In the past week the long awaited report from Lord Leveson has been released to explain his findings and solutions to the British press. Due to a minority of misbehaved British journos the Prime Minister, David Cameron, put together an inquiry into the press standards to see what could be done to prevent any further wrong doings.
The report that came out is long and winding as expected so I am just going to talk about a couple of the main points.
What Lord Leveson proposed was an independent regulator of the press that was underpinned by statute but had no involvement from any journalists or politicians.
To me this line doesn’t actually make sense. No politicians but it’s underpinned by statute laws. Laws and politicians go hand in hand. They may not be controlling the regulator as yet but if anything goes wrong with it they will be the first in to take control. And they will be the ones that have the power to change the law given the right opportunity.
Journalists cannot be accountable to the government. It is journalists the keep government to account it is one of the key roles of the press.
This in itself is worrying and it has worried many newspapers and people in the media industry.
I do believe however a new independent regulator has to come in to place. The previous regulator was the Press Complaints Commission but it pretty much waited for complaints to be made which in affect meant that it was already too late. What this new regulator should be able to do is investigate organisations and their practises before a complaint is made. They should have the power to check up on how the journalistic practises are working in each establishment.
And that is what Lord Leveson is proposing to happen. But, with an underpinning of statute law.
The other problem is that the question remains who would appoint the panel for the new regulator. If it doesn’t have journalistic or political influence, who will be the right person to appoint them. And if they have no motive within the industry who says they will hold the right determination to investigate the industry.
The other important point made was the creation of a whistle blowing hotline for journalists to call if they are feeling under pressure from their editor or colleagues or if they believe there is malpractice within the workplace. The idea of this sounds good to help crack down on issues such as phone hacking from the source itself. But the worrying side is of course what could be the misuse of the hotline as an escape route. It could lead to false claims if someone just has a grudge against a fellow employee. The newsroom sure is a fight-to-the-finish kind of place.
The important thing to remember is the press is free. They have a freedom to write and report without government involvement or pressure. So to have an underpinning of statute would risk possibilities of future censorship. Unlike in the USA, we don’t have the First Amendment to protect our freedom of speech which makes it all the more important to keep government as far away as possible.
The problem now remains as to what the solution to the Leveson report will be. David Cameron has said he does not like the idea of government involvement but he was the one who commissioned this report and will need to find a settlement between the press and the Leveson report.
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