Leveson Report: Media Plurality

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for securing and introducing this debate. I want to approach this question slightly differently. In the Leveson report and elsewhere there is an enormous emphasis on who owns what, on what percentage of shares in the media are owned by News International or any other body.

Ownership is certainly important, because our ultimate concern in a democracy is to ensure that the media are balanced, objective, impartial and represent a diversity of points of view. This is what the political culture of a democracy is about. Ownership becomes important only in so far as it stands in the way of these objectives, which of course it does. I do not doubt that at all. After all, Murdoch’s 173 newspapers worldwide supported the Iraq war. That kind of homogeneity does not spring up from nowhere; somebody is imposing it. My good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, just told us what happened when one particular Peer speaks and he alone is mentioned in the newspapers.

Yet supposing we had not one but five Rupert Murdochs—not one press baron but five press barons—would that necessarily guarantee the kind of democratic culture that we want? That happens in India, where not one but half a dozen barons have control. What happens? They collude, form a cartel and break rules, as various oil companies and banks have done; or collectively, they are subject to certain commercial pressures, and therefore end up behaving in exactly the same way; or they have certain common interests as proprietors, and therefore while they may compete, when their common interests are at stake they are all as one.

While ownership is important, it is not enough. I do not want us in this country to make the mistake of thinking that if no one owns more than 30% or 40% of shares in the media, somehow the problem will disappear or the problem will be solved. It will not; it will continue to haunt us. As I said, it is perfectly possible for press barons to collude, unite, form a cartel and continue the ugly practices that we would rightly condemn.

It also does not matter whether or not these people are domiciled because indigenous capitalists are not necessarily better than those settled abroad, nor does it matter whether or not they pay taxes here. We seem to be clutching at straws. I suggest that the problem is so deep that, although ownership is important, we need to concentrate on other things as well. We should be prepared for a world in which you might have multiple ownership but still the problem that worries us continues to haunt us. There may be a lack of balance and impartiality, no diversity of views and all the phone hacking and ugly practices that brought the Leveson inquiry into existence.

Nor do I think it is terribly important to inquire how often the Culture Secretary or the Prime Minister has met this or that media mogul. It is all right for public consumption but this is not how decisions are made. Friends of the Prime Minister talk to friends of media moguls and things get decided, or the media create a climate which channels the Prime Minister’s or Culture Secretary’s thinking in a certain direction. Looking at the log or the e-mails sent would not by itself help us to understand how decisions are made. Therefore, I suggest, with great humility, as I am not a media man but a boring, abstract philosopher, that we need to concentrate first, on how to stop this sort of thing happening irrespective of how many owners we have, and, secondly, on the concrete, positive mechanisms of self-correction that we can build into our system.

I want to run though half a dozen ideas which I have canvassed in my writings and in various speeches I have made in your Lordships’ House. First, I entirely agree that we need a strong regulatory mechanism and must insist on and enforce certain standards that Leveson has urged. Secondly, we must have an independent and publicly funded body to audit the media coverage of important issues; assess how they have covered these issues on the bases of accuracy, impartiality, balance and self-correcting procedures; and inform the public which media have behaved in which way. I refer to the example just given by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. We should name and shame the media in exactly the same way that we name and shame schools, teachers and NHS trusts.

Thirdly, we should make sure that the media give regular space to alternative points of view. There is no reason why 10% or 15% of the space in any newspaper or media—as used to be the case in Canada and elsewhere—or even 15% or 20% of the space could not be allocated to those who take a different point of view. Public funds should be made available to marginalised groups to enable them to articulate and promote their point of view.

Fourthly, we must safeguard the integrity of publicly owned institutions such as the BBC and ensure that they remain objective, command popular support and provide an alternative to the profit-driven media. Fifthly, there is no reason why Parliament cannot have a Select Committee on media coverage and hold public hearings where newspaper proprietors, journalists and others are required to explain why they have covered events in a particular way. Such a committee could examine systematic lies about membership of the European Union or about immigration. There is no reason why a parliamentary committee could not call press barons to account and ask them to explain their actions. I will speak for one minute more and then I am through.

Sixthly, MPs and Peers are expected to declare their interests, and I have never understood why journalists are not required to declare theirs. If a journalist has enjoyed the hospitality of a company or is a member of a party and writes about an event, it is important that he should declare his political and financial interests. Similarly, a newspaper editorial should not comment on an issue in which the owner of that newspaper has a stake. The constraints imposed on MPs and Peers should also be imposed on media proprietors and journalists.