I played football last weekend and not one of our team had a super-injunction. We’ve got to that stage in life where a trip to Ikea is as exciting as it gets and the idea of being up all night dancing with a blonde from The Only Way is Essex conjures up feelings of dread rather than anticipation. Given we were playing against The Times, I can’t vouch for our opponents.
Inevitably, when a bunch of footballing journos get together, the subject of super-injunctions gets a fair airing. The irony of the injunctions is that everyone at the game was able to talk in detail about the very things the injunctions are keeping secret. Most of them are not massive stories that will shock the world. They are more of the same diet of tittle-tattle masquerading as news which we get served up on a far too regular basis by much of our media.
While the current crop of B-list injunctors are giving privacy a bad name, the media fascination with the sex lives of overpaid footballers is giving media freedom a bad name – and too many politicians, keen to find ways to muzzle the press, are being handed a gift. Media freedom is precious. Self-regulation plays an important part in protecting it. However, when self-regulation is seen to serve only the interests of media owners and not the public, it falls into disrepute and hawkish politicians can pounce. The debate over phone-hacking and super-injunctions gives the welcome opportunity to promote a long overdue public discussion about media regulation.
The Press Complaints Commission has proved unable, and all too often unwilling, to tame the worst excesses of the media. Its supporters trumpet a growing number of complaints as evidence of it being more proactive. Record lows in the number of complaints being adjudicated is held up as proof that informal resolution works.
Both are a disingenuous slight of hand. Is public trust in the media rising? No. In many cases it has, fallen off a cliff. It was Rose Macauley, in A Casual Commentary, who said: “You should always believe all you read in the newspapers as this makes them more interesting”.
Newspaper owners are happy for such a state of affairs to continue, until judges and politicians start to intervene and create or threaten privacy laws. Then they cry out about the threat of censorship. As journalists, we have a natural inclination to oppose such laws – rightly so. They would be used by the rich and powerful to prevent newspapers exposing fraud, corruption or hypocrisy in the public interest. But, if we want such freedoms, we must also accept responsibilities. Press freedom cannot be about breaching privacy simply because the public may be interested, but only in the overwhelming public interest. There is an important difference.
Self-regulation is the best and most effective way to achieve that, but having media owners sit in judgement on their peers is like giving the police the role of judging the police – it can never work. A press regulation body needs to have a broader membership, with less financial and other influence exerted by media owners, and must have the power to be able to act. Editors like to say they heed the PCC’s occasional castigations – they do sometimes, but not when they interfere with the commercial interests of their titles. That’s why a new press complaints body must also have the power to hit those companies where it hurts – in the pocket.
The ability to impose fines and the power to demand they give the same prominence to any correction, clarification or judgement against them are vital if we are to have any chance of rebuilding public trust and keeping judges and politicians away from media freedoms. And the score in the football? Surely I can get an injunction to stop that being published?
Jeremy Dear is general secretary of the NUJ
