Shoddy journalism and an unrestrained Twitter
As newspapers relish in the great embarrassments of the BBC there are still important points to consider before Lord Justice Leveson sends his report to the printers, particularly when it comes to regulation, writes Raymond Snoddy.
Newspapers have not been slow to note the irony. Lord Justice Leveson should be producing his lengthy tome on the culture, practices and ethics of the press at around the same time as Nick Pollard, former head of Sky News, should complete his inquiry into at least some of the practices and management culture of BBC News.
Events at BBC News most closely resemble a Greek tragedy where everyone played their allotted parts, observed, in the main, the protocols of the Corporation and stumbled towards their destiny. There was an absence of malice and no suggestion of illegality, at least outside the lifetime of Jimmy Savile.
Yet newspapers can still be expected to note the difference of treatment meted out to the two branches of the media. The newspaper industry is, largely, expected to be eviscerated by Lord Leveson and face, at the very least, recommendations for statutory underpinning essentially because of illegal practices at the News of the World.
The BBC has been able to wash its dirty linen indoors with the help of external figures like Pollard and the former High Court judge, Dame Janet Smith. No one doubts either their competence or their independence but it is still a piecemeal approach.
Maybe, in time, all the work can be brought together and add up to an inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the BBC but it will probably have to be the work of media academics long after the event.
There have been understandable cross-media resentments in recent months. Newspapers thought – rightly – that the BBC showed considerable relish in its coverage of Leveson that often touched on the sanctimonious.
As a result there is no lack of schadenfreude in newspaper coverage of the great embarrassments of the BBC.
Despite all that there are still important points to consider before Lord Justice Leveson sends his report to the printers.
The most obvious is that both of the current issues – the inaccurate destruction of the reputation of Lord McAlpine and decades of abuse by Savile, some of it practised on BBC premises – happened in the sort of regulated system that his Lordship might now wish on the press.
Any system of regulation can fail, as indeed can the established law of the land, something that Lord Justice Leveson will doubtless comment on. But at the very least he should accept that theoretical forms of statutory underpinning are not an answer to anything in themselves.
It would be a far more creative thing if he were to concentrate on the real conundrum – how to maintain standards, ethics and media economics in the age of the Internet rather than reaching for new statutes.
The most plausible solution remains, despite the obvious difficulties and the harem of actors and comics calling for statutory regulation, to work with the newspaper industry and come up with an effective and independent form of self-regulation. It is likely to be the approach taken by Prime Minister David Cameron after a period of due deliberation. And events at the BBC should at least be a factor in his decision.
It cannot be said often enough that Lord Justice Leveson has already done his work by exposing to the public gaze practices that most journalists abhor and are embarrassed by. Quite apart from phone hacking it has amounted to a general wake-up call for the industry and you can be sure, from now on, of less casual cruelty from the press.
The Twitter issue
It will be very interesting to see what Lord Justice Leveson makes of the totally unregulated Twitter which had a role to play in the ‘unmasking’ of Lord McAlpine and could have an important part to play in any subsequent libel action.
Twitter comes from a robust American tradition of freedom of expression that does not believe in any prior restraint before publication. With tweets emerging at the rate thousands a second, traditional editorial safeguards would be totally impossible anyway. Lord McAlpine’s lawyer is right to wonder whether all the false allegations against his client can ever all be taken down from the internet, which, unfortunately, often feeds conspiracy theorists.
Amusing then that Fran Unsworth, acting head of BBC News, should ask BBC staff to desist from their twittering on the BBC crisis. She should try bringing back King Canute.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions at the BBC surrounding the Newsnight/Savile nexus. Intentions might have been well meant when bringing in two ‘outside’ BBC executives to handle the child abuse story that Newsnight did broadcast rather than deputy head of news Steve Mitchell and his boss Helen Boaden. But the decision has left Adrian Van Klaveren, controller of Radio Five Live, who is based in Salford and Peter Johnston, director of BBC Northern Ireland in a very awkward position.
They let through a ‘shoddy’ piece of journalism that should never have been broadcast and one that could yet cost the BBC a lot of money. Yet would it be fair if those who were parachuted in were to become the fall guys rather than those who held the great offices of state at BBC News?
It still looked odd for acting director general Tim Davie, who must still be rubbing his eyes to find himself in such a position, to force Boaden and Mitchell to step aside when they were not actually involved in the second Newsnight scandal.
I doubt we’ll get much clarity until the inquiry reports have been published and the resignations have been sought. Until then we can all keep up to date with the leaks – via Twitter.