Lord Inglewood
Main Page: Lord Inglewood (Non-affiliated - Excepted Hereditary)
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, regarding public interest, editors are responsible for the truth and for what is published in a newspaper, not the source of the story. If a story is not accurate, a range of options is available: the editor, the PPC or the courts, depending on the nature and the scale of the inaccuracy. We do not believe that additional safeguards on this point are necessary, but of course we will await the results of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into the wider ethics of the press.
Lord Inglewood
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of a local newspaper company. Would my noble friend the Minister not agree two things: first, that the bribery legislation applies equally to all citizens in this country, whether they are journalists or whether they are not; and secondly, that the decision whether to prosecute when evidence of a crime is available is something which is vested in the prosecution authorities?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, my noble friend goes really to the heart of the matter and brings out a very important point, which was stated clearly by my noble friend Lord Patten in his speech on Sunday, in which he said that the suggestion that a possible solution to the current crisis in confidence in the media today, which seems to be present as well in your Lordships’ House, would be a form of the Hippocratic oath,
“a watermark to distinguish proper, ethical journalism from the mass of intrusive and unregulated material”.