Posts Tagged ‘Hacked Off’
April 26th, 2013
Yesterday’s announcement by several newspaper groups that they had launched their own royal charter for press regulation was met with anger by Hacked Off campaigners and, to be frank, confusion by the public at large.
Index, for our part, welcomed the rejection of the government’s royal charter, while still being opposed to the papers’ royal charter.
Why? Well, there’s the issue that Index doesn’t really want there to be any royal charter, at all, no matter who’s dreamt it up. It still creates the prospect of external political approval of press regulation.
There’s also a problem that the papers’ version of the charter gives them a veto over appointments to the regulatory board, which risks the regulator being seen as a tool of the industry, just as the PCC was perceived to be.
Then there’s the issue that it doesn’t really address the problem of the threat of exemplary damages for those outside the regulator, one of Index’s key concerns.
And it leaves us none the wiser as to the whole “What’s a newspaper/journalist/website/blog?” question, which has been the cause of some confusion (as illustrated by Martin Belam‘s satirical take on the government’s explanatory flowchart below).
Still, the rejection is the interesting part. And the furore over the rejection has somewhat undermined the claims made by government and campaigners that they believed in a wholly voluntary system.
What happens next? By Leveson’s own admission, if a substantial part of the industry refuses to sign up, then the regulator has failed before it has even begun. That is where we seem to be now.
It was interesting to note that in his interview on BBC radio’s World At One yesterday, Peter Wright, who has been leading the discussion for Associated, Telegraph and News International publications, said that the other papers who are not part of that group saw the alternative royal charter proposal as a way to “get the ball rolling again” on negotiations over reform. That would suggest that even Wright sees this merely as the opening gambit in fresh negotiations.
So perhaps now we can start discussing the terms of a new, genuinely independent and voluntary regulator, without the mad rush that led to the government’s ultimately botched effort.
April 12th, 2013
The Department of Culture Media and Sport this week held a “mini-consultation” with the aim of soothing fears that bloggers may find themselves caught in the net of the proposed post-Leveson press regulator.
The fears stem from the initial drafting of the scope of the new regulator, which suggested that any “relevant publisher” of “news-related” material would be expected to join the regulator, and could face the “stick” of exemplary damages if they did not have a “reasonable” excuse for not being part of the regulatory system. These definitions applies to vast swathes of the web, as well as the traditional newspaper industry.
For many, the realisation dawned that the new regulator would not simply cover the “bad guys” of the Murdoch papers and the Mail; rather, in an age when anyone can be a journalist, so too can anyone with an online presence be regarded as a publisher of “news-related material”.
The task of defining who’s in and who’s out was brought into focus when leading site Mumsnet asked the DCMS whether it would be seen as a relevant publisher of news-related material. “We don’t know”, came the reply, reflecting the ill-thought nature of the whole process. Shortly afterwards, Mumsnet were told they would “probably not” be covered, but that ultimately, it would be for the courts to decide.
The DCMS then set out to develop a list of who would not be covered: Wine magazine Decanter was mentioned as not being a news publisher. This, frankly, is an insult to Decanter, which publishes wine news for people who are interested in wine.
Then we were told individual bloggers would not be covered, but that blogs that had multiple writers, or an editorial process, might. So that’s group blogs regulated, while, for example, the extremely influential and widely-read Jack of Kent blog, run by a single person, lawyer and journalist David Allen Green, is not.
“Small-scale” blogs are now, we are told, to be protected, but how does one define this? On what scale do we measure “small”?
Confusing? Yes. Because the whole thing is confused. The entire proposal is flawed, which is why Index had no wish to take part in this week’s consultation: we believe the whole situation to be irretrievable. The principal Index has consistently held — that only non-statute based regulation can guarantee a free press — has only been reinforced by the current fiasco.
Politicians and campaigners are desperately trying to keep this ill-conceived “press reform” momentum afloat, having seen it dragged out to sea on a self-generated wave of something-must-be-donery. These blogger consultations — the latest attempts to make sense of a nonsensical law — are the actions of a government, and a movement, not waving but drowning.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer at Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
September 17th, 2012
With power comes responsibility, warns Martin Moore of the Hacked Off campaign
(more…)
September 16th, 2011
The Hacked Off campaign, in association with the Liberal Democrats’ Social
Liberal Forum, and with the support of Index on Censorship and English PEN,
will be holding a fringe meeting with Hugh Grant at the Liberal Democrat
Conference 2011 in Birmingham.
“Phone Hacking, Privacy and Libel — The Future of the Press”,
will take place in the International Conference Centre (ICC) on Sunday
18 September at 1pm, in Hall 8b.
John Kampfner, chief executive of Index on Censorship, will join actor Hugh Grant, Liberal Democrats media spokesman Don
Foster MP, lawyer Charlotte Harris, and the Guardian’s head of media and
technology Dan Sabbagh. The fringe meeting will be chaired by former Lib Dem MP and member of the
Hacked Off advisory committee Dr Evan Harris.
The panel will discuss topics such as the current status of the Leveson and select committee
inquiries into phone hacking; police
investigations, such as Operation Weeting and Operation Elveden; the libel bill and Communications Review bill.
Panellists will also talk about the future of press self-regulation; the need for privacy reform, and the potential impact of changes to the UK’s libel laws.
John Kampfner will discuss press freedom in the light of phone hacking, privacy, super injunctions and Index’s ongoing Libel Reform campaign. While there has been concern about media standards in the UK, Index on Censorship strongly resists anything that will curb the freedom of the media. Maintaining media freedom in the UK is vitally important in a country condemned by the UN for its libel laws.
“Phone Hacking, Privacy and Libel – The Future of the Press” will take place
in the International Conference Centre (ICC) on Sunday, September 18, at
1pm, in Hall 8b.
The centre is inside the conference’s secure zone, so a conference pass is
needed to attend.
The ICC is on Broad Street, Birmingham, B1 2EA. Hall 8b is located on Level
5.
