Independent regulator tops Press Gazette online poll
Please note this is Hacked Off's old website, and it will soon be archived.
There’s more evidence of support for some form of statute-backed regulation of the press, coming from within the newspaper industry itself.
The Press Gazette’s online poll found 51% of respondents in favour of ‘an independent regulator’, set up via legislation, compared to 42% who prefer a reformed system of self regulation. The survey, which does not try to claim the statistical purity of a public opinion poll, is nonetheless an interesting indication of the way the wind is blowing among journalists.
Two recent polls have shown that more than three-quarters of the general public are rejecting the failures of self regulation and backing an independent system underpinned by law. Perhaps journalists are increasingly convinced that a new regulator is needed in order to decontaminate the brand.
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All sounds great in theory but…
Who will oversee the drawing up of the regulations? And then the on-going implementation of those regulations?
If the new regulatory body, through its actions, starts to act in a way that a large section(s) of its stakeholders – the press, readers, ‘victims’ – disagree with, to whom do they have recourse?
This country has many examples of bodies that sit in a kind of ‘third space’ – is the performance of these bodies so brilliant that their structure should be replicated?
In light of the travails at the BBC, and the fact that we, the licence fee payer, have no mechanism to influence what is going on – whether at the BBC itself or through the Trust set up to oversee it on our behalf – because ‘nothing can ‘endanger’ the independence of the BBC’, should something as fundamental as the freedom of the press by beholden to a similar system?
I was able to post a vote in the Press Gazette poll despite not being a journalist myself. I suspect that the voting may well have been skewed one way or another by vested interests and is not worth the screen it is shown on. Of much more interest and worth has the YouGov/Hacked off poll which showed the public’s overwhelming support for an independent regulator.
The press have for years in England printed complete untruths about people to sell new papers, I am just an ordinary reader of the press and yet I know this, as do most English people.
Also the press has in the past been used by government to blacken the character of people for example: Arthur Scargill, then years later the stories turn out not to be true as it was proved in his case. Also the press is used against organisations in much the same way by a government or party with a vested interest.
It is obvious to the ordinary people that there must be an independent body, to stop public manipulation by the press and to give those innocents a right of reply and apologies on the front page.