Press Briefing: Mail v Miliband: Freedom of the press is not at stake
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This briefing note aims to clarify issues about press regulation raised in the current controversy.
The Daily Mail will still be free to print character assassinations of the dead under Leveson
Nothing in the Leveson-based Royal Charter approved by all parties in Parliament could prevent newspapers expressing their opinions, no matter how repellent those opinions may be to most people. The Charter explicitly states, when referring to the powers of the Board of the new self-regulator:
‘The Board should not have the power to prevent publication of any material by anyone, at any time . . .’ (Schedule 3, par 17)
Leveson covers factual accuracy, after publicationÂ
What the Royal Charter will require is that papers correct mistakes of fact with appropriate prominence when they have been the subject of well-founded complaints. This is something that the old Press Complaints Commission also formally required, but in Leveson’s judgement the PCC failed to deliver this satisfactorily because it was not independent of the industry.
There will be no ‘statutory regulation’ of the press
Far from introducing ‘statutory control’ or ‘political control’ or ‘statutory regulation’ of the press, Parliament’s Royal Charter system painstakingly shields the whole system from political interference. Governments are blocked from meddling, and all significant appointments must be non-political. Moreover the reforms are being implemented by Charter rather than Act of Parliament precisely because David Cameron did not want to given even the appearance of statutory control.
The change will protect the public
What Ed Miliband wants – like David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Lord Justice Leveson, the victims of press abuse, every party in Parliament and the public – is effective, independent press self-regulation that will protect ordinary people from press cruelty of the kind that made the Leveson Inquiry necessary. The Daily Mail is resisting this.
Press proposals will not protect the public, and will not prevent political meddling
The rival charter bid backed by the Daily Mail and other papers, and the ‘IPSO’ regulation scheme that goes with it, will cheat the public of the fair and open complaints scheme and the low-cost arbitration scheme enshrined in Parliament’s Royal Charter. And they would also permit party politicians such as Lord Black and Lord Hunt, who dominate the current PCC system, to have key roles in the new one. They also contain no effective bar on a future Government changing the Charter by executive action.
Next week sees an end to the Charter muddle and delay
By Wednesday October 9 the press Charter bid should have been formally rejected and the Privy Council will finally be free to approve Parliament’s Leveson-based Charter. This is a formality – a brief stand-up meeting between ministers and the Queen nods it through with other Government business. There is no discussion, and no constitutional possibility that, once the Charter is on the agenda, it could be rejected by the Privy council.
Notes to editors:
1) Hacked Off has responded in full to the Daily Mail in this post by Prof  Brian Cathcart, Executive Director.
2) There are several models of press regulation. The model being pursued by parliament and the government is independent self-regulation and not statutory regulation which was considered and rejected by the government. More information on the different forms of press regulation can be found here.
2 Comments
Join the discussion and tell us your opinion.
Shall we face the facts, share the facts, along with those who always have known?
What troubles ‘the Daily Mail’ is the meaning that now attaches to ‘independent press regulation’. Weakening is in sight, of establishment control over journalists, and so over a journalism that for so long has kept eyes averted from the reign of fear and greed.
If morally valid complaints can be met with morally sensible responses, from the press itself, as directed by a credible regulator independent of government and of press ownership, then journalists will have greater degrees of freedom to resist the commercial and political pressures behind past abuses of press power.
To some, with no personal experience as victim, and no sense as yet of the role of the press for or against democracy, Leveson-compliance differences might seem but little between the all-party Royal Charter and the carry-on-much-as-usual press baron version. To those who know the history, the recent form and the established agenda of the press barons, captive along perhaps with many supporting advertisers, the differences are vital.
Even the establishment stands to gain from observance at long last of its own vaunted principles, only to be expected with Leveson-compliant independence and access and right to prominent corrections of significant error.
Thanks for this will be due of course to shared political courage, and to the judicial process headed by Lord Justice Leveson, but most of all to the people – their time, energy, skill and soul, within Hacked Off – who have insisted, against all bluster, that real reform should be ours.
Of course it’s also worth pointing out that the Editor In Chief of the Daily Mail and the Chair of the widely discredited PCC are one and the same: Paul Dacre. So even if anyone were to complain about the Mail’s vicious smearing of the late Ralph Miliband, one can imagine just how far any such complaint might get. All the more reason for effective independent regulation, with politicians and editors’ noses out of the trough at last!