{"id":3553,"date":"2012-11-27T20:17:09","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T19:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=3553"},"modified":"2012-11-30T17:00:57","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T16:00:57","slug":"on-leveson-and-regulation-from-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2012\/11\/on-leveson-and-regulation-from-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"On #Leveson and regulation (from 2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Switch on to regulation<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article first appeared in the Press Gazette on 22 July 2004.<\/em><\/p>\n

Politicians frequently bemoan the poisonous relationship between themselves and members\u00a0of the press. Peter Hain asked at a meeting earlier this year what could be done to rebuild\u00a0relationships between journalists and the government. There is an answer, and it’s one that\u00a0will stick in the throat of every print journalist. It’s regulation.<\/p>\n

What is really poisoning political life? Surely it is the kind of rancid editorial dished out daily\u00a0by the likes of the Daily Mail on one side and the holier-than-thou hectoring of The Guardian\u00a0on the other.\u00a0Broadcast journalists are used to getting a caning – especially at the Beeb. Part of the BBC’s\u00a0self-imposed, post-Hutton penance is the establishment of a seminary dispensing truth,\u00a0justice and the corporation way to every journalist who takes the licence fee-funded shilling.\u00a0But broadcast journalism remains the quality benchmark and standard-setter for all\u00a0journalism in the UK.<\/p>\n

The cocktail of editorial opinion and news served up in our privately owned press is\u00a0unknown in broadcasting. Take the Murdoch empire. The unregulated Trevor Kavanagh is\u00a0an out-and-out ideologue, albeit a brilliant one. Adam Boulton on the regulated Sky News is\u00a0an insightful and authoritative analyst.<\/p>\n

The reason for the difference is, I would argue, regulation.\u00a0Regulation that insists on accuracy, fairness and, crucially, impartiality.<\/p>\n

The new programme code proposed by Ofcom devotes a whole section to impartiality and\u00a0the code in its entirety is 35 pages. The Editors’ code of practice, that underpins the work of\u00a0the Press Complaints Commission, is not much longer than this article.<\/p>\n

Impartiality doesn’t merit a mention and the PCC administers the kind of knock-kneed\u00a0discipline that tabloid leader-writers routinely blame for the decline of the family and the\u00a0collapse in moral standards.
\nSo does regulation produce cringeing journalism? Take Boulton again. He’s hardly neutered\u00a0by the obligations of fairness and impartiality. And Ofcom’s proposed rules for the\u00a0independent sector are light indeed when you consider the BBC’s policy. Its rules on\u00a0impartiality and accuracy only begin at page 35 of its producer guidelines, and you have to\u00a0get to page 51 before you move on to the chapter on fairness and straight dealing.<\/p>\n

And yet Marr, Mardell, Trevelyan et al emerge from this regulatory yoke to produce\u00a0engaging reports.
\nI hate rules – something about the journalistic psyche makes me believe they don’t apply to\u00a0me. But all my working life I’ve laboured under the precepts of impartiality and fairness and\u00a0they’ve never, yes never, got in the way of my journalism or that of my colleagues. What regulating does is set out the playing field. And that has set the tone for political\u00a0reporting in British broadcasting for more than half a century. That tone, even in its most\u00a0populist incarnation on ITV News, never stoops to patronise or rant. Instead it offers serious\u00a0engagement with serious public issues, because we – the broadcasters – are obliged to be fair.<\/p>\n

Fair does not mean anodyne.\u00a0Impartiality does not mean a 15-second soundbite for every shade of political opinion. Nor\u00a0does the tide of complaint, bile and whingeing from political parties and their press people
\nmean that broadcasters’ interpretations of impartiality are cheerfully accepted. But it does\u00a0mean we have a broadcasting culture where fairness is the assumed starting point for\u00a0journalism and a genuinely independent watchdog to guard it.<\/p>\n

The threat now is from so-called “light-touch” regulation. You hear it from the people at\u00a0Ofcom in its multi-million pound palace of dead broadcast technology.<\/p>\n

The people at Fox News know all about this. They’ve been censured for breaching the part\u00a0of the code that asks for “respect for the truth”.<\/p>\n

Fox News presenter John Gibson was ticked off by Ofcom for a diatribe against the BBC that\u00a0made, in the words of the judgement, “false statements” for which Mr Gibson was “unable\u00a0to provide any substantial evidence”.\u00a0Such is the lightness of touch, that the judgement is the punishment.<\/p>\n

No on-air apology, no suspension of licence, just a reprimand. Gibson responded by\u00a0mocking the Ofcom “bureaucrats” and our regulatory system whilst throwing in a few more\u00a0digs at the Beeb. Ofcom’s proposal of labelling Fox News “Made in the USA” will hardly set\u00a0Roger Ailes and his cohorts aquiver.<\/p>\n

The fashionable argument is diversity – that people can choose their opinions to match their\u00a0ringtones. Tina Brown writing about Fox News – again – laments that its “brilliant\u00a0belligerence and formidable TV skills are not matched enough with reportorial testosterone\u00a0and creativity elsewhere”. Try Al Jazeera, Tina.<\/p>\n

News is important not because it’s a consumer product but because it informs citizens.\u00a0As the BBC is reminding everyone in its campaign for charter renewal, there is an ideal of\u00a0public service and as broadcast journalists, thank goodness, we’re actually meant to act like\u00a0there is.<\/p>\n

If regulation is to continue to prop up the public service values that distinguish British\u00a0broadcast journalism it might be that tougher, and smarter, ways of intervening need to be\u00a0devised.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Ofcom needs to “encourager les autres”. When Kurdish TV station Med-TV breached\u00a0the programme code in the 1990s the ITC issued formal warnings, a \u00a390,000 fine, and\u00a0finally stripped it of its licence to broadcast. Maybe now Ofcom is regretting letting Fox\u00a0News off the hook for its shock-jock war coverage.<\/p>\n

When Ofcom’s predecessors commissioned the most recent study of broadcast news that\u00a0probably lurks behind some of the recent proposals, they went straight to a man who’d\u00a0spent almost his entire career in, you probably guessed, print journalism. Former Financial Times man Ian Hargreaves found that the public overwhelmingly\u00a0supported regulation on impartiality and accuracy and wanted it extended.<\/p>\n

And what did he recommend? That regulators should “loosen up” impartiality rules on some\u00a0broadcasters.\u00a0So at a time when political journalism in print has become a kind of organized lobbying, and\u00a0where television retains its credibility precisely because it is regulated, we’re seeing not an\u00a0extension of the rules that preserve that credibility to newspapers but instead a weakening\u00a0of the pillars that support the nation’s most trusted media.<\/p>\n

The government knows it needs to do something about the way t communicates. The Phyllis\u00a0report was an acknowledgement of that.\u00a0But will it possibly make the leap of imagination required to recognise that to restore the\u00a0probity of political journalism it is necessary to reinforce the boundaries for it? No one is
\nholding a breath.<\/p>\n

The irony is that many politicians are not in favour of regulation. They prefer\u00a0accommodation – with proprietors, with interest groups, with favoured individuals who can\u00a0be trusted mouthpieces.\u00a0And broadcast journalism is good at calling to account, bad at accommodation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Switch on to regulation This article first appeared in the Press Gazette on 22 July 2004. Politicians frequently bemoan the poisonous relationship between themselves and members\u00a0of the press. Peter Hain asked at a meeting earlier this year what could be done to rebuild\u00a0relationships between journalists and the government. There is an answer, and it’s one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3553"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3561,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3553\/revisions\/3561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}