Baroness O'Neill urges greater transparency from the media in FLJS policy brief

The policy brief, entitled Regulating for Communication, expands upon the comments Baroness O'Neill made to the Leveson Inquiry last month, when she outlined proposals to address the lack of transparency over payments made and received by journalists in the reporting of certain stories.

In the policy brief, Baroness O'Neill asks, “What benefits in kind were provided to the media, and by whom? Who paid whom to cover certain stories, or not to cover them?” She goes on to confront the issue of media infringements on the private lives of public figures: “Did the media pay for private information about others, including about supposedly public figures? Were payments made for confidential commercial or political material?”

The policy brief makes recommendations for the introduction of five regulatory standards, backed by statute, including measures to encourage journalists to reveal sources, except where public interest exemptions apply, and to ensure that journalistic errors are corrected visibly and promptly.

Her argument critiques widely held views about the nature of a free press based on inexact interpretations of the Human Rights Declarations, to show that regulatory standards can improve the process of media reporting, whilst avoiding censorship of content.

The policy brief is the third to emerge from a panel discussion held at Wolfson College in May entitled Regulating Fleet Street: Media Regulation and the Role of Law, podcasts of which are available from our Resources pages.

It follows earlier policy briefs from the former Managing Editor of The Times Professor George Brock, who advocated a balance between strengthened legal defences for public interest journalism and non-statutory regulation, and Lara Fielden, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and formerly of Ofcom and the BBC, who made proposals for a new framework for media regulation to encompass online media.

Download:

Regulating for Communication

Baroness Onora O'Neill, political philosopher and crossbench member of the House of Lords