The Financial Times, the Guardian, and the Independent this week shifted their position towards a compromise on press regulation. Index criticises the change of stance, which risks threatening press freedom
Worrying news from Buckingham Palace Road this morning: the Telegraph is reporting that Culture Secretary Maria Miller’s special adviser Joanna Hindley warned its reporters of Miller’s connection to the Leveson report before the newspaper published details of her expenses, notably that Miller’s parents lived in her taxpayer-funded second home.
The paper took the rare step of choosing to disclose details of the conversation in light of concerns over “the potential dangers of politicians being given a role in overseeing the regulation of the press.”
The key passage from their story:
When a reporter approached Mrs Miller’s office last Thursday, her special adviser, Joanna Hindley, pointed out that the Editor of The Telegraph was involved in meetings with the Prime Minister and the Culture Secretary over implementing the recommendations made by Lord Justice Leveson.
“Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of editors’ meetings around Leveson at the moment. So I am just going to kind of flag up that connection for you to think about,” said Miss Hindley.
Miss Hindley also said the reporter should discuss the issue with “people a little higher up your organisation”.
In an email statement, a DCMS spokesperson said:
Mrs Miller’s special adviser raised concerns with a journalist about the nature of an approach to Mrs Miller’s elderly father. Her advisor noted that Mrs Miller was in regular contact with the paper’s editor and would raise her concerns directly with him, which Mrs Miller did subsequently.
However, this is a separate issue to on-going discussions about press regulation. Mrs Miller has made the Government’s position on this clear.
This “flagging up” is worrying, but it’s not the first instance of those in power feeling that they already have right to tell reporters what to print. Remember the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson’s revelation last month, pre-Leveson?
In the last few weeks, I have had an MP and a government minister call asking me to (respectively) discipline a Spectator writer who had annoyed him on Twitter and take down a blog that was ‘over-the-top’.
Meanwhile, Evan Harris of the Hacked Off campaign, which pushes for tougher regulation of the press, has apparently suggested Miller should “recuse herself” from Leveson issues.
Those of us concerned about a post-Leveson environment in which emboldened MPs are able to intimidate the press have been told we’re overreacting. But today’s report proves our point: it is precisely the sort of thing that could prevent journalists from doing their jobs and endangers press freedom and the role of the fourth estate in holding politicians to account. And it does little favours to the argument that the state should have a role in regulating our papers.
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. Follow her on Twitter: @martaruco
As the theatrics of the Leveson Inquiry draw to a close, Marta Cooper looks back on the hundreds of hours of evidence in court 73
Max Mosley has some ambitious ideas for the internet.
Speaking briefly at the Leveson Inquiry today, the former motorsports boss outlined his plans for the future regulation of the British press, on which Leveson will make recommendations this autumn. Mosley recommended a Press Commission to succeed the PCC and create the rules in addition to a Tribunal with statutory underpinning that would enforce said rules. The latter would be able to impose injunctions, and give reasonable notice before publishing certain stories unless there is a strong public interest in not doing so.
Having a rummage through his written proposal (available here) it’s his ideas for the web that stand out the most.
Mosley’s notion of a Tribunal, which would deal with privacy, defamation, harassment and accuracy, would have authority over “the full internet (subject to the necessary legislation)”. In addition to other powers, this would include a power to “suspend an individual’s access to the internet” as well as the “authority to deal with any post on the internet, even from an individual”.
The idea that the internet is a space that cannot be controlled, Mosley says, is “nonsense”, adding that users should obey the laws of their own countries.
Among some of the other provisions his idea of a “UK internet statute” could perhaps contain are:
- service providers must know the identity and address of their clients. All social media must know the identity of each user and the identity of the user’s service provider. The IP address alone is not enough; (…)
- search engines available to UK internet users should remove from their search results on demand any material which a court or Tribunal has found unlawful. It would be a defence if in a particular case the search engine could demonstrate that this was not possible for technical reasons;
- social media and service providers should warn their clients of the need to obey the law and make compliance with the law a contractual term, particularly in relation to privacy, defamation and on-line harassment.
“Our regulator must have the ability to deal with the internet, right down to micro level. This will increasingly be where the problems lie,” Mosley writes.
Of course there are some problems with the ease with which we can now communicate. It is easier to spit vitriol at or about others (and land yourself in jail for doing so, as Swansea student Liam Stacey did earlier this year). Like many children, I was bullied at school and shudder to think how much more alienating it would have been if Facebook were around to take it past the hometime bell. We tweet as easily as we speak with little regard for legislation such as libel or contempt. In an extreme and deplorable case in May, the rape victim of footballer Ched Evans was outed on Twitter, though in English law rape victims are granted anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992. And in a more recent development, Derbyshire police are now investigating allegedly racist comments made on Twitter about footballer Ashley Cole.
Mosley suggests “a network of adjudicators” in “every large city” would be well-placed to solve problems of online abuse quickly. Yet how does he propose we set the parameters of policing online content? To refer every single person who has posted something ranging from moronic to actually damaging on any manner of social network to his Tribunal is, frankly, impractical.
Of course, there’s context to this. Mosley was at the centre of a 2008 News of the World splash which falsely reported him taking part in a “sick Nazi orgy” with five prostitutes. He sued the now-defunct tabloid for breach of privacy in 2009, but in May 2011 lost his bid impose a legal duty of prior notification, with the European Court of Human Rights ruling that such a system would have a “chilling effect” on the press.
Nor is he a huge fan of search engines. He told the Inquiry last November that he had started taking legal action against Google in France and Germany. He said:
The fundamental thing is that Google could stop this appearing but they don’t or won’t as a matter of principle (…) The really dangerous things are the search engines.
To which Leveson replied: “That’s part of the problem.”
Marta Cooper is an editorial researcher at Index. She tweets at @martaruco