Future of Investigative Journalism: Communications Committee Report

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Wednesday 25th July 2012 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, it was a privilege to be a member of the Select Committee that produced the report that prompts our debate, and I learnt a great deal, not least from my fellow members. When the MPs’ expenses scandal was at its peak, I recall someone remarking that politicians had fallen even below journalists in the league table of public esteem. Since then, the phone hacking scandal has seemed to restore the customary pecking order, while bankers have contrived to plummet so far that they now seem in the relegation zone. I dare not speculate where bishops now lie in these hierarchies.

What is odd is that the British public has long had a lack of esteem for journalists, yet is the same British public that has shown great interest in reading what journalists write. Historically, newspapers have had a major influence on public opinion. Politicians of all parties would not have met newspaper editors and journalists quite so often if that was not so. The public seem to have a great appetite for celebrity exposés. The methods sometimes used have hardly always been models of fair scrutiny or investigation, yet there is a sound and ethical tradition of investigative journalism that has been well described in the report and to which the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, has referred. The public are right to feel justice has been done when authority figures and institutions are revealed to have done things which they would have preferred the general public not to know. Investigative journalists have helped to put injustices right when the courts or public authorities have not done so.

During this inquiry, the committee received plenty of evidence about the value of investigative journalism. Some people might still be in prison unjustly were it not for the ferret-like doggedness of journalists such as the late Paul Foot. Whether it is the Sunday Times Insight team—now drastically reduced, I am told—journalists working for “Panorama”, or a single journalist such as Nick Davies, sure that he is on to something with phone hacking and just will not let go, stories are uncovered and the body politic is healthier for it. Yet strangely in the UK such journalists are rarely honoured or become household names like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the United States in relation to Watergate. The British are great consumers of investigative journalism, but they, and we, have not done all that much to honour investigative journalists. We have rather taken them for granted, as if investigative journalism will always be there. Perhaps it will be.

Paragraph 240 of the report comments that while it is easy to paint a pessimistic picture of the economic problems facing investigative journalism—they have been well illustrated already—there was no evidence to suggest that investigative journalism would disappear. The Channel 4 investigative journalism training scheme is but one example of initiatives continuing to nurture this tradition. The number of courses on journalism in our universities has grown enormously, too. While some suggest that these have proliferated at a rate beyond the capacity of the industry to employ even its good graduates, journalists with a passion, even obsession, for investigation often find an outlet. Even so, a serious issue is emerging that should concern this House.

The most striking statistics in this report are to be found in table 1 on page 16 concerning national newspaper circulation over the past 10 years, to which the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, has already referred. Total circulation has declined from 27 million in 2001 to less than 20 million last year. That is the loss of more than one-quarter of all sales in a single decade. It is accelerating. The past three years have seen declines in newspaper circulation of more than 1 million copies a year. The losses are felt profoundly in local and regional newspapers, which have had to cope with a massive reduction in advertising revenue, too. I should perhaps declare an interest as the Bishop of Norwich because the Eastern Daily Press in Norfolk still outsells every national title, which I think is unique in this country. I thank God for the fact that we get in a regional newspaper not just local news but Westminster and international news. However, we have heard about Port Talbot as an example of a substantial community now served by no significant local media. Elsewhere, an increasing number of council meetings go unreported, and there are courts where the press gallery is empty.

The fourth estate can fulfil its role only if it is present. The decline in local and regional newspapers has been partly offset by the still significant presence of BBC local radio, which has been reprieved from the worst cuts recently proposed, and which means that we still have some local media. But we also need partiality and passion as well as balance to ensure that those exercising power and authority are called to account. If in due course council decisions are reported only through the newspapers and magazines published by councils themselves, it is hard not to think that the consequences will be far from happy.

Even so, there does not have to be a physical presence at council meetings for investigative journalism into all the work that for example councils do, to flourish. It was intriguing in our evidence to listen to Clare Sambrook, an outstanding investigative journalist, referring to the amount of work she does online, drilling down through what seem like unpromising data. There is a vast amount of information online that is published in an undigested way and which needs careful analysis by someone with a hypothesis or two to test. A line from TS Eliot in his Choruses from the Rock is pertinent:

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”.

We are often misled into thinking that the transparency and publication of data leads inevitably to knowledge. It does not. It needs investigation and interpretation, and only when the knowledge is reflected upon and digested might wisdom come.

If there is a frustration about this report, it is that the committee has discovered no single solution to deal with the difficulties diagnosed. There are few quick wins in this area. Certainly, the proposals for audit trails and greater legal clarity and consistency in issues related to the public interest make good sense, as does the proposal that where a news organisation develops more than a 25% share of the market through organic growth, a public interest test should be applied just as it is in relation to proposed mergers now.

Perhaps the most hopeful element of this report, however, was the discovery that many news organisations remain committed to investigative journalism since they regard it as the cutting edge of journalism itself. It is what makes journalism worth while. That, alongside the very different ways of promoting investigative journalism, illustrated in the USA by ProPublica and here with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, brings hope. It is clear that there exist funding streams that are neither strictly commercial nor use taxpayers’ money but that are essentially charitable. This has not been an area where UK philanthropy has needed to be operative in recent decades, because commercial and public finding models have worked, but there may be more potential there than has been imagined. Given the zero VAT rating on UK newspapers, it does not seem too much to ask the Charity Commission to clarify which activities related to investigative journalism might be charitable within the current state of the law.

The note sounded in this report is one of hopeful concern. Hope is an underrated virtue, but not here. I will forbear to preach a sermon on hope, noble Lords will be glad to hear, but the value of this report in relation to investigative journalism is that hope here should still outweigh anxiety.