What is news?
News value theory: Galtung and Ruge 1965 argue that a high value is put on negative news
Cultivation theory: George Gerbner 1979 investigated tv programmes; argues that the drip feeding of negative messages influences a viewer and makes them adopt a negative view “Mean World Syndrome”
Confirmation bias: people tend to notice things that reinforce what they already believe
Who owns newspapers?
Murdoch, media mogul
In a democracy it is recognised that those who represent
the people must be held to account. The 18th
century Parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, called
newspapers the ‘Fourth Estate’ (after the Courts, Religion and Parliament) and
they had a crucial role in ensuring that those in power didn’t abuse it. It is
also recognised that the owners of news media may also gain too much influence so:
American
and European policymakers and legislators have traditionally attempted to
ensure that a range of news providers coexists to provide a diverse variety of
news. (Harrison 2006: 81)
Owning just NOTW and The Sun newspapers, which operated in
the same markets on different days, did not create any problems regarding the
‘diverse variety of news’. However when Murdoch decided to buy Times
Newspapers, in 1981, he was looking to increase his market share to such an
extent that it was reducing the ‘range of news providers’. As such it should have been referred to the
monopolies and mergers commission. However, as The Times was not
profitable (and has continued to be unprofitable ever since) it escaped a
referral. The case of The Sunday Times was different, because it was
making money; it was left to Secretary of State for Trade, John Biffen, to make
the decision:
A
newspaper merger unprecedented in newspaper history went through in three days.
In such a rapid process it is perhaps understandable that he overlooked, or his
officials allowed him to overlook, £4.6 million of revenue and £700,000 of Sunday
Times profit, so that… he failed to apply the provisions of the Fair
Trading Act of 1973. (Evans 1984: 185)
Evans
was at the time the editor of The Sunday Times and was hostile to the
takeover as he believed that Murdoch had too much influence on newspapers’
editorial agendas (he was being ironic when he says that it is ‘understandable’
that The Sunday Times’ profit was ‘overlooked’). There’s little doubt that
Murdoch’s takeover was ‘waved through’ as a political favour from the then
Prime Minister:
Margaret
Thatcher had already decided that whatever the problems involved, Murdoch must
have the papers, on the grounds of his Conservative instincts and because of
what she saw as the leftward drift of the media. (McKie 2011)
Thatcher’s
reward for her favour (as well as a book deal with Harper-Collins, also owned
by Murdoch, when she retired) was continuing support for her policies in the
Murdoch press. This support can be shown in a number of ways, for example:
newspapers
owned by a corporation will support government directly, mute criticism of it
or withhold from the public information that could damage or embarrass it.
(Watson 1998: 220)
So
the Thatcher government
could rely on Murdoch’s newspapers to put a positive spin on its policies and
downplay any news that might have embarrassed it. The suggestion is that the proprietor tells
the editor what to print and what to exclude.
Murdoch Revolutionizes Fleet Street
London’s Fleet Street has long been synonymous
with the national press because many newspapers were based in its locality. In
1986 Murdoch moved the printing of his newspapers, virtually
overnight, from the centre of London to Wapping, in the East End. In doing so he
circumvented the power of the print unions who had resisted technological
change
The new
computer-based print technology allowed journalists to ‘direct input’ their
copy, making many printing jobs unnecessary and dramatically reducing costs.
The new technology allowed greater opportunities to update editions with late
stories but, more significantly, also offered managements much greater control
over the production process. (Franklin 1997: 101)
However,
there were also disadvantages to the new technology that may have indirectly led to the
newsroom culture of News Of The World where illegal acts were deemed OK in
pursuit of the story. New technology also isolates journalists by removing them
from the newsroom, encourages and facilitates freelance work, nurtures
multi-skilling practices and empowers managers against journalists and other
production workers.
Murdoch and Ethics
The Press has
an important function, as the fourth estate, in holding politicians, in
particular, to account. Businesses, too, can find their conduct investigated,
such as the famous Sunday Times investigation, in the 1970s, into
Thalidomide, a tranquilliser drug that was found to cause birth defects.
However, not all investigative journalism is in the public interest.
Under
Murdoch’s influence the tabloid press had increasingly focused
upon soft news, entertainment based stories. A number of these stories involved
intruding upon the subject’s privacy. For example, actor David Scarboro committed suicide after NOTW
published photographs of him at a psychiatric unit. There could be no public interest in
publishing those photographs, which probably contributed to Scarboro deciding
to end his life.
Such
intrusions into an individual’s private life can also be used for the purposes
of intimidation. Nick Davies, The Guardian’s lead investigative
journalist on the phone hacking scandal, stated in an interview on Democracy
Now that Chris Bryant, a Labour MP, had a photograph of him posing in his
underwear from the gay dating website, Gaydar, published in NOTW.
Davies
suggested that this was Rebekah Brook’s, the then editor of the paper, revenge
for asking her, in Parliament, if she’d ever paid the police for information
(surprisingly she admitted to it despite it being a criminal act). Since the
hacking scandal has broken, there have been numerous stories of News
International’s (the British arm of News Corporation) bullying tactics (for
example, Porter 2011). Porter likens the tactics to those of the Mafia, a
comparison heightened by Rupert Murdoch’s desire to have his family maintain
control of News Corporation.
The lack
of ethical behaviour within News Corporation was also in evidence in 1998 when
Harper Collins decided against publishing the last British Governor of Hong
Kong’s book that was critical of China (see bbcnews.co.uk). The
company had gained a controlling interest in Star TV in 1993 and had ambitions
to break into the Chinese market. Murdoch didn’t want to risk upsetting the Chinese
government by
publishing Patten’s book.
There had
been a similar conflict of interest caused by The Sunday Times’
investigation into the possible bribery of the Malaysian Prime Minister and a
British aid donation of £234m to build a dam over the Pergau River. The aid,
according to the newspaper, was tied to an arms deal for Britain. Murdoch
didn’t like the story as it too might have affected the prospects of Star TV; The
Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, was moved to another part of the company.
Listen to
Nick Davies of The Guardian interviewed
about his role in exposing how Millie Dowler’s phone had been hacked by NOTW
journalists.
News of the World’s Phone Hacking
After
the revelations that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked in 2002, it became
public knowledge that phone hacking at NOTW had been going on for many years
before 2006,
when its royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and the private detective he’d used,
Glenn Mulcaire, were arrested and sent to jail for hacking phones belonging to
the royal family. Andy Coulson, the editor, had resigned in 2007, though he
said that he was unaware of the hacking and News Corporation stood by the story
that it was the work of a rogue reporter for many years. After his resignation
Coulson became the media advisor to David Cameron, the Conservative leader of
the opposition. This was a controversial appointment, given Coulson’s
newspaper’s involvement in illegal activities; however, Cameron declared that
Coulson ‘deserved a second chance’.
In 2009,
Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, claimed in a letter
to Parliament that The Guardian was misleading the British people in its
insistence that there was a culture of hacking at NOTW. However, at the urging
of The Guardian the Metropolitan Police ‘reopened’ the inquiry. This
‘reopening’ was extremely brief and consisted of John Yates, then the Assistant
Commissioner for the Met, spending eight hours reviewing thousands of emails.
He declared he could find no reason to start another investigation. However, in
September 2010 the NOTW’s defence started to unravel when an
ex-journalist, Sean Hoare, gave an interview to the New York Times
stating that hacking was endemic. When the Met questioned Hoare they did so as a ‘suspect’ rather
than a ‘witness’, as would have been normal, and he unsurprisingly declined to
discuss the matter with them. Hoare was found dead at his home in July 2011,
though there were no suspicious circumstances. He had been a NOTW’s showbiz
correspondent and the lifestyle this entailed lead to his early death:
“I
was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars - get drunk with them, take
pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive. You are
going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things no sane man
would do. You’re a machine.” (Davies, 2011)
From this
point, aided by a number of ‘celebrities’ taking NOTW to court over the
hacking which brought more evidence into the public domain, The
Guardian’s story gained momentum:
Lawyers have
secured explosive new evidence linking one of the News of the World’s most
senior editorial executives to the hacking of voicemail messages from the phones of Sienna
Miller, Jude Law and their friends and employees. (Davies 2010)
The public
availability of the new evidence prompted News International, in the form of
Will Lewis, to investigate further and, eventually, the police launched a second
investigation, called ‘Weeting’. As a result a NOTW executive was arrested late in 2010, to be
followed by others the following April; in January Andy Coulson had resigned
from government saying that the phone hacking coverage was distracting him from
his job. It was revealed that Max Mosley, who was libelled by NOTW (he won
£60,000 in damages), underwrote many people’s legal costs when taking News
Group (the publishers part of News International) to court (Mendick, 2011).
There
is evidence that newspapers are happy to libel if the story will generate sales
sufficient to, at least, covering the cost if the publisher loses its case in
court
(normally only the rich can afford to sue for libel). For example, Express
Newspapers, which withdrew from the PCC in 2011, ‘has paid most in libel
damages in recent times then any other newspaper group’ (Greenslade, 2011). Davies
calculates that the cost for The Express for libelling the McCanns
(Parents of missing Madeleine) is the equivalent of just £5000 per story (2014)
However, the
cost of hacking to News Corporation has probable outweighed any circulation
gains. In May 2014 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reported ‘The
scandal has already cost News Corp $535m, including financial settlements with
718 phone-hacking victims.’ (Hutchinson, 2014)
The
Guardian’s reporting on hacking climax on 4 July with the Milly Dowler
revelation: Coulson and Brooks were arrested in July. As an attempted damage
limitation exercise, the NOTW was closed. Advertisers had abandoned the newspaper as it has become a toxic
brand. There then followed the resignations of Brooks and Les Hinton, who’d
been COE of News International during the time of the phone hacking. It’s highly
likely that had James not been Rupert’s son, he too would have been forced to
resign. Ironically it transpired that although NOTW had hacked Milly’s phone
they had not been responsible for deleting the messages. This wasn’t a case of
mendacious reporting by The Guardian but confusion about how the
messages were deleted. There have been various theories including they were
automatically deleted after several days; however, the police stated that, due
to missing technical data, it is impossible to say how they disappeared (Leigh
2012).
In
response to the outrage that greeted The Guardian’s revelation, Prime
Minister David Cameron set up an inquiry to investigate ‘the culture, practise
and ethics of the press’. He stated he would implement the reports recommendations
unless they were “heavy-handed” or “bonkers” (Mason 2012). However, as we shall
see, despite the fact the proposals were eminently sensible Cameron reneged on
this promise.
In February
2012 The Sun on Sunday launched to fill the gap, for News Group, left by
NOTW; although it hasn’t been as successful as its predecessor. The NOTW’s
circulation when it closed was 2.7m; the October circulation of The Sun on
Sunday was 1.6m (Source: ABC). It wasn’t until the Brooks-Coulson court
case, in 2013, that it was confirmed that the plan to launch the paper was
hatched before NOTW’s closure; this was denied at the time (Jukes, 2014:
location 567).
Before we
look at the Leveson Inquiry it is necessary to consider the role of the
Metropolitan Police in the investigation, as they could be considered to not to
have done their job very well. When presented with the failings of their
initial investigation the two top policemen, Sir Paul Stephenson and John
Yates, in the Met didn’t resign immediately. However, it then came to light
that an ex-NOTW deputy editor, Neil Wallis, had been hired by the police force
as a PR-adviser whilst it was investigating the phone hacking. Sir Paul
Stephenson was given £12000 free hospitality at Champneys health spa where
Wallis was a director. Andy Hayman was in charge of the initial hacking
investigation; the one that concluded that it was the work of a rogue
journalist. After he retired he became a columnist for The Times. To the
outsider it seems ‘odd’ that he did.
The
press’s role as the Fourth Estate has been brought into focus by the ‘hacking’
saga: on the one hand, newspapers were behaving illegally and had too close a
relationship with the police; on the other, The Guardian did its ‘duty’
and revealed the illegal behaviour despite the fact that police were
obstructing justice. Most newspapers operate as a business and so need to be
profitable - though Murdoch has been happy to trade losses for political
influence in his ownership of The Times, The Guardian is run by a
charity:
The
sole shareholder in Guardian Media Group, the [Scott] Trust was created in 1936
to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian.
(The Scott Trust Jan 2015)
Because
it doesn’t need to make a profit, or peddle influence, The Guardian is
able to ensure it fulfils its role as a member of the Fourth Estate.
PC, PCC, Millie Dowler scandal, Leveson Enquiry
In
the time of the PC and PCC, Britain’s press was self-regulated; this changed
after Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into the phone hacking.
From 1953 the
body entrusted with regulating the industry was the Press Council, which was
widely regarded as ineffective. In 1990 this came under Parliamentary scrutiny
with the Calcutt Committee’s investigation into privacy. This review followed
some high profile cases of newspapers, particularly the tabloids, invading the
privacy of individuals (particularly Royal personages and politicians). For
example, The Sun stated, in January 1987, that singer Elton John had sex
with underage rentboys. John sued for libel and was awarded damages of £1m. However,
libel laws on their own are not effective in righting wrongs published in newspapers
as it is very expensive to sue and so is a route only available to the rich.
As a result
of Calcutt’s report the press was installed in what the Heritage Secretary
(which had responsibility for the media) of the time, David Mellor, called the
“last chance saloon”; in other words, this was a final warning to get their
self-regulatory act together or face legislation on privacy. A few years later
Mellor himself was caught in a ‘kiss and tell’ story; the newspaper industry’s
revenge?
The
Press Council was replaced by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) [PCC Code Aug
2007.pdf],
which was dominated by representatives of newspaper publishers:
one of its
first acts was to criticise the Daily Star for headlining its front page
story on a select committee proposal to admit homosexuals into the army with “Poofters
on parade?. (Keeble 1994: 29)
However,
Calcutt himself wasn’t impressed and in early 1993 he demanded statutory
tribunals, a code of conduct and criminal offences to curb tabloid newspaper
excesses. He wasn’t listened too. The argument against legal intervention
centres on the belief that a press must be free of the government interference
that legislation would necessarily bring. The issue of press intrusion was
highlighted again in 1997 after Princess Diana died in a car crash when being
harassed by chasing paparazzi.
Brian
Cathcart, in his account of the phone hacking saga, pointed out that the PCC
seemed to be reluctant to use its powers:
as the years
went by the PCC supplied fewer and fewer adjudications- the number fell from
142 in 1989 to just forty-four in 2010, even though the number of complaints
had tripled. (2012: location 760)
The
PCC then found itself in the position of its predecessor, The Press Council,
just before it was replaced, because of the regulator’s inability to
effectively deal with the behaviour of NOTW. In 2007 the PCC agreed with the
newspaper’s version of events that the hacking had been solely the work of a
rogue reporter. Later, after an investigation into suggestions that the PCC had
been lied to by NOTW, the chairperson Baroness Buscombe concluded:
“Having
reviewed all the information available, we concluded that we were not
materially misled.” (Conlon 2011)
The day after
the Millie Dowler scandal had broken, however, Buscombe had to concede that
they were lied to and she later resigned. As Cathcart puts it:
Although it
is consistently presented to parliament and the public as a regulator it was no
such thing. It was a moderately successful complaints agency. (2012: location
723)
We shall
consider whether we are seeing the end of the self-regulation of the press in
Britain in section 17.
When News
International bid to buy the 61% of BSkyB it didn’t own, Ofcom, the regulator
for broadcasters and telecommunications, was asked to decide whether it should
be referred to the competition authorities to ensure one provider didn’t
dominate the television industry. Ed Richards, in an interview given just
before he retired from running Ofcom at the end of 2014, stated he was:
“surprised”
by the informality, closeness and frequency of contact between executives and
ministers during the failed bid by Mr Murdoch’s News Corp for BSkyB in 2011.
(Burrell 2014)
The degree of
contact between News Corporation and the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was
revealed during the Leveson Inquiry. Hunt, who had ultimate responsibility for
deciding whether the bid should be allowed, and his officials were found to
have exchanged 799 texts with Fred Michel, News Corporation’s biggest lobbyist.
Whereas groups opposing the bid had nowhere near the same amount of access to
the minister.
Richards also
noted that Ofcom had to spend millions of public money in court countering
BSkyB’s challengers to the regulator’s ruling. This financial muscle may have
also proved decisive in the court case against Rebekah Brooks - see section 16.
The Leveson Inquiry
The
first part of the Inquiry, which was split into four modules, consisted of 72
days of hearings from 184 witnesses including victims of malicious reporting
(both well-known and not), politicians (including the leaders of the three main
political parties) and newspaper editors and reporters. Rupert
Murdoch, and his son James, once again had to defend their newspapers’ actions;
both Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson testified. The second part of the
Inquiry was into the phone hacking.
Leveson
opened the Inquiry by stating:
“The press provides an essential check on all aspects of
public life. That is why any failure within the media affects all of us. At the
heart of this Inquiry, therefore, may be one simple question: who guards the
guardians?”
(The National Archives: The Leveson
Inquiry)
Leveson
therefore made clear the importance of the press’s role as the Fourth Estate
but also the need to regulate newspapers given the failure of the PCC and the
regulatory bodies that went before it. The hearings began in November 2011 and the 2000 page report
published a year later, available here.
The BBC’s
summary of Leveson Inquiry recommendations (he made 38 in total) was as
follows:
- New self-regulation body
recommended
- Independent of serving
editors, government and business
- No widespread corruption of
police by the press found
- Politicians and press have
been too close
- Press behaviour, at times,
has been ‘outrageous’
BBC News - Leveson Report: at a glance
The
key recommendation was a new self-regulatory body that would be under-pinned by
legislation to ensure that it was effective. This legislation would also ensure
the freedom of the press from governmental pressure. The Prime Minister
rejected government legislation (which pro-Leveson campaigners saw as giving in
to press pressure) though the Labour and Liberal-Democrats agreed with that it was
necessary. In place of legislation, in March 2013, the main political parties,
and Hacked Off representatives, agreed upon a ‘Royal Charter on Self-Regulation
of the Press’ – see Box: Royal Charter. The absence of newspaper groups from
these discussions suggested that the government felt publishers would not
negotiate on their anti-Leveson stance; the publishers saw it as a ‘stich-up’
in favour of Hacked Off.
The New System of Press
Self-Regulation in the UK
In many ways
the Royal Charter is typical of how Britain deals with constitutional issues;
that is it is based on tradition rather than any written rules. Hugh Tomlinson,
a QC at the prestigious Matrix Chambers, explains:
Royal
Charters are granted by the Privy Council. This is a body set up under the
“Royal Prerogative?. It is not a deliberative body. Its meetings are short and
formal – lasting only for a few minutes with everyone remaining standing. Its
members are the Queen and several hundred distinguished politicians, judges and
others - although only three or four members (who are current government
ministers) attend meetings, along with the Queen or her representative. By
convention, the “Queen in Council? always follows the advice of her ministers.
In other words, the Privy Council is, in substance (although not in form) a
sub-committee of the Cabinet. It executes the orders of Government ministers.
It is unclear
whether and to what extent the Privy Council (that is, Government ministers) is
entitled to interfere with the day-to-day operation of a chartered corporation
or with the terms of its Charter. There are no clear legal rules governing the
position. (2014:17)
The Royal
Charter meant that legislation would not be required (hence keeping the
government’s role at ‘arm’s length’) so while the press could still regulate
themselves they would need to seek approval from the Chartered Recognition
Panel. The role of the Panel would be to ensure that the regulator fulfilled
Leveson’s recommendations. The Panel’s independence of government would be
assured by needing a two-thirds majority (something that is usually difficult
to achieve) in Parliament for any amendments to the way it operated. Although
participation in self-regulation would be voluntary Leveson suggested
incentives for the press, including a cheap and effective arbitration service
for complainants that would avoid the high cost of court cases. Any publisher
that didn’t join would be liable for court costs even, in some circumstances,
if the claimant loses the case.
Leveson
was criticised for devoting only a few pages of his report to regulating the
Internet (see
here). Blogs,
however, were meant to be included in his proposals though it was later made
clear that small operations, with turnovers of less than £2m or employed fewer
than 10 staff, would be exempt (Burrell, 2013). We will consider the current
state of press regulation in section 18.
Regulation
The response
of most of the newspaper industry was to refuse to cooperate with the
cross-party proposals for a regulator under-pinned by a Royal Charter. Instead
they created its own regulator, Ipso (Independent Press Standards Organisation)
that has not been validated by the Chartered Recognition Panel. Three newspaper
groups, publishers of The Financial Times, The Guardian and The
Independent, are not part of Ipso. This new self-regulator took over from
the PCC in September 2014 and adjudicated on any complaints that were being
dealt with by the PCC at the time. The Editor’s Code for Ipso is exactly the
same as it was for the PCC and, as Roy Greenslade points out, there are many
other similarities:
Turning to
the editors’ code committee, the sense of déjà vu is greater still. In the days
of the PCC, the committee’s chairman was the Mail group’s editor-in-chief, Paul
Dacre. And, lo and behold, Dacre has been reappointed to the same role he has
held for six years. Same bell, same whistle. And the committee’s membership is
remarkably similar to the one that has existed for years. It is, in fact,
exactly the same. (2014)
There are
some changes from the PCC: Ipso can initiate investigations rather than require
a complaint from someone directly involved in the news story and fines can be
levied. In December 2014 Ipso ordered the Aberdeen Press & Journal
to publish a correction more prominently (Greenslade, 2014a).
The Media
Standard Trust’s report into Ipso concluded that Ipso only satisfied 12 of
Leveson’s 38 recommendations (for six of them it was unclear on the information
available):
However, of
the 20 recommendations that IPSO fails, many are key elements of the Leveson
system, including independence from industry, access to justice, and
complaints.
(2013, available
here)
So whilst
Ipso is an improvement on PCC it is nothing like the self-regulatory body that
Leveson was advocating. To complicate the issue another regulator started
operating in January 2015 that was committed to Leveson’s proposals: IMPRESS:
The Independent Monitor for the Press (see impressproject.org). It is
unclear whether any of the three newspapers not involved with Ipso will join
it.
Although,
according to Hacked Off’s website, Brian Cathcart is no longer one of the ‘key
people’ in the organisation he is well placed to comment upon the current
situation:
Although the Leveson Inquiry recommended changes to ensure that in future press
self-regulation was independent and effective without impinging on the freedom
of expression of journalists, newspaper editors and proprietors have conceded
only cosmetic changes. Their discredited Press Complaints Commission was
re-launched under a new name, IPSO, but it satisfies only a few of the Leveson
criteria. This position, however, is not sustainable, first because Leveson
established mechanisms which will disadvantage news publishers rejecting fair
self-regulation, and second because the various scandals and the Leveson
process have caused a lasting shift in public attitudes. Newspapers have lost
trust, while readers as customers feel entitled to fair treatment, and in the
age of the internet newspapers no longer have the power they once had to bury
bad news about themselves. The proprietors drag their heels, but their days of
unaccountability are ending. (email to author, 2015)
Press Regulation (2019): Does IPSO regulate all newspapers
and magazines in the UK?
IPSO regulates most UK
newspapers and magazines (but currently not the Guardian, Independent or
Financial Times)
Press Regulation: What you need to know
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36034956
Since the
Leveson Inquiry was set up in 2011 - days after the News of the World newspaper
closed amid the phone-hacking scandal - the issue of how to regulate the press
industry has been fiercely debated.
As culture
secretary, John Whittingdale's job is to regulate newspapers and he is
currently overseeing a whole new regulatory framework under consideration in
the wake of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards.
What's the background to press regulation reform?
Milly
Dowler, 13, was murdered in 2002. Her phone was later hacked by a private
detective working for the News of the World
In 2011, it
emerged that thousands of people, from celebrities to families of murder
victims, had been victims of phone hacking by the now-defunct News of the World.
In response,
Prime Minister David Cameron set up a public, judge-led investigation - the
Leveson Inquiry - to examine the culture, behaviour and ethics of the press.
After hearing
from numerous
high-profile witnesses, Lord Leveson recommended newspapers should continue to be
self-regulated - as they had been by the Press Complaints Commission - but that
there should be a new
press standards body created by the industry, backed by legislation, and with a new
code of conduct.
The inquiry
specifically focussed on the press, not into the media more generally.
Broadcasters are regulated by Ofcom, which is backed by law.
What happened after the Leveson Inquiry?
It would have
the power to impose million-pound fines on UK publishers and demand prominent
corrections and apologies from UK news publishers, they said. Newspapers who
refused to join the new regulatory regime would be liable - potentially - for
hefty damages if a claim was upheld against them.
The press
kicked back, saying the final draft of the Royal Charter plan was neither
"voluntary or independent", and formed its own regulator, the
Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), with wider powers than
previous bodies.
Why a Royal Charter?
David Cameron
- uncomfortable with the idea of state interference in the press - rejected the
idea of legislation to underpin the new system of regulation.
The
compromise was the Royal Charter - an unlikely way to regulate the press. It is
often described as a medieval form of documentation, used to set up
universities.
The Royal
Charter itself mainly sets out the workings of the body that is supposed to
guarantee the self-regulator does its job properly.
But despite
what one paper called its "flummery" the government spotted
advantages to a Royal Charter. While an act of parliament can be amended with a
simple majority, it was possible to insert a clause in the Royal Charter
requiring any changes to be approved by a two-thirds majority
What are the arguments over press regulation?
Campaigners tentatively welcomed the Royal Charter plan, saying it
would protect the public against the worst abuses of the press.
However, the newspaper industry raised concerns that it
would give politicians too much power. The Newspaper Society said it was
tantamount to "state-sponsored regulation".
What's the situation now?
Image
copyright Getty Images Image caption Labour have called for Culture Secretary
John Whittingdale to "recuse" himself from decisions relating to
press regulation
The Royal
Charter was approved by the Queen in October 2013. However, publishers have
largely chosen not to sign up to the voluntary system, sticking instead with
their own regulator Ipso.
A key part of
the Royal Charter plan was a law requiring publishers to pay both sides' costs
in a privacy or libel case, even if they won - unless they signed up to the
official press regulator.
Mr
Whittingdale says it is "under consideration" and has told newspaper
editors he questions whether this legal change will be "positive" for
the newspaper industry.
Labour's
Maria Eagle says Mr Whittingdale must "clarify exactly why he no longer
believes" section 40 of the act should come into force.
Labour has
now also called for Mr Whittingdale to withdraw from press
regulation decisions after it emerged four newspapers were aware of his past
relationship with a sex worker, but did not run the story.
