Regulating the Press

After a year of inquiry and taking almost 400 verbal testimonies and 300 written submissions, the Lord Justice Leveson Report and recommendations for the reform of British press oversight was finally delivered. The Inquiry had been precipitated by the outrageous ‘phone-hacking’ scandal of the Murdoch-owned News of the World, which finally broke the back of outrage that had been building up for decades with the growth of ‘tabloid’ journalism.
The descent into yellow, gutter journalism was quickly imitated across the world as a section of the press followed the sordid business-model of Murdoch to generate revenues by pandering to the baser instincts of the public. Every Caribbean territory has, for instance, its version of the Guyanese tabloid, Kaieteur News, which was cited in the WikiLeaks from the local US Embassy for its ‘muckraking’ reporting.
In India, wracked by the further degeneration of the press into ‘paid news’, which offered coverage for a price, there was also a fierce debate precipitated by the comments of the new Chairman of their press regulatory body, former Justice Katju. In addition to the negative role of the sensationalist, tabloid approach of the press in general, he posited the need for a positive approach that would take into consideration the needs of the country at its particular point of developmental history. In Guyana, the Guyana Times had called for a Media Monitoring Unit ‘with teeth’ that would enforce ‘rules of reportage’ in the local press.
The Leveson Report should be seen as an opportunity to discuss and debate the need of such rules for the press in every society – developed and developing. The Report, coming in at 2000 pages, making it longer than “War and Peace”, excoriated the British press for “a recklessness in prioritizing sensational stories,” and of “wreaking havoc with people’s lives.” The Financial Times called it a “damning indictment of the culture and practices of the newspaper industry.”
The report was also most scathing about the Press Complaints Commission, or PCC, Britain’s voluntary regulatory body for newspapers and magazines – which has been the preferred model across the ‘free-world’ for monitoring the press. During the hearings, it was widely expected that the eventual Report would recommend a ‘press law’, but in the end – probably bowing to the ideological pressures of the extreme ‘libertarian’ position, he attempted to steer between Scylla and Charybdis.
Recognising the public’s loss of confidence in the industry-controlled Press Complaints Commission, Leveson called for the creation of a new regulatory Board which would be “truly independent” of the newspaper industry and the government, but backed by legislation. The body would be organized by the media industry, but the board would not include any current editors or politicians. Membership in the new body would be voluntary, but newspapers which did not sign up to it could be regulated by Ofcom, the British government agency that regulates television networks
The new board would be able to fine newspapers up to £1 million if they were found to be in breach of the codes set up to govern them. It would have beefed-up investigative powers, giving it the authority to carry out probes into specific newspapers. He stressed that this did not imply state control – just that the self regulation would be backed by a compulsory element. In Guyana, the Guyana Times had proposed similar rules for its suggested “Media Monitoring Unit”.
In Britain, interestingly enough, the parameters of the debate were quickly established within the governing coalition. PM David Cameron, backed off from his earlier promise to implement the Report and adopted the robust ‘libertarian’ position that there should be absolutely no legislation governing the press. He said the Report “has the potential to infringe free speech and the free press.” His Liberal Democrat partner Clegg, however argued that a free-wheeling press must be balanced against the needs of the ‘vulnerable’.
Let the debate on press regulation begin.