LEVESON IS BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

Author of Media Communication: An Introduction To Theory & Process (Palgrave Macmillan) and co-author With Anne Hill of The Dictionary of Media & Communication Studies (Bloomsbury Education) James Watson speaks up for a press free of kitemarks which he sees as potentially a modern version of the 19th century Red spot, symbol of press regulation and the oppression of freedom.

BEWARE THE RED SPOT!

Leveson seems to have forgotten that press freedom was not lightly won; that it took several centuries of defying censorship and establishment repression to achieve what we have now; that the word was always at risk of the blue pencil, or in the case of the 19th century in Britain the red spot. Levesons suggestion of a kite mark for a legitimised press is of course couched in the language of moderation, but it rather gives the game away. What was the red spot? It was the obligatory sign to be printed on licensed newspapers of the 19th century. The spot confirmed that a newspaper had paid for permission to print. It differentiated the respectable, the establishment press, from the radicals. Its intention was to outlaw and silence papers edited by such pioneers of liberty as William Cobbett, Richard Carlile, Henry Hetherington, Bronterre OBrien, Earnest Jones, George Julian Harney and Feargus OConnor who demanded reform of parliament, democracy and a free press.

Invitation to the great and the good

No one would argue today that a kite mark might constitute a tax on knowledge as the red spot certainly was. It would merely be a symbol of a press that did not abuse celebrities and members of the public, did not lie, and was accountable for its sins, honouring such journalistic principles as truth, objectivity and impartiality (assuming society could achieve a consensus on their definition). What Leveson says the modern press requires, seemingly with the wholehearted backing of Ed Miliband, J.K.Rowling, Hugh Grant and the Hacked Off movement is a regulatory body that would be the custodian of such principles.

Alas one persons objectivity is anothers prejudice and, as with the task of recruiting the members of all committees, commissions and inquiries, the nature of that recruitment instantly breeds suspicion: who appoints the judges and according to what criteria? What is rarely considered in the selection of the great and the good is you and me; the florist at the corner, the Mum with her kids waiting for the Number 9 bus or anybody at the Darby and Joan Club autumn bazaar (much less the readers of the old News of the World). No, the names to regulate whatever is deemed regulateable will be selected in the age-old manner as Judge Brian Leveson was, exercising narrow criteria not a little to do with being distinguished, part of the establishment and safe. It does not take three guesses to envisage the constitution of a body to regulate the press. A few moments deliberation might lead to the conclusion that as far as regulation is concerned we have been here before, many times in many different forms, but always with the same intent control.

Elephants in the newsroom

Writing in the UK edition of the Huffington Post (3 December, 2012), James Alan Anslow states that in many ways the Leveson Report is an impressive piece of work; it is a detailed, political and expedient response to (here Anslow suspends his approval) an absurdly amorphous and poorly considered brief. He cites what he considers Levesons two showstopping misjudgements: two ignored elephants in the newsroom. First, Leveson neglects, almost to the point of dismissing its significance, the Internet, deeming it a moral vacuum. It is almost as if the power and reach of the Internet did not exist, scarcely impinging on the present and future of the traditional press. Yet in the UK, the US and most other parts of the developed world, says Anslow, the Internet is responsible for the irreversibly accelerating demise of print newspapers. It is both the elephant in the room and, for mass communication via print, the enemy at the door. Anslow considers that Leveson fundamentally misunderstands the nature of news journalism. He states:
Journalism operates in society's borderlands it is liminal; that is to say it can only fulfil its function if it can move between structures, without being in thrall to any of them (including media moguls). For example, journalists must find operational space within which to conduct off-the-record conversations with contacts be they police officers or politicians; good hacks have always plied their trade by being less than straightforward.

In other words, subversion is both natural to the trade and inescapable. The publication of news is, says Anslow, always, to one extent or another, "loaded" and provocativeThere will always be times that journalism tests and even breaks the law: whether to expose corrupt MPs by buying stolen data or to unveil royal hypocrisy by procuring a transcript of an adulterous phone conversation.

Quicksand of moral relativity Like many other Leveson-doubters Anslow believes that there are already in Britain criminal laws in place to deal with press abuse if those laws are applied with vigour and probity. Invoking public interest defence or mitigation invariably plunges the process into the quicksand of moral relativity so beloved of expensive lawyers. What we need in the opinion of journalist Mick Hume is more freedom, not less. Author of There is No Such Thing As a Free Pressand we need one more than ever (Societas, 2012), Hume believes that freedom is no exemplar of order but an unruly mess. He writes:
We should defend press freedom and freedom of expression as a bedrock liberty of a civilised society and defend the right of a free press to be an unruly mess. That some abuse press freedom, as in the phone-hacking scandal, is no excuse for others to encroach upon it. Press freedom is not a gift to be handed down like charity only to those deemed deserving. It is an indivisible liberty for all or none at all.

Calculated gain
It was to be expected that commitments to such liberty, expressed by politicians including prime minister David Cameron, would be seen by many as calculated to curry favour with the press. After all, Leveson and the public learnt much about the cosying-up between government ministers (and those of the previous, Labour government) and high-fliers in the Murdoch empire such as former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks (affectionately referred to as Country Suppers). Cameron had actually appointed ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson his press secretary until revelations about phone-hacking forced Coulsons exit from Downing Street. Two QCs, Ben Emmerson and Hugh Tomlinson in a UK Guardian article No threat to freedom (4 December 2012) conceded that The politicians who oppose Leveson will be able to rely on the support of the media in future, adding, The whole point of Leveson was to expose this sort of patronage, and bring it to an end. Even so, forgetting for a moment where the comment is coming from, Camerons doubts about regulation are valid. His swiftly-expressed view was that We should, I believe, be wary of any legislation which has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press. He went on:
The danger is that this would create a vehicle for politicians, whether today or some time in the future, to impose regulation and obligations on the press, something Lord Justice Leveson himself wishes to avoid.

Camerons position would be worthy of support if it were not for the fact that his government was concurrently launching draconian plans to put Internet communications under further legal surveillance.

Point missed
That many British newspapers have a dire record of abusing the responsibilities of a free press is not in doubt as Leveson illustrates in telling and often distressing detail. Such practices are evident from day to day and obvious to all, but there seems to be scant analysis of why. Writing in the Guardian former Times editor Harold Evans, while believing Leveson deserves support, points out a serious weakness: The biggest disappointmentis how far he [Leveson] skates over the crucial issue of ownership. Evans refers to Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers sidelining of the law of competition in 1982 in a secret deal by which Times Newspapers came under News International control:
All Levesons fine language about the need for future transparency is justified by the vaguest of references to what made it necessary in the first place. It surely matters a great deal that the greatest concentration of the British press was achieved by a backroom deal that gave News International such sway over British public life.

Culture of the bully

The issue is structure, the nature of the landscape of newspapers dominated by the usual suspects, the corporations; News International being only the most dominant in a pool of corporate sharks. That landscape in recent years has been characterised by the closure of many good newspapers or the switch from daily to weekly, especially in the provinces (a situation dramatically echoed in America). Competition has always been fierce, but the advent of the Internet has transformed traditional rivalries into a battleground where all values take second place to naked profit. The pawns in this battle are journalists, many of them forced into reportorial conduct that permits them no option: get the story, do the dirty, tap the phones, or make way for somebody who will. In short, as the National Union of Journalists emphasise in their journal and stressed in their evidence to Leveson, it is a culture of bullying. What rightly meets with sympathy in the Leveson Report is the case made by the NUJ for a journalists conscience clause. Leveson was struck by the evidence of journalists who felt they might be put under pressure to do things that were unethical. The solution, a whistle-blowing hotline for journalists to report bullying does, however, sound nave if not laughable. Until the structural circumstances the centralisation of media ownership into fewer and fewer hands are acted upon in the name of plurality little will change, except the inexorable decline of the paper press.

In the wake of Brian

After unparalleled publicity over many months, the Leveson Inquiry will sink beneath the waves of consciousness and memory; perhaps most importantly because it set out to ask the wrong question.

Whats regrettable is that the main issue concerning the media the nature of ownership and control remains unaddressed. There is nothing in practice or in the stars that will in future bar the Murdoch empire from fulfilling its ambition to own the whole of BSkyB and thus rule the roost of British broadcasting. Scandal has only delayed the process. Meanwhile, though the News of the World arguably suffered harshly as a sacrificial victim, what do we have, as the current clich has it, going forward? Why, the Sun on Sunday. Plus a change and happy country suppers! First published in the authors monthly blog at Watsonworksblog.blogspot.com Blog 37 January 2013

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