Media: News Corporation

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Friday 15th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, it has been a tumultuous week and I am grateful that we are having this debate. We could have held it on any day, but it seems better to hold it at this end of the week because the terms of reference, or at least the draft terms of reference, for the phone hacking and media inquiry to be chaired by Lord Justice Leveson are now available.

Before that inquiry takes on the retrospective task of investigating,

“the extent of unlawful and improper conduct within News International and other newspaper organisations”,

it is to undertake a more general inquiry,

“into the culture, practices and ethics of the press”,

covering press relations with the police and politicians. The inquiry is also to make recommendations,

“for a new more effective policy and regulatory regime which supports the integrity and freedom of the press, the plurality of the media and its independence from Government”.

This may not be the optimal sequence of inquiries, but we must accept that the practicalities of beginning the inquiry while police investigation and prosecutions are under way may be a reason to work on recommendations for the future before completing the inquiry into the past. Any recommendations for the future must take a critical look at different conceptions of press freedom, their strengths, weaknesses, and justification, and determine which best support media communication that enables the public to assess what they read, hear and view.

In my view, the best arguments for a free press in a democratic society see it as supporting public, social and cultural life. Yet during the past 50 years media freedom has often and misleadingly been equated with and reduced to freedom of expression. Freedom of expression for individuals is a classical liberal demand, most often justified on the grounds that individuals' speech is generally harmless and innocuous. In the 20th century, media as well as individual freedom has also been labelled freedom of expression. Yet while the speech of individuals is generally innocuous, that of powerful organisations often is not. The media are and should be in the business of communication, not of self-expression.

An equally liberal but more plausible justification for media freedom appeals to the need of democratic citizens for media whose communication they can understand and assess, so allowing them to play a full and critical part in public, social and cultural life. Where readers, listeners and viewers cannot tell whether content is deceptive, or even whether it has been obtained by illegal means, the basic purposes of a free press are undermined rather than supported. Self-expression is not enough.

Effective communication requires media that treat readers, listeners and viewers with respect, providing information and evidence that help them to judge content intelligently, and so to place and refuse their trust intelligently. This needs regulation that provides less flimsy ways of maintaining media standards than those of the much derided Press Complaints Commission, which works to standards much less robust than those once common in professional and public life which the media have repeatedly criticised as inadequate. It does not seem likely that the media have such exceptional probity that they, unlike others, can effectively regulate themselves.

Yet already we hear claims that media regulation on a statutory basis would be even worse. On Wednesday, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, suggested briefly that self-regulation must continue; I was glad to note that the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was more cautious on this point. The fear of those who advocate self-regulation is that anything else would allow politicians to regulate the media, suppressing what it suited them to suppress, leaving us with censorship and not a free press.

Such claims are implausible. Press freedom is compatible with and best protected by regulation of the right sort. If we want evidence that regulation can be compatible with press freedom, we need look no further than the BBC, which is quite stringently regulated yet whose journalism has quite a high reputation for independence. Of course, the regulation that is right for the BBC cannot simply be extended to other media, and bad regulation, or regulation by politicians, would be risky and potentially disastrous. But there is no reason to settle for bad regulation, or to let politicians regulate. Setting up regulators indeed needs legislation, but regulators and their operational decisions can be insulated from political and party concerns. An appropriate media regulator could be expressly prohibited from controlling or censoring content.

Much can be achieved by regulating media process rather than media content. I offer three examples, one micro, one middling and one macro. I start with the micro example: transparency. Journalists, editors and proprietors could be required to declare their interests, like others in positions of influence, to list payments made and favours received—dinners, for example—without in relevant cases naming recipients and sources. They could be required to make such transactions, where they were financial, explicit in company accounts. The media have generally been keen to insist on the merits of transparency for others with influence and power, and what is sauce for the political goose is surely sauce for the media gander.

The second example is privacy. Recent revelations have made us all too aware that we need to revisit the question of privacy. Having incorporated the right to privacy into UK law, we have, perhaps understandably given the now acknowledged intimidation of politicians, failed to discuss, let alone implement, privacy protection. All that we have is the limited and clumsy protection afforded by the Data Protection Act 1998, which covers only organised, searchable information. A serious and unhysterical debate on privacy is needed if we are to find a form of media regulation that supports a strong, free and independent press that serves the needs of citizens.

The third example, the macro example, is plurality and culture. Media power in the UK is, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, reminded us, very concentrated. Much of it is in the hands of those with little stake in the future of the UK. Media regulation of concentrations of ownership and control could both help ensure that UK citizens have a plurality of offerings and that media power is exercised by those with a stake in our future. Is it right for those who pay no tax to have powerful voices in debates about taxation? Is it right for debates on UK strategic interests to be led by those who do not share our fate? Are citizens and democracy well served if many of those who control the media do not share citizenship, domicile or residence with their readers, listeners and viewers?

Long after the scandals of the hacks and hackers, the pols and the police have become history, we will be judged by the culture, practices and ethics of the media that we support in the wake of them.