11 May 2000 – Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror, has now achieved the dubious distinction of being the first editor of a national newspaper to receive two slaps on the wrist from the Press Complaints Commission. The first, awarded when he was editor of the News of the World, concerned the invasion of the privacy of Countess Spencer while she was a patient at a private clinic. Now comes a fairly savage rebuke in the wake of the City Slickers share scandal.
The Commission’s nine-page report (see below) was printed in full across two pages of today’s Mirror, along with a fairly unctuous leader which concludes: “We take the PCC very seriously and would never deliberately breach its code. On this occasion we made mistakes. And we regret them.”
So that’s all right, then. The PCC report has been forwarded to the Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror, but there is no present indication that Mr Morgan will not remain as editor, having been cleared by his Board soon after the scandal broke. There remains an outstanding enquiry by the Department of Trade and Industry into his conduct, but it is doubtful that Mr Morgan is losing too much sleep over the prospect.
There have been suggestions that the wording of the PCC code needs to be tightened, yet again, to prevent a recurrence of such behaviour. But this misses the point. The current wording seems clear enough to PressWise.It says:
14. Financial Journalism
(i) Even where the law does not prohibit it, journalists must not use for their own profit financial information they receive in advance of its general publication, nor should they pass such information to others.
(ii) They must not write about shares or securities in whose performance they know that they or their close families have a significant financial interest, without disclosing the interest to the editor or financial editor.
(iii) They must not buy or sell, either directly or through nominees or agents, shares or securities about which they have written recently or about which they intend to write in the near future.
What is needed is not another re-wording of the code, but the granting of real powers to the PCC. These should include the imposition of meaningful fines on offending newspapers – fines which could be used to create a fund to pay compensation to the victims of press misbehaviour. Monetary greed was at the root of this affair, as it so often is. Financial sanctions may be the only realistic way to keep newspapers honest and ethical.
Correspondence in The Guardian
During the past week, arising from the Piers Morgan affair, there has been a spirited exchange in The Guardian‘s correspondence columns.
On May 17, Gerald Isaaman, a former member of the PCC, wrote:
“Matt Wells’s excellent piece about Piers Morgan’s share-buying (It’s been a terrible week for newspapers, May 15) goes only part of the way, since it fails to take on board the potential of a DTI investigation. In the same edition, Roy Greenslade tells how a corrosive press stitched up Alistair Campbell and Philip Gould. In your columns the previous week, Jeremy Paxman revealed the sick reporters who make up stories, and this week too we have had the unsatisfactory Press Complaints Commission “adjudication” on the Sunday Times and the buying of Jonathan Aitken’s allegedly important-to-the-nation memoirs.
“Editors of major newspapers may well despair at the fraught times they have when complaints are lodged against them, but the answer to their difficulties is to get it right in the first place and fire staff who consistently fail to report the truth.
“The much vaunted “political” nous of Lord Wakeham is, in my view, counter-productive, especially as I spent some years sitting on the PCC and witnessed its inability to grapple with the heart of the problem – the fact that it has no serious sanctions as a watchdog other than the proverbial slap on the wrist. No wonder our television compatriots complain when they face huge fines for getting it wrong. No wonder nobody wants to change anything and to maintain the present cosy code of conduct system.
“All that will probably change when European legislation kicks in later this year, and our judges enter the fray. Editors then may well find themselves testing the traditional cry for press freedom to the limit when they face punishments more likely to fit the crime. What the industry refuses to recognise is that the inherent failure of the PCC lies in the fact that many people and organisations who have wholly legitimate grounds for complaining about the press simply refuse to do so – because they believe it is a total waste of time.
“Unless that situation is rectified – and the public have a fair and just watchdog they believe in – editors will continue to smile contritely for a day or so. A few sleepless nights are a small price to pay if you can still be free to play havoc with people’s private lives and cynically distort the truth.”
Two days later Lord Wakeham was stung to reply. He wrote:
“Gerald Isaaman shows an enthusiasm for a statutory system of press regulation which he did not exhibit when he was for a short while a member of the Press Complaints Commission before my time, nor, I imagine when he was editor of a local paper in north London. He was right then and wrong now.
“The Jonathan Aitken adjudication is consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights. Gerald’s views are not. As an editor Gerald would not have tolerated a regime of fines and the like, imposed by a commission made up in part by his competitors. I can’t see how he would reasonable expect the current generation of editors to tolerate it either.
“I hope Gerald is not building too many hopes on the European Convention. He need only to look to Scotland where this legislation has already brought the Scottish legal system to a grinding halt, and then he should read the terms of the act itself, which was amended to avoid precisely the sort of disaster scenario Gerald predicts. In legislating, the government moved – rightly and commendably – to enshrine the special importance of freedom of expression, and the position of independent, effective self-regulation.
“The best protection for ordinary people is a free and easy, accessible system of self-regulation that has a commendable record of raising standards over the years. It certainly isn’t perfect, but the legal costs of a statutory system would put it out of the reach of most of us.
“Given the millions of news stories written every year in national and local newspapers and periodicals, I would suggest that standards of accuracy are astonishingly high – certainly the PCC receives only a fraction of the complaints that the Office of Supervision of Solicitors receives about the conduct of solicitors, for instance. Of course things go wrong. When they do, the PCC helps put them right or criticises a newspaper if it cannot get satisfaction for a complainant. It does so in an average of 40 days and without cost to the complainant.”
Next day (May 20) came a stinging response from Jock Gallagher, former executive director of the Association of British Editors.
“Lord Wakeham,” he wrote, “is wrong yet again. The Press Complaints Commission is an ineffective body which does journalism no favours. For example, it insists that people must complain before it is prepared to investigate a breach of its code of conduct, no matter how blatant – or how important – any breach may be. That means a newspaper can go out on a limb with unproven allegations, and if those involved do not complain and/or have the funds to seek legal redress, the paper gets away with it. The less-responsible editor might think that worth a few sleepless nights.
“Nor does the PCC make much positive attempt to encourage complaints. All too many people see it as the paid-for defender of the newspaper industry and not an independent watchdog that will inhibit a prurient press. Those in the public eye know that a complaint will not only drag them over the coals for a second time, but also make them targets for future press intrusion.
“When Lord Wakeham departs from the commission, it is to be hoped that his successor will restore a much-needed robustness to its policing role.”
And on the same day, Gerald Isaaman re-entered the fray:
“Lord Wakeham’s patronising response to my criticism ascribes to me views I don’t hold and then tries to deflate them with his customary weasel words. Why doesn’t he answer the major charge: people with legitimate cause ignore the PCC because they regard it as a toothless watchdog; celebrities refrain from using it because of the necessity of republishing their original complaint. There have to be other answers.”
Mike Jempson, Director of The PressWise Trust, writes:
We welcome endorsement from editors like Gerald Isaaman and Jock Gallagher for the view PressWise has held for years. The Press Complaints Commission should be replaced by a genuinely independent body that defends press freedom and the public’s right to accurate information by adjudicating on complaints promptly and fairly, and imposing sanctions when appropriate.
The City Slickers share dealing scandal at The Mirror did journalism a great disservice. That Piers Morgan remains in post as editor demonstrates yet again that the business interests of the publisher override respect for the public or self-regulation.
Lord Wakeham may trumpet the PCC’s ability to provide ‘a free and easy, accessible system of self regulation’ but while he was busy on government business reforming the House of Lords, one of his many other jobs, Morgan was presiding over a paper where the much-vaunted Code of Practice was receiving short shrift. Yet when The Mirror unfairly accused the journalist Greg Pallast of being a ‘liar’ and a ‘sex pest’ after he exposed Labour’s cash for influence (Dollygate) scandal, the PCC caved in to pressure from the paper’s lawyers and refused to adjudicate the complaint. The London Evening Standard had already apologised and paid damages for repeating The Mirror‘s trumped-up story, but the PCC insisted that Pallast should sue. As a US citizen he would have had to underwrite legal action in advance, making it impossible for him to clear his name.
More recently the PCC let the News of the World off the hook over an inaccurate and damaging story generated in London about an Irish woman living in England, simply because the story appeared only in the Irish slip edition. Hardly the act of a body concerned to prove that it works well for ordinary people.
Many cases take far longer than 40 days to resolve, and PressWise has long since given up on the PCC as a useful means of gaining redress. We look forward to a fresh, rights-based approach to media regulation in the government’s promised Communications Bill next year. Is it a vain hope that editors will give this the same kind of welcome accorded to the overhaul of self-regulation in other professions, such as police and doctors?