BRITISH NEWSPAPERS have their backs to the wall. Their cherished self-regulation is discredited, now a long way past what the 1994 Calcutt inquiry into press standards called the “last chance saloon”. The ongoing Leveson successor to Calcutt, a far more formidable threat, is set not only to damn practices in the tabloids, particularly the Murdoch press, but is likely to pronounce on both the ineffectiveness of self-regulation and the toothless Press Complaints Commission (PCC) run by the industry, and to suggest alternatives. The press keeping its eye on itself is unlikely to be one of them.
Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mailand the Mail on Sunday, at the inquiry on Monday was acknowledging current weaknesses and suggesting putting the onus for disciplining the profession firmly on individual journalists rather than the newspapers and their editors who might encourage misconduct. An editor, he would say that ...
Dacre argued that journalists in breach of their code of conduct should, like misbehaving or incompetent doctors, be struck off a national register maintained by a new self-regulatory body, working alongside the PCC. Those not carrying the new press card would be barred from covering events such as key government briefings or interviews relating to sporting fixtures. He implied that the public could be assured then (please cut out the chuckling in the back row!) that those carrying the card would be honourable, respectable journalists in whom they could place their faith and expect fair dealings, “bona fide operators, committed to a set of standards and a body to whom complaints can be made.”
Quite apart from the fact that the public is unlikely to be so easily reassured, and that definitions of acceptable behaviour are likely to remain poles apart, the comparison with doctors is hardly apposite. Doctor registration is all about ensuring a minimum degree of competence, that we are not going to be operated on or medicated by the completely untrained. That they can be struck off for unethical behaviour is merely an added bonus of the system. The registration of journalists, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with competence – he does not suggest spelling tests – and, if solely a tool for enforcing ethical standards, would be in danger of becoming a system of political vetting by the industry.
Instead, Leveson should look to a system of policing of the papers themselves that would be independent of both the industry and government. And he could do worse than looking at Ireland’s.