Future of Investigative Journalism: Communications Committee Report

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Wednesday 25th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I thank all concerned for this debate, which demonstrates once again the ability of your Lordships’ House to gather together a great range of expertise and quality when debating issues of the day. I also think it is a good sign that so many members of the Communications Committee have been present to debate the report that they produced. That adds a different style from simply reading the report because individual members pick out particular aspects of the report, leaving us with ideas or topics that they think should be given further consideration. We are grateful to them for that.

I am particularly pleased that we were able to hear from my noble friend Lord Macdonald of Tradeston in his valedictory appearance on behalf of the committee. I am sure it will not be the last time he speaks, either here or in the main Chamber. He has been able to add a sense of realism—as have other members—because he has actually been in the areas where decisions of the nature discussed in the report have been taken.

In welcoming the report, I draw attention to the fact that this was authorised for publication in January and published in February, but we are only debating it in July. There may be reasons for that that I am not aware of, but I do not think it does the work of our Select Committees any good if they are held in the dark and not allowed to reveal themselves fully in debate as has happened today. Perhaps the Minister can comment on that.

We have heard of the genesis of the report: the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, in his bath on a Saturday night, date unspecified. I do not think that we need to know any more, thank you. However, no one reading the report or listening to the high-quality debate can be in any doubt of the salience of the work of your Lordships’ Communications Committee, or fail to be impressed by its ability to spot the key topics of our time, and provide the vital evidence that gives us a chance to discuss the issues it raises.

As the report says, in recent months the role and practices of investigative journalism have received, and will continue to receive, unprecedented scrutiny—I think the noble Lord, Lord Black, called it “pain”—in terms of Lord Justice Leveson’s ongoing inquiry and various other reports and pieces of legislation that could bear on this issue. The report says that the purpose of its work was to look at the future of investigative journalism in the light of the problems currently facing the media and the technological revolution unfolding in the area. However, the report goes much further than that; it is not simply a review of the situation because it produces a number of rather important recommendations. I shall go through some of those that we should focus on today.

On reading the report, we are left with the sense that there is a real and present danger that responsible investigative journalism will not flourish in the future as it has in the past. Today I shall argue that many of the report’s recommendations could and should be implemented immediately, as well as feeding into the action that will need to be taken on Leveson and the other initiatives. I shall cover three main issues: why responsible, high-quality investigative journalism matters and what the issues that threaten it are; what ought to be done immediately to begin to remedy that situation; and what we should be looking at from other agencies, such as Leveson, to secure the future of responsible, high-quality public interest journalism, to borrow a phrase from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. The report states:

“Responsible, high quality, investigative journalism matters; it is a vital constituent of the UK’s system of democratic governance and accountability. At its best, it informs and educates us, enhances our democracy, and is a force for good”.

I say, “Bravo!” to that.

In a world experiencing many changes, few are greater than the revolution in media and communications. New ownership structures, changing consumer habits and technological innovation have together eroded the traditional distinction between broadcasting, newspapers, online news provision, blogs and social networking. These are threats to a way of communicating news that challenges newspaper proprietors, editors and TV news executives across the world. The traditional media have responded to this threat by changing the way that they do business.

First, our mainstream media are no longer “mass” in the old sense. They cater to niches and have become fragmented. Secondly, new technology has created “24 hours a day, seven days a week” media industries. News now moves in real time, tracking and reporting events, great and small, as they happen. The imperative to keep up with competitors and steal a march on them means that the premium for broadcasters and online news sources is to get the story out with the greatest speed possible. Because news breaks during 24-hour news days, the daily or evening newspapers find it increasingly difficult to generate audiences for what they produce.

Thirdly, as a result of increased competition and the consequent need to fuel new stories every hour of every day, the premium for the media now is sensation and scoop not accuracy, headlines not substance, and angles on a story rather than depth of coverage. Therefore, one of the casualties of this new media world is the quality of news itself. Stories now break based on rumour and gossip. People are aware of breaking news but, if it is not substantiated, the audience rarely finds out that the story was fiction, not fact. The line between news and comment is ever harder to find because news comes so fast that a newspaper or TV channel becomes less the reporter of the news and more the commentator on the news. Comment now infuses the very way that news is reported, the issues that are selected, the campaigns that newspapers mount and the framing within which news is presented. Therefore, a question of concern for all citizens in a democracy such as ours is whether a comment-based and scoop-driven media can reflect our common culture and provide the forum within which democratic debate about public life can take place. This is a point to which I shall return.

My second point is to press the Government to take on some of the report’s recommendations to begin the urgent work that is needed to improve the situation—yes, even before the report from Lord Leveson and in advance of other ongoing work. Piecemeal action is rarely to be recommended but on this occasion it is justified, as we really do have a looming crisis.

Several noble Lords mentioned the question of whether, as the report says, investigative journalism is suffering as a result of inconsistencies and a lack of clarity in the law. This is the “50 shades of grey” point made by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. An additional point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Black: there are several other areas in which the law needs to be clarified. We have heard that the DPP is consulting on what the report describes as the publication of his,

“broad approach to determining which cases should be prosecuted or otherwise in cases where illegal activity undertaken by journalists in the course of an investigation might be considered to be in the public interest”,

which is welcome. I would be grateful if the noble Baroness, when she responds, could give us some idea of the timescale for this and whether it is imminent.

The report recommends that every news organisation should have sensible internal procedures to track and formally record its decisions first to investigate and secondly to publish a story if such decisions rely on the public interest defence. In its response to the committee, Ofcom makes some points about this. I read it as saying that it thinks they are already broadly doing this in a way that would be satisfactory to the committee. Again, I wonder whether this is right. It would be helpful if the Minister could respond on this and see whether she could work with Ofcom to make sure that this becomes a standard and not just one of the number of ways in which this activity is documented.

As we have heard, the report repeats a recommendation that the Communications Act 2003 should be amended to enable the public interest test to be invoked at the discretion of either the Secretary of State or Ofcom. Again, there has been some action on this and we would be grateful if the Minister could update us on where we are.

Finally on this point, the report recommends that the Charity Commission considers the current pressures of investigative journalism, as well as its democratic importance, when interpreting the relevant legislation. This is a serious point. However, we are helped by the excellent Hodgson report that just came out. This may require some primary legislation. Therefore, it may be possible to work this in together. Perhaps the Minister could take this proposal and give us some advice, either today or later, on whether the department might consider moving with this.

My third point concerns issues the report flags up for other committees or agencies to take forward when they report. However, I hope that much in the report is already being acted on because so much of it is salient. Again, perhaps the Minister could reflect on the progress on a number of these points when she replies. I shall go through my list very quickly and not dwell on it. It includes: the question of tax breaks and other financial incentives that might help broadcasting and newspaper industries through this difficult transitional stage; regulating online content, which currently falls outwith the scope of regulation; triggering the public interest test when a news organisation develops a more than 25% share of the national newspaper market through organic growth as well as proposed mergers; and strengthening media ownership rules to protect plurality. I know that Ofcom is dealing with the latter two issues, so an update would be useful.

The report also requests that the charter review process takes on board the suggestion that the BBC should provide high-quality investigative content in both its television and radio services, including at a regional level. Presumably this is something the department is beginning to shape up to, so a comment would be useful. We have talked about the Defamation Bill and I think we are all looking forward to the debate on that. It was also mentioned that there needs to be more consideration for the role of whistleblowers so that they are properly protected.

Finally, I shall deal with the money. I am struck by how today’s debate has largely focused on how to regulate the industry and, highly relevant in view of the newspaper headlines this morning, how to punish malfeasance. Is there not also the question of how to protect and support the good? One of the casualties of the new media world is the quality of news itself. Stories now break based on rumour and gossip. People are aware but they are not told absolutely whether the story was fiction or fact. As I have said, the line between news and comment is harder to find. As news comes so fast, the TV channel becomes more the commentator than the reporter.

As we have heard, the advertising business model of today’s print media is being destroyed as advertising gravitates from the ordinary news media to the internet. The happenstance of a triangular and interdependent relationship, whose common interest happened to coincide between owners, advertisers and consumers, is breaking down. The question arises: who will sponsor, pay for and underpin quality journalism? Who will fund the in-depth research and publish the quality writing we have enjoyed to date, which, at its best, is the envy of the world? Few people believe that the newspapers we have today will exist in their present physical form in 10 or even five years’ time. No private proprietor of the type described by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, will be able to sustain broadsheet losses in the order of £40 million or £50 million a year at a time when advertising and readers are deserting these newspapers. Even if shareholders can be persuaded by John Kay to think longer term, they will still want growth and rising profits in the bad times as well as the good.

We need to look at the mechanisms by which we not only deal with abuses in the press but enhance and incentivise good standards. The report observes that public funding is a potential model for financing investigative journalism. It works in other worlds. Many noble Lords have referred to philanthropy. I have my doubts about that, as others have expressed. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s thoughts on the report’s specific proposal that a proportion of all media fines should be allocated to a fund reserved for financing investigative journalism or for the training of investigative journalists.

However, the real problem here, and something that the committee might consider returning to in a future report, is that there are features of good-quality investigative journalism that, in a purely market-based system, the market by itself cannot produce. Of course we want journalism that meets diverse consumer tastes and of course we want publishers who compete to innovate in meeting those tastes—and they will—but we also want journalism to meet certain standards irrespective of whether they limit profit maximisation.

We can deal with the bad issues arising from journalism by refining and enforcing the law, but as a matter of public policy we need to begin to think about how we incentivise the good as well; in other words, as the standard of journalism declines—and I think there is an issue in the internet age about declining standards—we must have a means by which we incentivise the good, always remembering the challenging words of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, about being certain about what exactly investigative journalism is.

We faced similar problems at the start of radio and then TV broadcasting, and out of those emerged the BBC licence fee, so perhaps that licence fee should be available to the internet and for publications that go beyond broadcasting. I offer this idea to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, the next time he is ruminating in his bathroom of a Saturday evening: that the committee considers this issue for possible future study, as I am certain that it is something we shall return to.