Future of Investigative Journalism: Communications Committee Report

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Wednesday 25th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I welcome this chance to discuss the report of the Communications Committee, of which I have the privilege of being a member, serving under our able chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

Investigative journalism goes back to biblical times. Perhaps I might remind noble Lords in this Room that Moses sent 12 investigators on a 40-day mission into Canaan to report on the state of the land. Two of them, Caleb and Joshua, reported well of it; the other 10 did not. Reliance on a misleading majority report was one of the reasons why the Israelites spent 40 years wandering the desert.

Today we expect more accuracy. Investigative journalism is vital for holding the Government and others who have power over our lives to account, for shining a light on things that we ought to know but have not been disclosed, and for providing the material for the national debate that takes place every day and that enables every citizen to be included and informed.

There has been one significant change in our recent source of such journalism. The print newspapers are not as powerful as they were, nor as much of a threat as we have been led to believe; nor are they, arguably, any longer the main source of investigative journalism. The generation represented in your Lordships’ House, and the politicians, are in thrall to print journalism. However, Ofcom recently reported that 10% of the population say that they read fewer paper magazines, and 8% say that they read fewer newspapers. Long-term trends in radio listening are down: 22% of 15 to 24 year-olds listen less, and use other devices instead.

The young get their news from the internet and social media. Digital sources outstrip papers as a source of news for them, and increasingly for the rest of the population. Newspaper circulation has declined markedly in the last decade, as has been said, and therefore the revenue from advertising is less, although I lack a certain sympathy because job advertisements, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, killed themselves off by exorbitant charges. The local press has suffered even more, and that is regrettable as traditionally it was a source of investigative journalism and training in that skill.

I am somewhat sceptical when it comes to believing that newspapers can persuade people to vote one way or the other. It is not clear to me whether the police and politicians are, allegedly, manipulating the journalists or the other way round. The Leveson inquiry and the facts that led to it might be the last gasp of an old order of reporting.

Does this mean that there is a grave danger that there will be no funding for investigative journalism? I think not. The philanthropic funding of investigative journalism is always going to be problematic and cannot substitute for publishers’ funding because it is impossible to dispel the perception that the funder would want his special interests investigated. Government funding would be equally suspect.

The internet, however, opens up new and more inexpensive possibilities of investigative journalism. It is worth noting that some of the most important investigative stories have come about in this age of recession and hard times for papers, such as MPs’ expenses and phone hacking. Therefore, the vigour of investigative journalism is not necessarily dependent on traditional funding. It has become cheaper because of the internet and the contribution of individuals online to the gathering of evidence. The internet is more efficient than library research, when libraries are under threat; freedom of information and social media give leads and official data to anyone who goes online. The risk with internet stories is that we need to distinguish truth from untruth and inaccuracies. Once they take hold in the digital world, untruth can be piled on untruth like Chinese whispers. The young need to be educated, more than ever, in critical analysis and the dangers of treating everything online as gospel truth.

The internet has no editors, no legal control. It crosses international boundaries and information on it has no kite mark. Some of it is fabrication, some is discriminatory, and there is no check. The young may be too trusting of Twitter and Facebook, too often taken in, and prey to those who betray their trust and privacy. This attitude may spill over into their trusting any facts online. School instruction in the use of computers ought to teach such awareness and discrimination just as much as software skills.

Because of the changes in the way we receive our news, the need to study convergence has become important. We need to consider whether there is still any utility in distinguishing, for the purposes of law and control, between newspapers, online papers, publication on tablets, mobile phones, TV on digital devices and so on. The Press Complaints Commission’s reach is therefore very narrow, but we need no more statutory regulation. Moreover, given choice in what to watch digitally in this age of downloading chosen programmes, there is a real possibility that the programmes of investigative journalism will not be chosen.

What does this mean for regulation? This arises in connection with the recent spates of law breaking in the creation and researching of news. MPs’ expenses details came from private information that was sold, arguably contrary to the Data Protection Act. Can journalists break the law in order to expose the truth? We all praise them if they break the local law to film in Syria, expose abuse in an old persons’ home by undercover methods, or unearth a Royal Family scandal. In an inchoate way, we believe that the public interest may justify breaking the law to get the story. Certainly, in order to prevent fishing expeditions, the claim of public interest should be registered with the editor, if we are dealing with newspapers, before the investigation starts to ensure agreement that the expected end result can be regarded as being in the public interest, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood.

It is a welcome development that the current Defamation Bill contains a public interest defence. Recent events have persuaded me that we no longer have a national view of what should be private and what should be brought to light, whether by investigative journalism or freedom of information. To me, some phone hacking of celebrities might be less of an invasion of privacy than material forced out into the public domain by the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act—certainly when it comes to references, as I have said before. Sometimes it seems pointless to try to protect any information, given the reach and uncontrollability of the internet. If we have to decide between more regulation of the press or not, we should err on the side of freedom, not least because of the impossibility of attempting control in an era of declining sales and the convergence of media.

This is not to say that the press or contributors to the internet should be allowed to get away with everything. Whenever I have been closely involved in a reported story, I have been shocked, even distressed, by the level of inaccuracy and the difficulty of resolving matters through apology and correction. The Communications Committee in an earlier report already recommended that the BBC improve its complaints system. I repeat my own view that there should be an external ombudsman for the final stage of appeal against a BBC report. Only if that comes about will the public be satisfied objectively.

Today, transparency reigns. Journalists are at the forefront of those calling for openness, the declaration of interests and conflicts, and the recording of background for the purposes of monitoring equality and diversity. I therefore support the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, who, in her Reuters memorial lecture 2011, called for journalists to face the same scrutiny that they apply to others. They, too, should reveal their financial and other interests, gifts and payment for content and their ethnicity and schooling, in the same way that politicians, professionals, judges and trustees have to. Diversity of perspective from our journalists is needed here as much as anywhere.

The current furore should not mean an end to investigative journalism or more brakes on the press. There is sufficient law to control reporting if it is applied, and there really is little that can be done about the internet, save educating its users. Investigative journalism needs our support and encouragement, and I hope that your Lordships’ House will give it that.