Hacked Off response to the Royal Charter delay
Please note this is Hacked Off's old website, and it will soon be archived.
Responding to news of a delay in the signing of the Royal Charter for self-regulation of the press, Dr Evan Harris, Associate Director of Hacked Off said:
All three party leaders promised the victims of press abuse that they would deliver a system which would meet the standards laid down by the Leveson Report.
Only one of these Royal Charters is compliant and this is the case by a mile. Victims expect all of the parties to stand by their leaders’ promises.
Press reform has been overdue for decades. If there is another delay for a further month, that can be borne.
What is the reason for the delay?
Hacked Off understands that the Government have received legal advice that, in order to avoid being judicially reviewed, before the cross-party Leveson charter can be signed at Privy Council, they must formally consider the Royal Charter prepared by News International, Associated Newspapers and the Telegraph Group.
Is the Government still committed to the cross-party charter?
A government source has told Hacked Off: “The cross-party Royal Charter meets the Leveson principles, has been agreed by the three main political parties, and has been approved by Parliament. The Government’s view on the cross-party Royal Charter has not changed. We believe it would put in place a system of independent self-regulation of the press. It would provide victims of press excesses, like the McCanns and the Dowlers, with real redress while protecting the freedom of the press.”
What is the timetable from here?
“Pre-publication” of the press’s charter on the Privy Council website is expected to continue until 24th May. This is not a formal consultation process. From 24th May to the 21st June, the DCMS is expected to carry out a formal consideration of the press charter. In order to proceed to the next stage, the press version will then require the approval of all three parties. Assuming that (any of) the three parties keep their promise to victims to provide a Leveson-compliant charter, the Government will have to reject the press charter at this stage. When the press charter is rejected, the cross-party Leveson charter will be put to the Privy Council. This is expected to happen soon after 21st June.
Can the press version of the charter become “Leveson compliant”?
No. It is impossible for the press charter to meet the Leveson criteria, as it is deficient in at least 20 ways. See this blog for some examples.
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Free Press is related to Free Markets and look where that has brought us unprecedented inequality. The press is wholly dependent on corporate advertising which thus dictates editorial policy. Look at the balance between right wing and left wing titles. Freedom of the press is freedom for the Murdochs of the world to promote consumerism and censor all dissent, it is in fact the worst form of censorship.
It seems that the press are hoping that time will dull peoples anger about the press abuses. They are stalling for time with their own version of a charter for regulation. Instead of leaving the regulation to politicians and the press wouldn’t it be better to mount a public campaign to persuade people to stop buying these newspapers. Pick one of the large circulation papers and persuade people to live without that paper from a certain date and for a certain period of time. The threat of this would hopefully dissuade the advertisers from placing adverts during that period further reducing the profitability of that particular paper.
It’s time to show the press and politicians that their power comes ultimately from us.
Another measured response, appreciated, in quiet earnest of continued pressure.
For the Quislings of Mammon, dawning need now to re-think ‘the winning side’.
A democratic free press should support ALL to be ‘the winners’ in this debate. IF genuinely for ‘in it together’ democracy, we will trust in ‘the education (better) of our masters (high and low)’, adequacy of basic education our shared goal.
For ‘the best’ – not necessarily ‘the cleverest’ – to rise ‘to the top’, in journalism as in politics, empowered as we all need (for the promotion of partnership, peace and prosperity), competitors will have to be seen as committed to equal partnership, the proofing of all against corruption, the only viable basis of rational trust.
If, even after Leveson, and facing sensible all-party agreement, ‘the press’ under baronial rule cannot give up its many pretences – of ‘democratic service’ in ghettoisation; of ‘too poor to self-regulate’; and of ‘too guilty or fragile to bear arbitration’ – then the case will be strengthened in many more minds for a ‘one-cover’ genuinely free press, presenting honest debate to all.
The sending of ‘an owl storm’ by Professor Dumbledore was amusing, but using a ‘Denial of Service’ attack is not necessarily virtuous or risk-free.
Charter-bombing’ of the Privy Council, as now approved and implemented it seems by “Downing Street”, appears to allow the trumping of ‘open all-party authority’ by the probably more opaque processes of ‘the Privy Council’.
If that is its intent – perhaps to be proved in the immediate outcome – then ridicule and contempt will have been earned, not only by those crying fear of ‘political interference’, also by any complicit in the manoeuvre.
Soon perhaps, back to a Leveson Bill. Ideally with mention of duty to encourage democracy, ‘rule of, for, by, the Equal People’, necessary context of a truly free press.
Is it envisaged that ‘the Privy Council’ will consult and negotiate with the public, and the press-barons, to arrive at a ‘Privy Council Charter’ to be put to ‘the three main political parties’ and thence to parliament?
Surely judgement of constitutional and Leveson compliance, if contested, should be ‘in the open, through the courts’. We already have something of the ‘Leveson-pending effect’, to protect the innocent. There is propriety and advantage in ‘taking our time’, having the right course openly defined, to the satisfaction of as many as may be reached by reason and shareable morality.
For supporters of Hacked Off, comfort can be on-going in widely shared public concern for press freedom. Evidence emerges in so many quarters, however struggling. A polemic from Andrew Gilligan attests, in The Telegraph, 30th March 2013.
In any time of doubt and change, there can naturally be ‘genuine concerns’ about possible impacts on democracy and on business interests, more precisely on the hopes of some for progress towards democracy, and on the hopes of others for greater concentration of wealth and power.
Regret might be shared that progress tends to require immediate adverse stimulus, and that instability brings with it risk of harm as well as hope of benefit. However, failing the experience of a collective epiphany, unable as yet to move straight to genuine democracy, we are obliged to weigh risks in our pursuit of progress. With varying ‘shakes’ of conscience and interest, miscible or not, we ‘press on’.
Though in a sense ‘regrettable’ that ‘we had to have’ the Leveson Inquiry, need for independent illumination had become widely recognisable, its general recognition needing little more than the usual persistences of party politics. ‘Decency’ had been so far offended by our ‘free press’, and confidence was so wanting in our ‘elected representatives’ as a whole, trust really had to be placed with court-practised skills of judgement, the weighing of supposed evidence and opposed arguments put by paired professional advocates.
Lord Justice Leveson – well aware that between advocates one or both might be mistaken (as well as less than disinterested in ‘the result’) – made extraordinary efforts to gain sufficient prior ‘evidence’ on context (before the main hearings), to make more comprehensible ‘the facts of complaint’, and to make more possible a relevant prescription. Sadly, the judge was let down, by ‘us’. For now we are left to argue the dosage of a ‘pre-scientific’ tincture (attended by leeches), an advance on press-baron homeopathy, but framed by no coherent definition either of democracy or ‘the public interest’.
Some may be tempted to deny the seriousness of any and every scandal, at least in comparison with the importance of ‘press freedom’. They direct us to close address of the meaning(s) they allow for such ‘freedom’. Do they operate for or against a meaningful consensus or balance or coherence as to ‘public interest’?
Reading between the lines, a stronger case can hardly be imagined than that made by Andrew Gilligan, for the liberation of every citizen, for our ‘free enterprises’ to be manned by ‘free individuals’, and for none to be made Quisling under material threat against self or family or any other. In short, for equal partnership.
At least in concision surpassing both 1984 and Darkness at Noon, we now have perhaps the perfect expository text for late-primary study of propaganda, apparent subservience, and glorious pro-democratic expression, intended or not.
Would that our polemics and congratulations could be less ambiguous.