Back to News

SHARE:

 

Expert panel deliver proposals for Leveson and media reform

Published on
Thursday 24 May 2012
Category
College & Community

The event, entitled Redirecting Fleet Street: Media Regulation and the Rule of Law was held at Wolfson College on 18th May, and featured media experts and senior figures from journalism, policymaking, and the law.

Martin Moore, Director of the Media Standards Trust, opened proceedings with a sobering account of how pervasive journalistic wrongdoing has been, extending far beyond the News of the World's phone hacking, as revealed by Operation Motorman.

Lara Fielden, formerly of the BBC and Ofcom and currently visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute, took on an issue that has been consistently raised by the Leveson Inquiry but not yet adequately addressed - that of the exponential rise of online news sources, which would appear to defy any attempt at regulation. She argued instead that the current debate on press regulation cannot be isolated from other media, given the increasing convergence of content as newspapers, broadcasters, and other online content become increasingly indistinguishable.

Proposing a radical new structure for media regulation across platforms, she advocated an incentivized, three-tier model of regulation in which media outlets can demonstrate commitment to ethical standards through a kite mark system that also empowers the consumer to make informed, democratic choices.

A different approach was taken by the media lawyer Mark Stephens, who has both represented hacking victims and been a victim of phone hacking himself. He questioned whether we need to bolster regulation at all, given that the law is the foundation for regulation and criminal charges will undoubtedly be brought against wrongdoers in the phone hacking scandal.

The political philosopher Baroness Onora O'Neill challenged over-reliance on the law by arguing that legal action to defend against cyber bullying and 'poison pen' attacks, for instance, is often unaffordable for the average person. Her thesis did concede that, whilst it is possible to regulate speech acts such as bullying, hate speech, and fraud, it is not possible to regulate content.

Baroness O'Neill argued that freedom of expression includes the freedom to receive credible, trustworthy information, and the journalist's duty to the reader requires that the press should be subject to the same demands of transparency as politicians and other forms of industry

The relationship between politicians and the press has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months, and it was these structural issues of media power that were addressed by Damian Tambini of LSE in his talk on the policy reforms to emerge from the Leveson Inquiry and issues of media ownership and pluralism. He argued that both Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt were given too much ministerial discretion over the decision of whether to refer the proposed BSkyB merger to the competition commission.

While we may still be some way from determining the proper balance of media influence, in the final session of the day, Professor George Brock, Head of Journalism at City University and former Managing Editor of The Times, presented a persuasive proposal for balanced reforms to create a more effective, incentivized basis for non-statutory regulation, alongside strengthened legal defences to protect good journalism.

Arguing on the one hand for a revised privacy law and a stronger legal definition of what is in the public interest, Professor Brock demonstrated that self-regulation can then be made to work by restricting access to a public interest defence to newsroom editors who can demonstrate high ethical standards throughout their newsroom.

You can download a programme for the event and read more here.

Podcasts of the presentations will be made available in the coming days and the theories and proposals discussed by the panel will be developed in greater detail in a series of policy briefs, to be published over the summer.