Media: News Corporation

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Friday 15th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, there has been a national shudder of shock, anger and shame at the degradation of certain sections of the press that has been brought to light; at the corruption that has been exposed in the police; and at the unhealthy relations between politicians and the media that have been highlighted. It is also fair to note that these matters have been exposed by the better sections of the press and in the debate in the House of Commons earlier this week, tabled and led by my right honourable friend Ed Miliband. We have seen vented the loathing of many politicians for the media. While relations between individual politicians and individual journalists are frequently cordial—and there is nothing wrong with that—institutionally, the relationship between politics and the media has become poisonous. Why should there be this loathing?

There is a loathing of the recklessness with the truth of some journalists, the all too habitual trivialisation of issues, the assumption that there appears to be in extensive parts of the media that the attention span of the public is minimal and that issues are best reported and discussed in terms of personalities, and that politics is little more than an unsatisfactory subset of the entertainment industry. There is a loathing of the selectivity of reporting, the blurring of fact and opinion, the hypocritical combination of high sententiousness and low practice, the wilful confusion of the public interest with what interests the public, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, just said, and the swaggering rejection of ethical obligation on the basis that journalism is not a profession but a trade. Legislators must be concerned if journalists set themselves above the law, particularly if newsgathering methods include bribery and hacking. Legitimate ends surely cannot justify illegitimate means. There is a loathing of the cynical exploitation of self-regulation and the contempt with which elements of the press treat the Press Complaints Commission and its code. What we witness and what we dislike is the exercise of power without responsibility and what we loath, on the occasions when it occurs, is the cruelty of the media—the malice and the thuggery of the press pack in full cry, which is the modern equivalent of the lynch mob.

While these are proper grounds for disapprobation, they are liable to be mixed with a jealous resentment which may be less legitimate and which we ought also to consider. Politicians often feel that journalists do not take them at their own estimate of themselves, are insufficiently deferential and do not report them as they ought to be reported. There is a feeling that, if they notice us at all, it is to caricature us, and that humiliation at the hands of the sketch writers is the best recognition that many a Back-Bencher will ever receive. There is a resentment among politicians that many journalists are better than they are at their job—they are cleverer and quicker. There is a jealousy that in the public perception and often in reality journalists rather than politicians lead the national debate, and that campaigning journalists are often more effective than campaigning politicians. There is a fear on the part of politicians that the media have displaced Parliament. Where is the true debating chamber of the nation? Is it the House of Commons or is it the studio of the “Today” programme, of “Newsnight” or the editorial column of the Sun or the Daily Mail? There is a competition for power between politicians and the media and politicians feel that they have been losing that competition.

That atmosphere of jealousy, resentment, loathing and exultation in the new discomfiture of an enemy is not the best atmosphere in which to design reform. The Government were right to set up an inquiry led by Lord Justice Leveson which will proceed deliberately and gradually to advise politicians and government on what may best be done. What we should have no doubt about is that reform is essential.

I see the power of the media as a constitutional issue; indeed, a constitutional issue that is more important and more pressing than many of the constitutional issues that the coalition has chosen to address so far. It is a constitutional issue because a free media is indispensable to our democracy. The media mediate information and the public debate. There can be no healthy democracy without a healthy media. On behalf of the public, the media should, indeed, scrutinise politicians.

I am not aware of any country that has found a satisfactory way to accommodate the media within its polity. In the United States the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression, but the United States has the National Enquirer and “Fox News”. So what should we do in Britain? Good constitution-making finds ways to contain power and interest within structures that help ensure that power functions for the public benefit; that scope for the abuse of power is minimised; and that where abuse takes place there can be redress. Our present constitutional arrangements fail to accommodate the power of the media to this standard. In the liberal state to which we aspire we want a very large freedom for the media to investigate, to report, to expose, to challenge, to develop public understanding, to stimulate opinion and also to inform understanding by politicians of the public. We should have the largest freedom of the media consistent with other claims that a free society must also make, including the establishment and the guarding of a legal right to personal privacy and the observation of the limits to tolerance of decent public opinion.

The extent to which there should be freedom of the press will depend upon the extent to which the press is prepared to be responsible. It is best, of course, if there is a culture of responsibility and external restraints are not felt as such. However, where self-regulation fails, legal restraint must operate. There always are elements of the media that are not responsible, and it is not just the tabloids. Grand editors of quality newspapers tell us that they have the right to break the law in what they interpret as the public interest. However, the rule of law is a no less important value in a liberal society than freedom of the press. The law must be sensible and reasonable, and it should contain a presumption in favour of freedom of speech, but that end should not warrant nefarious means such as blagging and hacking.

Self-regulation is essential and it is for the industry to redesign the system of self-regulation to produce a modified Press Complaints Commission or some other body that the industry now believes is the right one to have. That body should articulate standards, secure assent across the industry to them, operate whatever sanctions it can, and negotiate redress for people who are injured, as the noble Lord, Lord Grade, rightly reminded us.

However, self-regulation is not sufficient. We have had 20 years of experience since the Select Committee on National Heritage, of which I was a member, reported on the problem of media intrusion into privacy. The media have had 20 years in the last-chance saloon. The time has come for the state to create a statutory underpinning for self-regulation. Statutory regulation, of course, should be at arm’s length from the politicians. There is no new principle here. We already have the Competition Commission and Ofcom, which are responsible for statutory regulation to protect plurality and to ensure that fit and proper people control the media. We have the Information Commissioner, the data protection regime and the law of libel, about which editors grumble, but they should not pretend that statutory regulation is of itself a shocking innovation or a violation of press freedom. The media will no doubt fight against it, but Lord Justice Leveson should now design a statutory system to define the boundary between acceptable conduct by the media and that which is unacceptable, and he should propose sanctions that will effectively deter abuse or punish it if it has occurred. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, the present crisis provides an opportunity.

However, when scandals have occurred in the past, Parliament has shied away from its responsibility. Clutching the tattered banner of press freedom, politicians have shirked tackling abuse. Only unwittingly did Parliament act in 1998 with the enactment of the Human Rights Act, which incorporated into our domestic law the right to privacy contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. The judges have begun to construct a jurisprudence. That was not a bad way to embark, and we should praise the courage and decisiveness of the judges. However, super-injunctions and opacity are obviously not satisfactory, and the Prime Minister was right to say that it is for Parliament to enact a law of privacy.

We must not, this time, shirk that responsibility. We are wrong if we suppose that the present crisis has already set us free. The closure of the News of the World and the resignation of Rebekah Brooks will not solve anything. The dynamics of the situation remain unchanged. We will still have a mass media. The configuration of it will be different; Murdoch may loom less large; newspapers may continue to decline and new media to grow. But democracy will still require information that can be trusted and a media that enables public debate to be articulated. Competition within the media will still be frantic—indeed, cut-throat. Proprietors and journalists will still want power. Politicians will still seek to mobilise the media for their own purposes—to get their stories out, to spin and to win elections. I fear that there will never be the clear water between the media and politics that the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, hankers after. Politicians will still be frightened by the power of the media to inflict damage on Governments, political parties and individual politicians themselves. It will be very difficult to achieve a better pathology, but we must now find better ways to accommodate the media within our evolving constitution and the political life of our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I do not know whether it is appropriate to comment but everyone seems to be doing so. I understand that the convention of the House is that speeches are not read. Although that convention is frequently held in abeyance, it means that your Lordships all have the capacity to consider and present the key points of their statements, perhaps with an opportunity for people to read the full speech on a later occasion.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, surely the circumstances today are quite exceptional. It seems to me that the House would be very interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Birt, has to say. I am sure that he will confine his remarks to a reasonable minimum, but I think that we should hear his contribution to this debate.

[Baroness D'Souza]

My Lords, I thoroughly endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has just said.