Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2540
- 2559)
TUESDAY 20 MAY 2008
Lord Rothermere, Mr Charles Sinclair and Mr Kevin
Beatty
Q2540 Chairman:
Regional newspapers, I suppose, would be the easiest because you
may be in very strong Labour areas, and I assume that will have
some impact upon how the editors advise their readers to vote?
Lord Rothermere: We leave the decision to which
political party, if any, for the editors of those regional newspapers
to come to on their own.
Q2541 Chairman:
There is nothing which is laid down; there is no code which is
laid down which I could go to, or anyone could go to, or your
editors could go to and say, "These are the rules"?
We are taking evidence from Trinity Mirror next and, certainly
as far as their regional editors are concerned, they have quite
a strong code of guidance to their editors; but you do not have
that?
Lord Rothermere: We do not have a written code;
we do not feel that we need to have a written code. We have a
convention and that convention is editorial independence; and,
of course, with the local newspapers the editors are expected
to reflect and to report accurately on their local issues; and
also to allow freedom of expression within their local area. They
have the choice of which political party to choose, or which issue
to support or to campaign upon, and we leave that up to them.
If there is a code, the code is that they should represent their
local constituency.
Q2542 Chairman:
When it comes to the national newspapers that is a similar policy?
Lord Rothermere: Yes.
Q2543 Chairman:
When did this policy change? Because the first Lord Rothermere
did not actually take this view; he was very hands-on, was he
not?
Lord Rothermere: Perhaps because of that, that
is why we have the policy!
Q2544 Chairman:
You half joke, but is that half the reason why it took place?
Lord Rothermere: The Board believes that as
a professional media organisation, in order to hire the best editors,
and in order to have a relationship of trust with our readers,
we need to allow them the integrity and the freedom to edit.
Q2545 Chairman:
It puts a lot of power in the hands of your editor-in-chief, does
it not?
Lord Rothermere: Yes, I think it probably does
but he is a big man.
Q2546 Chairman:
You are satisfied in the way that he has developed the papers?
Lord Rothermere: They have been extremely successful.
Q2547 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
Lord Rothermere, may I just ask you to clarify something. On page
2 of your written evidence in the last paragraph from the bottom
you say there that in certain circumstances the editorial stance
has got to be in-line with the Board's wishes. The editorial independence
about which you speak is really within those parameters. If the
editorial line goes against the policy of the Board then you would
feel it right to intervene, would you?
Lord Rothermere: May I answer that question
in two parts. The first part is, I have to say while I have been
Chairman of the Board, and while I have been on the Board, I have
never once seen on the agenda, or taken part in, a discussion
over what should be in our newspapers or what editorial policy
the editors should choose. The second part of that question, if
I may, I would like to direct to Charles Sinclair, who actually
wrote this letter.
Mr Sinclair: I think the broad point is that
the interest of the Board of DMGT is in the framework within which
the paper is edited. Our interest is primarily commercial. We
are interested in the circulation and advertising performance
of the papers; but the Board of DMGT—certainly while I have
been on it, which is a fair while—have not involved themselves
at all with the editorial line that the editor-in-chief, or any
of the other editors, should take.
Q2548 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
Can I just put this to you: there are those—and I am one
of them, to be frank with you—who think that there is a
large amount of content in the Daily Mail which
says, "Nothing works; it's all rotten. Politicians are trash.
They're only in it to line their own pockets". You can turn
over page after page and "nothing works". I assume,
especially from what Lord Rothermere was saying earlier, that
if the Board felt that was too extreme and, in your terms, it
was costing you circulation or losing readers, you would then
step in? The fact that you do not implies that you are happy with
the tone that the paper generally sets, in my view.
Mr Sinclair: I think the key point here is that
the act of buying a newspaper is a voluntary one every day, and
between 2.1 and 2.3 million people every day volunteer to buy
the Daily Mail. They do not have to—there are ten
other competing papers out there every day. Of course, some stories
are carried which test the establishment on what it is doing because
I think that is what reporters think it is there for. I would
actually contest on a page count how many pages of the Daily
Mail are actually quite as negative as you suggest. I think
even an editor as strong as Mr Dacre if he was too negative, too
often, would rapidly alienate the readership, and that is clearly
not the case.
Q2549 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
What proportion of your readers does your research tell you usually
vote Labour?
Mr Sinclair: Something close to half, I believe.
Q2550 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
As much as that?
Mr Sinclair: If you look at the size of the
readership of the Daily Mail, which is 5.6 million, it
is a pretty even slice through the population as a whole. Roughly
half the population—there are swings—votes Labour
so why would the Mail be different? I think if you asked
the same question of The Sun—how many of their
readers vote Labour—you might get a similar answer.
Q2551 Lord Corbett of Castle Vale:
You make my point, Mr Sinclair. In fact the last time I looked
at these figures the political profile we had reached was very
similar to that of the Daily Mirror strangely, in a sense.
People are buying for different reasons. I think, Lord Rothermere,
when my colleague put the point about what kind of extreme situation
would provoke the Board to intervene, and Lord Maxton said, half
joking, I suppose, what if Mr Dacre decided to back the Labour
Party at the next election, is that the kind of thing which would
cause the Board a little bit of concern?
Mr Sinclair: In my experience, no. Our papers
in Associated have sometimes supported the Labour Party. I think
the Standard has been a consistent supporter of the Labour
Party on London issues.
Lord King of Bridgwater: It is very easy
sitting on this side of the table being obsessed with politics,
but actually the extreme event that would cause you the greatest
concern would be a significant drop in circulation, is that not
right? Mr Sinclair, you included the word "commercial"
as the real consideration in this, and you have the evidence behind
you that actually the Standard and the Mail came
out for different parties at the last Election which is an interesting
illustration of an absence of dictatorial top-down direction?
Lord Maxton: Yet the Standard
ran a very hard campaign, and I will not say any more than that.
Q2552 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
Lord Rothermere, we have been discussing whether the Board would
step in over political matters, such as the legalisation of cannabis
and going into the euro, but what about what I call "cultural
matters"? You have a young family, for instance, recently
there has been some controversy over the way the Mail covered
Princess Beatrice in her bikini, particularly against the backdrop
of concerns about anorexia and so on. Are there instances of those
kinds of matters where you might possibly suggest that a different
tone should be pursued?
Lord Rothermere: Currently the laws on privacy
have been greatly strengthened by the Human Rights Act. The ability
for plaintiffs to bring cases against newspapers has been incredibly
strengthened by the no-win no-fee and the ability to take insurance
out on their cases, to the point where a lot of regional newspapers
are sometimes being pressured by various individuals to not carry
legitimate stories, because they do not have the budgets to be
able to fight these kinds of legal battles. The PCC is a strong
organisation and I think will make a ruling on this particular
issue. I do not think our editors need to burden themselves with
yet another bar. As I say, that is really up to our editors to
make a decision on. I think that they are sophisticated and experienced
enough to make that decision for themselves.
Q2553 Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury:
I suppose I was not so much talking about invasion of privacy
as an attitude, a stance on an issue that is not necessarily overtly
political, and whether that would be something the Board might
try and steer an editor away from?
Lord Rothermere: We feel that our editors are
sufficiently grown-up enough to be able to deal with those issues
on their own.
Q2554 Chairman:
You think the Press Complaints Commission is a powerful body?
That is not the evidence that everyone has been giving to this
Committee.
Lord Rothermere: I cannot speak for everybody
else, I am sorry.
Q2555 Chairman:
You regard it as such? The Mail regard the PCC as being
important and powerful, in the sense that whatever they say you
will abide by?
Lord Rothermere: Yes, exactly.
Q2556 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Can I come at this issue of content from a slightly different
angle to do with the way that budgets are set and, therefore,
how journalism is funded and what choices are made about it. Perhaps
Mr Beatty could tell us, first of all, who sets the journalistic
budget for your newspapers?
Mr Beatty: The budgets are actually set by the
editors in conjunction with their divisional managing directors.
Before we come into a budget process we obviously clearly know
our strategy, we clearly know what the economic outlook is and
we determine what we have to do to be able to deliver the expectation
of our Board and shareholders; but the editors actually set the
budgets. It is our responsibility to make sure the editors are
properly resourced to be able to deliver what they feel they need
to deliver.
Q2557 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
In terms of what they feel they need to be able to deliver, clearly
some kinds of journalism are a lot more expensive than others.
Foreign coverage, for example, is obviously more expensive; certain
kinds of specialisms are more expensive. Does the Board take no
view in particular about how the weight of journalism should be
placed within any given newspaper, let us say particularly the
Daily Mail but not exclusively, as between what one might
call "serious journalism", which requires specialism
and considerable research, and other kinds of journalism which
perhaps are not quite so pricey to produce; and, in particular,
the balance between, say, news content and what I think is generally
called "lifestyle content", in which I think the Daily
Mail has specialised in quite a good deal?
Mr Beatty: The answer to that is answer is emphatically
no. That is left to the editors.
Q2558 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
The editors are not influenced in any way by the Board as to the
relative cost of one kind of journalism as against another, at
any stage in the budget-setting process?
Mr Beatty: No.
Q2559 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
If the Daily Mail's editor were to come towards you as
the Board with a budget that proposed considerable additional
investment, let us say, in foreign news coverage, what kind of
dialogue would then go on between the Board and that editor?
Mr Beatty: It has never happened in my experience
that the editor would approach either myself or the Board on a
specific requirement for a type of journalism. The editors obviously
will come to the planning process with a proposed budget. For
example, if they believe that we should be investing in extra
pagination and, therefore, require more journalism, that would
be looked at in the round.
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