By Jeremy Sare, England.
In the few days since Lord Justice Leveson delivered his 2,000 page verdict on the “culture, practice and ethics of the press”, there has been a visceral rejection by the newspapers against any law to underpin the media’s new self-regulatory body.
The law would in essence be no different from any organisation’s legal anchor such as exists for lawyers, police even MPs not to mention BBC, ITV and Sky News. It would be the guarantor that the self-regulated body would function as intended and not how press barons would chose to corrupt it; huge fines would be paid and prominent apologies printed when ‘mistakes’ were, inevitably, made.
Yet this modest proposal has been presented as a full scale assault on press freedom (“this pernicious law” ” a dark moment”). Otherwise intelligent people have suggested it amounts to “state control” and would turn Britain into the equivalent of Zimbabwe or Cuba. As Lord Leveson said himself, not one witness (of 337 who gave evidence) argued for any degree of political interference in the press.
The public, when asked, are massively in favour of the law, which also, incidentally, would enshrine in statute, for the first time, the Government’s duty to protect the freedom of the press. It would be Britain’s very own First Amendment, as it were.
But in the meantime most newspapers seek to entirely debase the issue and conjure terrible injustices just over the political horizon where future tyrannical Governments would seek to strengthen any existing law even further. “There be dragons”, they warn sternly.
All we are witnessing is the historical propaganda from the familiar outlets of the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph churning out deeply misleading stories which do not convince the public but only satisfy those attending their own editorial meetings. As Lord Leveson said during his address, the press is uniquely powerful in holding power to account – except its own.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. The common man had hoped the Inquiry would lead us to the sunlit uplands away from the grimy tabloid gutter. But to be led, we would first need a leader. And instead we have Prime Minister David Cameron who clearly had decided long ago he would reject any recommendation for a law to institute the regulatory body. And with that he sided with the forces of conservatism and inertia.
Cameron may be able to draw out his bluff for a while before Parliament even if the Deputy PM is clearly in a different place philosophically. Supported by his barely able Culture Secretary ‘Mumsy’ Maria Miller, Dave can face down all the Labour members and many of his own MPs but he has not had the courage to address the victims of hacking and intimidation who, to a man, want to see a legal basis to self-regulation. The word they grasp at is “betrayal” and show Cameron to instinctively place political expediency before principle and ordinary people’s access to justice.
The law would not be some alien imposition on Britain’s traditions. In fact, for the doubters and naysayers, we can see how it works already. The Republic of Ireland has been working under this exact system since 2009, and nearly all of British papers have quietly signed up to it. Yet we are expected to believe the sky will fall in, if the same law is enacted in Britain.
This is not an issue which appears to have a strong parallel in the US, for which you should be thankful. Whatever the failings of the US media, and there are many, at least you do not have national newspapers owned by foreign residents who seek to propagate their personal agendas often against the national interest.
Senior writer for the Observer, Will Hutton said, “Freedom is not only menaced by the state; it is also menaced by private media barons and their servants…..an avalanche of highly spun journalism to serve partisan interests has become habitual. The public realm has become degraded. The trade and craft of journalism has been abused…”
Cameron’s strategy is obviously the slow strangulation of the report but the issues will not die. This depressing realisation was exemplified perfectly the day before the report was published when the X-Factor judge, Louis Walsh, received $600k in compensation from the Sun for inventing a story about him sexually assaulting another man. This inquiry was meant to signal a cultural change which would enhance our national life, restore journalistic integrity and reputation and it is intolerable to see the opportunity to be squandered by the Conservatives for the sake of cheap politics.
As Lord Justice Leveson said, in Britain there had been seven similar enquiries into the power of the press in the last 70 years, “no-one can think it can be sensible to contemplate an eighth.”
