They are right to have been concerned. The recession, coupled with a structural decline in the print press and the new competitive demands of digital media have meant that, in the print press at least, there is less spent on original, from the ground up, journalism. This is particularly true at local level where circulations have plummeted and advertising revenue has fallen off a cliff in the last decade. There is evidence that in certain local areas there is now sparse reporting of council meetings and court cases, and little scrutiny of other public authorities. This is certainly the case in south Wales, where we run a joint project on the future of local news with Cardiff University.

The Lords’ report makes some sensible recommendations. It presses the government to offer further tax breaks or other financial incentives to help news through this ‘difficult transitional phase’. With this in mind it urges the government to rethink existing charity law to make it clearer that investigative journalism counts as a charitable purpose. It recommends that news organisations keep an audit trail of decisions, which could then be used as a defence against legal action. It also raises entirely valid concerns about the growth of public relations, and the opaque use of public relations material by journalists. This leads it to the excellent recommendation that:

“journalists themselves be transparent in their use of press releases particularly online where barriers to publishing links to press releases are low” (Paragraph 278).

As the creators of churnalism.com, built for exactly this purpose, we would most certainly endorse this recommendation.

These recommendations, though useful, would have been more helpful with some flesh on the bone. Tax breaks for investigative journalism makes sense, but what taxes? Withdrawing VAT zero rating from news organisations that do not join a regulatory organisation would be a very powerful incentive to join, but would it be illegal under EU law – as the Committee suggests it might – or not? And is 25% the right threshold for invoking the public interest test? The Committee farms this question off to Ofcom, Leveson and the CMS Committee when it could have suggested criteria itself.

The report has also, in my view, missed some critical opportunities. It comes out against public interest defences for journalism in law. Its rationale for this is that ‘it is not realistic for all relevant existing criminal laws to be changed’. This seems like an odd reason given that you would not have to change all relevant existing criminal laws. A statutory public interest defence for disclosure could be written into a bill (say the Protection of Freedoms Bill), with reference to the various laws to which it applies (e.g. RIPA, Computer Misuse Act, Official Secrets Act). Not only is this realistic, it’s relatively straightforward.

The alternative the report suggests – the publication of decisions based on public interest by prosecuting authorities – fudges the problem. The difficulty, as a number of editors have explained at Leveson, is that publications do not currently feel properly protected when doing something they know to be in the public interest, but which may involve practices which break the law. James Harding, editor of The Times, told the Leveson Inquiry:

“The world we live in now is very odd, because I fear that the public interest defence we have is currently too narrow and not sufficiently robust, but more than that, it’s very uneven, so it applies to some laws and not to others. So we’re in the odd situation that blagging — you can impersonate your way to securing a document, but you could not buy that document, say, from the knowledge that you had a public interest defence” (Leveson Inquiry, 17^th January, Morning Hearing).

If editors feel this way, then individual journalists and others exposing information in the public interest, will feel it even more acutely. Only with a statutory public interest defence will they feel in a strong enough position to investigate where they might need to break the law.

The report also falls into the trap of blurring the financial health of the incumbent news industry with the future of journalism. “[W]e welcome the Government’s removal in June 2011”, the report says in paragraph 159, “of the local cross-media ownership restrictions; this should also help support local media outlets by enabling them to consolidate across media platform”. Ownership rules are anachronistic, that’s true, but it is naive to think their relaxation is likely to lead to investment in investigative journalism. One need only look at how many of the incumbents have, when given the choice over the last decade, chosen to cut editorial costs rather than sacrifice profits.

The Lords Committee also shies away from criticising the government’s Local TV plans. This is a shame because the plans represent a massive missed opportunity when it comes to investigative journalism. The government plans to spend £25 million on transmitters with a shelf-life of 3-5 years, and another £15 million on television programming that will be only marginally about public interest journalism. Imagine, if instead of spending the money on transmitters and features programming, it turned the £40 million into an innovation fund for news, similar to the Knight News Challenge in the US. Organisations and individuals could apply for funds for innovative news projects, new investigative journalism ventures, and entrepreneurial news initiatives. Suddenly, an issue where there is real cause for concern would blossom with energy and creativity. And all without spending any more than has already been committed.

Now that would have been a radical, forward looking recommendation.

Working for The Orwell Prize (Media Standards Trust)

Location London

Salary In the region of £25,000 pro rata

The Media Standards Trust is looking for a new administrator for the Orwell Prize, Britain’s most prestigious prize for political writing.

The successful candidate will be required to:

• Administer the entry process (which includes calling for entries from publishers, editors, journalists and bloggers; logging entries and upholding eligibility rules; and liaising with judges)
• Organise events (including the launch debate, shortlist debate, awards ceremony), and explore organising standalone events and events at literary festivals
• Promote the Prize to the press and the public, especially press around the longlist, shortlist and winner announcements
• Manage relationships with publishers, news organisations, bloggers, literary festivals, Orwell experts, bookshops and others
• Maintain, edit and curate the Orwell Prize website, diary blogs, twitter feed, newsletter, YouTube channel and flickr stream
• Work with the director of the Prize, the director of the Media Standards Trust and the Council of the Orwell Prize
• Develop the Prize
• Manage interns

Applicants should have:

• An interest in and understanding of journalism, politics, new media and political writing
• Some knowledge of the works of George Orwell and willingness to learn more
• Excellent organisational, time management, research and computer skills

The successful candidate will be taking over the job in the middle of the Prize cycle – just before the judging of the longlists – and will therefore need to be a quick learner and able to start at the end of February or beginning of March.

Please apply with a CV and covering letter to OrwellPrize@gmail.com.

Closing date: Friday 17 February 2012

Interviews are likely to be conducted w/c 20 February.

Start date will be end of February or beginning of March.

A copy of this advert can be found at w4mp and on the Orwell Prize website.

In addition to a written witness statement, the MST has so far submitted the following as evidence (click on the titles to read the documents):

• A More Accountable Press (2009, referred to as Submitted Evidence #1 in Martin Moore’s written statement)
• Can independent self-regulation keep standards high and preserve press freedom? (2010, Submitted Evidence #2)
• PCC Statistics: a critical analysis by the Media Standards Trust (unpublished, 2011, Submitted Evidence #3)
• Did the PCC fail when it came to phone hacking? (2012, Submitted Evidence #4)
• Privacy: Submission to the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions (2011, Submitted Evidence #5)
• Press Self-Regulation: A History in Five Reports (forthcoming, to be submitted separately, Submitted Evidence #6)
• The Future of Investigative Journalism: Submission to House of Lords Communications Select Committee (2011, Submitted  Evidence #7)

You can also watch video of the oral evidence session, or read a transcript, on the Leveson Inquiry website.

Martin was giving evidence alongside Will Moy, of Full Fact.

Did the PCC fail when it came to phone hacking?

Many within the press have argued that the Leveson Inquiry is unfortunate and unnecessary, a political distraction partly designed to divert attention from politicians’ links with News International, and a threat to press freedom. They also argue that self-regulation was not to blame for the phone hacking scandal: it was a failure of law, not the Press Complaints Commission.

This pamphlet argues that those claiming the PCC did not fail in the case of phone hacking are wrong. It will show how, although its defenders are justified in saying it did not have the remit or the resources to deal with the scandal, it still failed: by claiming responsibility for regulating newsgathering without the resources or the powers to do so; by giving the deliberate and misleading impression that it was investigating phone hacking and associated problems; and by claiming there were no serious problems and no signs of malpractice beyond one rogue reporter, without having any evidence to show whether there were or were not.

This forms part of the MST’s submission to the Leveson Inquiry.

PCC Statistics: A critical analysis by the Media Standards Trust

An analysis of the measurements of success of the PCC based on its own statistics, including an independent audit of the MST’s findings by Full Fact.

The research in this report was undertaken in the first half of 2011 but was not published due to external developments in the phone hacking story from July 2011.

This report has since been submitted to the Leveson Inquiry.

“[Nick] Davies’s work…has gained no traction at all in the rest of Fleet Street, which operates under a system of omerta so strict that it would secure a nod of approbation from the heads of the big New York crime families” Peter Oborne, The Observer, April 2010

“There seemed to be some omerta principle at work that meant that not a single other national newspaper thought this could possibly be worth an inch of newsprint” Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, Newsweek, 2011

Tom Watson MP grabbed headlines last November when he accused James Murdoch of being a “mafia boss” and operating a code of silence, but he wasn’t the first to use the “media omerta” analogy in the phone hacking scandal.

The media’s treatment of developments had been markedly selective. Curiously, it was not just the News International titles that avoided certain avenues of inquiry, following The Guardian’s 2009 revelation of widespread voicemail interception.

In a chapter of a new book about phone hacking we examine Oborne and Rusbridger’s assertions that the press significantly under-reported the phone hacking scandal – a news story which would eventually lead to the demise of the News of the World, several high profile resignations and the ongoing Leveson Inquiry.

Despite significant revelations in July 2009 about the possible extent of phone hacking at the News of the World, coverage of the issue in the press was minimal. Exempting The Guardian and The Observer, a trawl of the articles published in the UK’s major national press titles between 10 June 2006 and 10 November 2011 reveals a failure to report the phone hacking scandal in a sustained and systematic manner.

As shown in our graphs here, there are distinctive patterns in levels of coverage and angles chosen by different national newspaper titles. Coverage only picked up after an investigation by the New York Times at the end of 2010 and the revelations of July 2011.

The story warranted very little newsprint before the major developments in 2011. Whereas The Guardian had written 237 articles by the end of 2010, The Independent had 83, the Daily Telegraph 46, and The Times 43. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tabloids gave the story barely minimal coverage. By the close of 2010, the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday had written 38 articles, The Sun 17, and the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror a mere 11 [more on methodology here].

At various times between 2006 and 2011, aspects of the phone hacking story were simply not reported by British journalists. In the words of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, they were apparently ‘blinded’ to ‘the significance of the issue’.

In our chapter we look deeper into the ways media covered the story. We argue that explanations for the non-reporting of the phone hacking scandal need to delve beyond simplistic, if valid, assertions of industry cover-up.

To understand why the majority of national newspapers didn’t regard phone hacking as newsworthy, it is necessary to unpick a tangled web of contributing factors.

We explore competing professional, political and commercial interests; the failure of other organisations – particularly the Metropolitan Police – to investigate the matter thoroughly; and the intimidating power of News International.

On this occasion, a large part of the media failed to deem its own industry’s scandal ‘newsworthy’ enough to warrant proper attention, which has ramifications far beyond the phone hacking scandal.

The inclination for journalists not to regard a scandal within their own industry as ‘newsworthy’ is hardly surprising, but other stories might also be suppressed for a similar combination of professional, political and commercial interests – a fact that ought to be considered by Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry and other bodies considering the question of press regulation.

The vigour of journalism and healthy democratic debate is not merely dependent on the effective regulation of what is reported, it is also dependent on ensuring that harmful illegal activity is regarded as sufficiently ‘newsworthy’ to be investigated and reported.

A new system of regulation should not only end the abuse of self-regulation by the News of the World, it should also consider whether newspapers ought to be independently held to account for their editorial decisions regarding ‘newsworthiness’.

Our full chapter is available on the Social Science Research Network here. It is an extract from The Phone Hacking Scandal: Journalism on Trial, edited by Richard Lance Keeble and John Mair (Arima 2012). The book was launched at an event in London on Tuesday 7 February.

Daniel Bennett has recently finished his PhD in the War Studies Department, King’s College, London. Judith Townend is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism, City University London.

Sir Christopher Meyer: “I made several statements from August until the verdicts were delivered in the end of January or February, whenever it was, in 2007, against phone hacking, but beyond exhortation, I did not believe there was more that could be done during a police investigation, a court – a trial, until after the verdicts were rendered.”

Mr Robert Jay: “It follows from that, Sir Christopher, that once the criminal process had ended and the investigation had concluded, there was nothing to stop the PCC, is this right, from carrying out whatever inquiry or investigation that it wished?”

Sir Christopher Meyer: “None whatsoever, and this is exactly what we did.”

The PCC could not, he claims, have known phone hacking had gone further than one rogue reporter, without having investigative powers like the police. This is consistent with what the PCC said prior to July 2011.

But the comprehensive 408-page evidence submitted by the current director appears to challenge this claim.

In December 2006 the then PCC director, Tim Toulmin, wrote a paper for the Commission (PCC Paper No. 3856) called ‘The Clive Goodman Phone Message Tapping Case’. The paper considered what steps the PCC should take following the conclusion of Clive Goodman’s trial:

‘It is also likely that further information will come to light when the judge makes his sentencing remarks. One approach might be for the Commission to review the position following those remarks – expected in January – and decide at that point whether to write to the Editor with further questions based on what is known now and whatever comes to light later.’ (p.253 in PCC evidence)

The following year, after Goodman had been convicted, and the judge had made his sentencing remarks, the PCC questioned the new editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler. It recorded part of Myler’s response in its 2007 report. In particularly it noted that Myler referred to the court case and the sentencing hearing. “[T]he identity of that source [Mulcaire] and the fact that the arrangement involved illegally accessing telephone voice mails was completely unknown and, indeed, deliberately concealed from all at the News of the World’, Myler told the PCC. ‘…[I]t was made clear at the sentencing hearing that both the prosecution and the judge accepted that” (PCC Report on Subterfuge and Newsgathering 2007, paragraph 4.9).

So what did the judge, Mr Justice Gross, say in his sentencing remarks, specifically about the private investigator employed on an exclusive contract by News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire?

“As to Counts 16 to 20 [relating to the phone-hacking of Max Clifford, Simon Hughes MP, Andrew Skylett, Elle Macpherson and Gordon Taylor], you had not dealt with Goodman but with others at News International”. (The Guardian, 21 July 2009)

The judge, in other words, was absolutely clear that it was not just one rogue reporter – Clive Goodman – but that ‘others at News International’ were involved.

Even if the PCC had missed the judge’s remarks, then it only needed to look at Mulcaire’s plea. In addition to pleading guilty to hacking into the phones of members of the royal household, Mulcaire pleaded guilty to hacking five other individuals: Max Clifford, Skylet Andrew, Gordon Taylor, Simon Hughes and Elle MacPherson. None of these were likely to be targets of the royal correspondent.

Therefore far from needing any special investigative powers to see that phone hacking went further than one rogue reporter, the PCC need only have looked at the judge’s sentencing remarks, and the plea of one of the defendants. Indeed, the PCC had specifically said it would be waiting for the sentencing remarks before deciding how to proceed. Then, following the sentencing remarks it chose not to question the relevant editor of News of the World, and chose to believe the claim of the new editor that phone hacking did not go beyond one rogue reporter.

It is absolutely right that newspaper editors should be able to shout about the good work they do. As Lord Justice Leveson said, “it is extremely important to emphasise the positive” role that newspapers play, as well as scrutinizing the negative. Dominic Mohan, the current editor of The Sun, did just this by talking about The Sun’s campaigns (Help for Heroes, the Millies, Sun employment, drug awareness campaign), The Sun’s investigations, and the important role The Sun plays in making serious, complex subjects digestible.

But it is also right that these editors should be challenged, particularly when they say things that are inconsistent, unfounded, or inaccurate. They weren’t, Mohan especially.

Read through Dominic Mohan’s written evidence and there are frequent references to the importance of the PCC to him and those at the paper he edits:

‘The main guide to ethical conduct for Sun joumalists in their day-to-day work is the PCC Code, which we take very seriously…  The importance of the Code is also underlined through regular discussion of it, as well as training sessions’ (paragraph 4&6)

‘If the PCC Code is breached, a complaint is received and it is found to have merit, then a correction will be published. Any published correction as a result of a PCC complaint is negotiated directly with the PCC who in turn liaises with the complainant. Corrections are never placed further back in the newspaper than the original article, except for those connected with page one stories where the correction is published on page two” (paragraph 18, my bold).

This emphasis on the importance of the PCC Code and the results of PCC complaints is consistent with what his predecessors at The Sun, and its ex-stablemate the News of the World, have said to previous inquiries, particularly with regard to PCC adjudications.

In 2003 Rebekah Brooks (then Wade), speaking to the culture media and sport select committee, said that “the threat of a complaint being upheld by the PCC is what terrifies editors – not particularly a financial sanction; it is the actual adjudication’ (Q.429). Andy Coulson, giving evidence alongside Wade, said that an adjudication ‘carries an enormous amount of weight and far more significance than a fine’ (Q.428).

In his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, Mohan also emphasised the importance of adjudications: ‘I am proud’, he wrote, ‘that as Editor I have only had one partial PCC complaint upheld against the paper’ (paragraph 8).

This is all sounds good, but is it true? The best way to judge is to look at the way the newspapers have actually dealt with complaints and evidence of malpractice and compare that to what the editors themselves say. In the case of Brooks and Coulson, we already know that their newspapers breached the PCC code on an industrial scale.

But how has The Sun dealt with complaints since Mohan took over as editor in August 2009? Since August 2009 there has has been only one adjudication upheld against The Sun. This was for two stories published on 18^th and 19^thSeptember 2009, the first titled ‘Boy, 12 Turns Into Girl’, the second titled ‘Now Boy, 9 Is Girl’. They were published on Page 1 and Page 5 on the 18^th, and Page 1 and Page 5 on the 19^th.

Pages 1 and 5 of The Sun, 18 September 2009

Pages 1 and 5 of The Sun, 19 September 2009

The parents of one of the children complained that the articles breached Clause 1 – Accuracy, and Clause 3 – Privacy, as well as clauses 4 (harassment), 6 (children), and 12 (discrimination). A further complaint was received from a second couple. In respect of accuracy (clause 1) and privacy (clause 3) the complaint was upheld. It was not upheld on the other clauses or for the second couple.

Given an upheld adjudication is – we are told by News International editors – taken very seriously indeed, given it is the only upheld adjudication against the paper since Mohan took over, and since it involved a child and breached the two most prominent clauses of the code, one would have thought the published adjudication would have been published quickly, with due prominence and the journalists involved disciplined.

Page 6 of The Sun, 10 April 2010

Yet it took The Sun almost 7 months to publish a correction (the upheld adjudication), and this was in one narrow column down the right hand side of Page 6 – i.e. further back in the paper than any of the original articles (see left). Furthermore there is no evidence that Mohan was disciplined or that the journalists who wrote the original articles, Brian Flynn and Rhodri Phillips, were disciplined. Both are still writing for the paper.

This directly contradicts Mohan’s written evidence that ‘Corrections are never placed further back in the newspaper than the original article, except for those connected with page one stories where the correction is published on page two’. The one clear and substantial example available was published further back in the paper. If Mohan had checked any of his written evidence he would surely have checked this claim. Yet this evidence, submitted under oath, is wrong. Unfortunately the counsel, Robert Jay, failed to bring adequate attention to this contradiction.

Nor is The Sun’s PCC record since 2009 as unblemished as Mohan suggests. If one goes through the 52 PCC complaints against The Sun that were recorded in 2010, The Sun appears to have admitted code breaches in 38 of them. This was not addressed at the inquiry.

Or take another case which went not to the PCC but to the High Court. Parameswaran Subramanyam said that articles published in The Sun and Daily Mail in October 2009, which claimed he secretly broke his hunger strike outside Parliament, were entirely false and defamatory. As a consequence of the articles Subramanyam lost friends, was shunned by family members, and was ostracised from the Tamil community (see his statement here). He also, he says, contemplated suicide.

For ten months The Sun and Daily Mail refused to correct the articles. Only when Subramanyam took legal action, with the help of a Conditional Fee Agreement, was he able to secure full corrections and apologies from both papers:

‘OUR article of 9 October 2009 falsely alleged that throughout a 23 day hunger strike, Mr Parameswaran Subramanyam secretly ate takeaway burgers when dishonestly claiming he was on hunger strike in support of Sri Lankan Tamils, in a campaign which was policed at considerable expense and caused the police to waste public money.

We now accept that these allegations are totally untrue. Mr Subramanyam, whose sole aim has always been to promote the Tamil cause, did not eat any food at all during his hunger strike.

We apologise to Mr Subramanyam and his family for any upset and embarrassment caused and are paying him a substantial sum in damages.’

The Sun, 29^th July 2010

It would have been very helpful to have heard Dominic Mohan’s explanation of why it was so difficult, and took so long, to correct an article which was ‘totally untrue’ and was based on no evidence. Unfortunately we didn’t.

The Committee has occasionally hit the headlines, particularly when Richard Caseby of The Sun attacked the ‘sexing up’ of The Guardian’s Milly Dowler story. But it’s mostly been understandably swamped by Leveson; its recommendations will be less significant and carry less weight, and it’s lacked the star names and entertaining confrontations.

Even if its outcomes will have less impact, however, the evidence heard by the Committee has been interesting and important. Its sessions finished just before Christmas, and over the previous 11 weeks editors, journalists, journalism professors, and even a computer scientist sat down to explain the problems and possibilities for investigative journalism.

Investigative journalism needs subsidy

One of the most striking pieces of evidence came in the very last session from former Independent editor, Simon Kelner, who talked about how he tried to set up an investigative unit when he started at the paper:

I took four guys off the newsdesk, I gave them as much rope as they wanted, as much support, never put them under pressure to come up with world exclusives. About six months later we’d had two stories that were on page 9 and page 11 and it had cost us a small fortune. So we abandoned it.

Not every investigative team is quite that unsuccessful. But witnesses were united in arguing that investigative journalism is expensive, and needs some sort of subsidy to survive. That subsidy can be from an organisation’s other activities: Channel 4’s written evidence (from page 23) said ‘advertising income from other Channel 4 activities which are more profitable funds content that delivers public value, but is less commercially focused’, such as investigations. Even Sir Harry Evans, editor of the Sunday Times at the height of its Insight team’s success, was reluctant to credit any individual part of the newspaper for its financial performance.

Evidence from two not-for-profit investigative organisations painted a similar picture. Richard Tofel from ProPublica said that the likelihood they could survive commercially was ‘exceedingly remote’, while the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s written submission (from page 10) revealed that income from commercial tie-ups only accounted for around a third of its income.

The inquiry didn’t hear, however, from ExaroNews, a commercial investigative journalism organisation that launched in November, midway through the evidence sessions. If it can survive on subscriptions as it hopes, it could prove an exception, and with most national media organisations in the UK struggling financially (making cross-subsidies less likely), that would be very welcome.

Local journalism is dying

Another common theme was that the crisis in local journalism has kicked away a ladder on which investigative journalism can stand. Journalist Andrew Gilligan said that the problems facing local newspapers are “poisoning the whole ecosystem”. As local newspapers are “hollowed out”, to use Martin Moore’s phrase, they lose much of their value as sources for national newspapers, as well as leaving courts, councils, and hospitals unscrutinised. The financial difficulties of local media – and the actions of their owners – raise issues outside the committee’s remit, but it’s clear they affect investigative journalism at all levels in some way.

Exactly what could be done to support investigative journalism is far less clear, and anything designed to specifically support investigations will have to grapple with the question of how they’re defined; the Committee seemed to settle for a “Yes, but you know what we mean” approach similar to Potter Stewart’s famous remarks on hardcore pornography. It’s likely, however, that the report will explore charitable status as a way of raising money for organisations to do investigations, something which could help encourage the sort of philanthropy for journalism found in the US.

There have been some blind spots in the hearings. Only one journalist from business-to-business media gave evidence, for example, and given the criticism of local newspaper chains it would have been interesting to hear from them. The role of NGOs in investigating was also neglected. But at a time when Leveson has illuminated some of the dark side of journalism, it’s been refreshing to see politicians from the most establishment of institutions supporting the most anti-establishment journalism.

The House of Lords Communications Select Committee’s inquiry into the future of investigative journalism is due to report in early 2012. Written evidence and transcripts of oral evidence can be found on the Committee’s website.

Jamie Thunder is a freelance journalist and PhD student at the Centre for Law, Justice, and Journalism, City University. You can follow Jamie on Twitter (@jdthndr) or visit his blog, The Thunderer.