Leveson Report: Media Plurality

Lord Sharkey Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2013 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Sharkey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to take forward issues of media plurality in the light of the Leveson report.

[Lord Sharkey]

My Lords, like most noble Lords, I very much welcomed the cross-party agreement on press regulation, and I very much hope that the current apparent contest between two rival versions of the royal charter is resolved in favour of the charter approved by Parliament. I am certain that our royal charter will help to prevent the kind of gross, shameful and even criminal behaviour that the Leveson report detailed so graphically. But no matter how very welcome this progress towards regulation is, I believe it is entirely timely for us to remind ourselves that Lord Justice Leveson was charged to look at both regulation of the press and ownership of the press—both important and, I believe, equally important.

It is worth recalling briefly why we have had to discuss regulation of the press at all. The obvious and shameful behaviour of elements of the press is the proximate reason, of course. However, much of this behaviour was also illegal or in clear violation of the press’s own code of conduct, which raises the questions of why the law was not enforced and the code not applied. The reason for these failures is to be found in the historic cosiness between politicians, the police and some parts of the print media. The cosiness existed—and perhaps still exists; we shall see—because of the perceived power of the press to punish or reward political parties or individuals. This perceived power exists largely because of the sheer size and reach of some parts of the print media, and it was this perceived power, by virtue of size and influence, that allowed parts of our press to consider themselves above the law or immune from the consequences of breaking it. It was the sense of power and immunity that fostered the widespread and corrupt culture that Leveson detailed in his report.

I am certain that regulation of the press is a necessary condition for reforming this culture, but I am equally certain that it is not sufficient. Size and reach have been the drivers of press misbehaviour and of the complicity of other of our institutions in that misbehaviour. As long as there are great concentrations of media ownership, the drivers of potential future misbehaviour will always be present. To make sure that regulation of the press achieves long-lasting and deep cultural reform, we must also address the issue of concentration of media ownership. If we do not do that, the chances are that not far down the road we will find ourselves back again in the last chance saloon commissioning Leveson mark 2.

It is quite striking, looking back at the various media crises of the past few years, to see how little discussion there has been in the media of the issue of media concentration and pluralism. One can see why this may be, of course, but it will have to change. There needs to be more public discussion, more examination, more analysis and simply more noise about the whole area of who owns what and what they do with it. There is a clear lesson from the setting up of the Leveson inquiry, which is that the public is slow to take notice and the Government are slow to act unless there is a clear problem to address. Of course, I acknowledge that there is already a considerable body of research and argument about what to do about concentration of media ownership. However, as I shall illustrate in a moment, much of that work has not entered the public consciousness, and quite a lot of this work seems, at first or even second glance, to be as easy to grasp as quantum physics.

It is in this context that I should say how very much I welcome the inquiry currently being held by the Lords Select Committee on Communications under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. I have seen the written evidence so far submitted to the committee in the very helpful documents provided for this debate by the Library. Although I shall touch on some of the themes and characteristics of these documents, I shall, as is proper, leave their full examination to the committee. I should also say that I very much look forward to hearing the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, in a few moments.

There are those who say that the whole issue of media concentration is just too complex to deal with in any satisfactory way. It is easy to see why people might say that. The problem is not in setting down what we would like to achieve. Ofcom defines the desired outcome of a plural market as,

“ensuring there is a diversity of viewpoints available and consumed across and within media enterprises and ... preventing any one media owner or voice having too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda”.

This is a pretty good objective and, as Lord Justice Leveson noted, it seems to be generally acceptable. The problems arise over how much is too much, and over how you measure it. Here is an invitation to complexity, eagerly seized by Ofcom.

In its report to the Secretary of State, Ofcom considered three types of broad metric: availability, consumption and impact. Within these, it considered five different types of consumption metric. The measurement proposals were certainly comprehensive, but also very complicated. Leveson noted this. He said that,

“its complexity is also a disadvantage, in that it will be difficult for most people to understand and could come under sustained attack from those media providers who feel that they may be the subject of plurality concerns”.

There is a very important point here: a complex system of ensuring plurality simply will not work. It will be opaque, user-unfriendly, difficult to explain and a bonanza for lawyers. What we need is simplicity and a measure that acknowledges the reality that the media exist in a revenue and profit-driven marketplace. When profits can be magicked away—something that we have seen quite a lot of recently—revenue is the best and simplest indicator of dominance.

There are already simple proposals for a measurement framework based on revenue, some put forward by Claire Enders and Professor Barnett. I urge the Minister to consider very carefully the merit of those simple proposals. Everyone will understand a rule that says that you cannot have more than X% of market revenue. If you can measure market presence easily, as I believe you can with such a simple rule, then Leveson’s next question applies: what action should be taken if plurality rules are breached? Again, simplicity and the commercial world should be our guide. The answer is that rule breach should lead to divestment. That is what happens when the size of an ordinary commercial company presents a danger, and it is what should happen to media organisations too.

One frequent additional source of complication in discussions of what to do about media plurality is the internet. Or, more precisely, should we include Google, Facebook, Twitter and others in our list of media organisations that should be scrutinised for possible concentration of power and influence? I know there has been a lot of discussion about all this, but again I think there is a simple and simplifying approach available to us. There should be a very simple test. Do these and similar very large internet players exercise meaningful editorial control? If they do, include them; if they do not, then do not. As things stand, I do not believe that any of these companies exercise meaningful editorial control. If it is simply their size that presents a problem, it is surely a commercial problem and best dealt with by the CMA.

In the time available, I have been able to deal with only some aspects of the issues surrounding media plurality. I am very much aware, for example, that the place of local and regional media in all this deserves detailed discussion at some point. I very much look forward to hearing the contributions of other noble Lords on the subject of plurality.

I also want to say to the Minister that I do not underestimate the difficulties that the Government will have in finding a solution to this problem, just as I hope that the Minister does not underestimate the need actually to find a solution in the near future. I realise that when the Minister replies to the Question—which is, it is worth repeating: “To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to take forward issues of media plurality in the light of the Leveson Report”—he will almost certainly not be able to give us dates or a very precise plan, but I should be very grateful if he could at least describe the process and the road map by which the Government intend to progress the matter, assuming that they intend to do so.