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Press challenged on regulation
Ben Fenton, Chief Media Correspondent Financial Times
DATELINE: 17/9/11
Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, has challenged the national newspaper industry to put its house in order by devising a regulatory system free from interference by powerful owners. He added that regulation would also have to apply to their websites, including the video that would increasingly become part of the traditional "newspaper" offering online.
Speaking at the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge on Wednesday, Mr Hunt said that in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, the public would insist on a "system of robust, independent regulation with credible sanction-making power".While emphasising that the government would await the results of the Leveson inquiry into the workings of the press and its relations with the police and politicians, he said the current self-regulatory system, centred on the Press Complaints Commission, funded by the newspaper industry, could not carry on.
He made clear the government preferred an alternative system in which proprietors were not involved.
"Independence [for a regulator] means freedom from interference by politicians, but also from media owners so that complaints about press behaviour can be dealt with credibly.
"Other industries have developed models which have robust and credible sanction regimes and we should consider them with an open mind as we await Lord Justice Leveson's recommendations."
He said the new digital era, blurring distinctions between print and video, gave the newspaper industry a chance to look to its future. "My challenge to you is this: work with us to establish a credible, independent regulatory framework which has the confidence of consumers and we will support it as the one-stop regulatory framework to be applied across all the technology platforms you operate."
In other parts of his speech, Mr Hunt laid down "directions of travel" for a proposed communications bill. He said that as the value of free-to-air licences fell in a digital age, public-service broadcasters such as ITV and Channel Five would have to be given more flexibility in their business models. However he gave no details of what he had in mind.
Mr Hunt told the audience, including the heads of all main UK broadcasters, he had asked Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, to consider how it could establish new measurements of media influence as part of a way of ensuring there was no concentration of power. This followed the row over Mr Murdoch's effort to buy the 60.9 per cent of British Sky Broadcasting he does not already own, a bid abandoned amid the controversy over phone hacking.
He added that he would ask the regulator to examine whether politicians should have any role at all in deciding who owned the media. The BSkyB affair had made him question whether it was right for any politician to take such important decisions. He said it was vital to avoid too much caution in setting out the regulatory framework for the creative industries, which offered the UK a greater opportunity for growth than any country in the world bar the US.
● Lord Justice Leveson has ruled that 46 victims of phone hacking or press intrusion will be represented by a single barrister when the first phase of his inquiry begins its public sessions, probably next month.
Last modified: Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Your comments:
Murdoch+Convergence = New Regulation
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt took a step back from political involvement in media ownership issues in a recent speech and called for a new press regulation system free from political or owner interference (ie. not the Press Complaints Commission or PCC).
It's a sign of our revolutionary times that the speech at which he called for a “system of robust, independent regulation with credible sanction-making power" was made at the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge on 14 September - that's 'television' as in the moving picture box in the corner of the room.
Admittedly, Hunt argued that the new system would have to cover newspaper websites, and the video that they increasingly feature, and he talked about Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, extending its remit to act as a watchdog on concentration of ownership within the media as a whole. But despite arguing against too much caution in setting out a new regulatory framework for 'the creative industries', he failed to grasp the nettle of convergence.
All he could come up with was a blurry vision of new media where the line between print and video became indistinct. “My challenge to you is this:" he said, "work with us to establish a credible, independent regulatory framework which has the confidence of consumers and we will support it as the one-stop regulatory framework to be applied across all the technology platforms you operate.”
Meanwhile, in another part of the forest and at the same time, newspaper editor Lionel Barber called for a Media Standards Commission dominated by independent outsiders rather than owners and editors. And Barber, editor of the Financial Times, said that bloggers like Guido Fawkes and aggregators like the Huffington Post should be regulated by his proposed commission.
Giving the annual Fulbright lecture at the British Library, Barber announced the death of the PCC and argued that new forms of press regulation would have to recognise that "the distinction between old and new media are rapidly becoming meaningless in the new digital ecosystem. New media is moving into reporting. Old media is blogging and tweeting, and using social media to promote and distribute news and analysis around the world.”
Well done, Hunt and Barber! Some of us only been saying the same thing for the past decade or more. Still, who ever listens to the workers?
It obviously takes a scandal to wake up the great and the good.
Posted by: Gary Herman: 17 Sep, 2011 14:31:49
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World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
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DATELINE: 13/3/13
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A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
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