been strengthening
the competition law and the Enterprise Act is certainly a very
striking instance of that. Economic efficiency is not necessarily
the same as the public interest and an economically efficient
organisation of a media market might have too little diversity
and too little quality for us. I think that a proportionate level
of public intervention is desirable, and then one gets into interesting
debates about the proportionality of the UK's intervention into
the broadcasting market and whether in fact, as Ofcom are suggesting
with their interesting idea of a public service publisher, there
might not be opportunities to support worthy initiatives outwith
the traditional broadcasting media.
Q745 Bishop of Manchester:
In terms of any extra or alternative strategy structures, am I
hearing you correctly if I interpret what you have said as being,
in terms of legislation at the moment, we have the balance about
right?
Professor Collins: Saying that everything in
the garden is lovely is a dangerous—
Q746 Bishop of Manchester:
That is not quite what I said.
Professor Collins: I think that there are many
worse things than the situation of the media in the UK at the
moment. I think that there a number of ways in which things could
be significantly improved and the two areas where I would like
to see attention being devoted are encouraging and fostering some
high quality and rather fragile existing activities online and
encouraging entry from more, and I would like to see more public
debate and perhaps a little sabre rattling around the issues of
journalistic conduct and codes.
Chairman: That leads us in a sense to
Professor Curran who I gather is undertaking a major study into
research.
Q747 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
As Rector of the Goldsmith Media Research Programme, you are carrying
out a very large study on the future of news. I am sharing this
rather extensive series of questions with Baroness Thornton, so
I will stick to the first half and then hand over to her. There
are one or two specifics about the standards of news journalist
declining across the board and whether the national broadsheet
papers and the BBC are tending towards becoming more tabloid.
Professor Curran: Perhaps I should say that
our study of the future of news is focusing on the impact of online
journalism, so we are addressing the question, is Stewart Purvis
right? Is it the case that new technology will enable a number
of voices to be heard and we are only in the early phase of research
and we do not know what we are going to find, but the kind of
questions we are asking are perhaps relevant to questions you
should consider. Will the movement of advertising from the printed
press to online undermine the model of sustainable economic journalism?
In America, there are massive editorial budget cuts taking place
as advertising moves out of the press into cyberspace and that
is leading to a deterioration of editorial performance, increased
reliance on press releases and so on. Will that happen to us in
Britain is one question we are asking. The second question is,
will the range of sources be extended? Will journalists be able
to go to specialist websites and is that affecting the way they
are writing copy? Is journalism getting better because they are
using a wider range of sources? The third thing we are looking
at is, what are the limitations on the effectiveness of online
publications? Do they need money to be effective? How good is
the BBC in terms of its online operation? I pick up the comment
that Richard Collins made. Maybe one thing that you should be
looking at is to consider whether a small amount of money spent
in promoting online journalism would not have a significant impact,
whether you should be thinking about social market policies subsidising
minority online journalism.
Q748 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
It has been brought to our attention now and again that there
is something called multi-skilling journalists, so that they can
equally report on material that is going to be in the printed
media as well as online, but there is a point that you make in
your written evidence which is, is it the case that because breaking
news is highly competitive, just to quote, you say, "The
imperative to be first almost always displaces the imperative
to be right" and, following on from that, is it that the
public gain the impression that the first maybe not always dead
accurate newsflash and then does not really concentrate on the
back up after it which might correct the facts to a certain or
lesser extent? The other point that has been made to us which
is relevant to this and particularly to the fact that you are
concentrating much more online than in the printed or traditional
television screen is that now a whole new world is opened up to
the public because not only do they get the alert of what is new
in the news but also they can drill down and learn a great deal
more about any particular subject through the VDU than they would
ever get through other types of more traditional media.
Professor Curran: We are at the early stages
of our research and we cannot answer that question but it cuts
both ways, does it not? The intensification of the new cycle means
that there is increased pressure to get out a story fast and that
can lead to the cutting of corners but, at the same time, new
technology extends the range of sources that are potentially available
to journalists which can make for greater depth of story making.
We are still in the process of investigating that.
Q749 Baroness Thornton:
In your evidence, you referred to different ownership regimes
policing different cultures and news agendas within newsrooms.
In America, we did ask those sorts of questions about what the
effect had on news journalists and so on, but do you have any
views about how that difference manifests itself?
Professor Curran: There is a difference in the
culture of American journalism and British journalism and essentially
British print journalism is geared to entertainment whereas American
journalism is much more worthy, it is much more concerned with
promoting the public interest. One of the things that you might
possibly consider is, how might you modify the culture of press
journalism in Britain. Take the Press Complaints Commission. Its
main purpose is to be a mailbox for complainants and to get people
like you off the back of journalists. It could have a bigger role.
It could celebrate great journalism; it could award prizes honouring
great journalism; it could produce reports criticising shabby/bad
journalism. In other words, it could be a source of professionalisation
inside of the press industry in Britain, so that the culture of
earnestness and worthiness that is viewed with such contempt by
British journalists that you have encountered in America would
actually find a presence in British journalism to the improvement
of British journalism.
Chairman: We obviously could carry this
on for a very long time. I personally have been fascinated by
the fact that you have talked about my interest, the online and
the Internet. We do have to finish there though we obviously could
go on for much longer. I would like to thank the three of you
very much indeed for your contributions. They will have an important
impact on our final report. Thank you very much.
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