The Leveson Inquiry - a nasty top-down authoritarian assault on a Free Press in the U.K., that would never happen in the U.S., where citizens have the enviable protection of the First Amendment.
My running analysis/commentary on the Frontline Club's Leveson debate.
Featuring Torin Douglas (as Chair), Martin Moore, Rich Peppiatt, Mick Hume and Kirsty Hughes.
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@0:03:57 - MM speaks. He goes over some of the points from the Leveson Report.
@0:12:24 - I would challenge the whole idea that polls are an accurate and useful barometer of public support.
In the past, public feeling was expressed through campaigns by the *public*, this was how a democratically-held view would be developed and articulated.
These days we are expected to stay at home and fill in polls designed or commissioned by pressure/campaign groups. There are a number of problems with claiming that this latter approach reflects true public feeling, not least a) question wording tends to be influenced by the pollsters' own agenda even when the polls are 'independently' carried out, and will cherry-pick the sort of opinion that they call for b) percentages are all very well, but what is the *gross* popularity of the poll, i.e. its total participants? There are about 65 million people in the U.K.
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@0:14:12 - MH speaks.
@0:16:43 - MH: the paradox of 'independent self-regulation'. Why has no-one else noticed this?
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@0:24:00 - RP speaks.
@0:24:14 - 'Why are liberals and the Left lining up to endorse Leveson?' RP asks.
I'll give you a simple answer - because they've given up on democracy being defined by the demos.
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@0:24:30 - RP argues that the nature of democracy has fundamentally changed and these days it is run by corporate powers - including the corporate press - rather than the forces of Government - 'Rupert Murdoch is more powerful in many ways than David Cameron, you could argue'. Therefore the press should be regulated.
Either by laws written by the state, or by an oxymoronic 'independent self-regulator', which is, as MH says, to be summoned out of the ether and to be mysteriously and magically immune to the mistakes, biasses and prejudices that affect hacks and all their readers (that is, the common man).
Well, Murdoch's press may provide an annoying, blaring backdrop of press narcissism and endless obsession with trivia to our everyday lives, but last time I looked it was not powered by the full forces of statecraft with the ability to change and enforce the law.
No matter who owns the press or how loud its voice is, establishing a regulator over it either explicitly (if underpinned by statute) or implicitly (as a clique of unaccountable elites appointed by them) hands the public voice, eyes and ears over to the isolated forces of the state, which can only result in the undermining of the essential foundation for a healthy democracy - the autonomy of ordinary people.
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@0:26:08 - If there is anything that transparently captures the whole powerful undertow of elitist snobbery pervading this entire discussion, it is RP's 'cooking' analogy.
He argues that, when at home, he can cook up whatever he likes, but everyone would agree that if he was to sell his cooking to the general public some sort of regulation would be necessary.
The contemptuous message is obvious: the press can't feed all those dumb masses out there just *anything*, who knows what might happen to us. 'Common sense' dictates that we must have regulation.
This argument is reiterated in various guises during the discussion (by, amongst others, Mandy Cormack @0:51:20).
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@0:26:30 - RP flatly states it: 'We don't have a free press'.
I one hundred percent agree. But why don't we have a free press? Because of insane mediaeval libel laws, perhaps? Because we are about to get a new press regulator?
Nope. Apparently the reason we don't have a free press is because Rich Peppiatt doesn't get paid to sit down, rant about whatever he likes and then have the results published verbatim by his editor.
Those of us that know the difference between, on the one hand, having a blanket consensus forced on us from outside by an elitist and powerful regulator and, on the other, privately establishing a consensus within our own publication might advise Rich, if he would like to make his voice heard, to work his way up to a more senior position.
We might call this sort of 'press censorship' 'old-fashioned editing'. Indeed, given the sort of stuff coming out of Rich's mouth in the course of this debate, in his case I would call it 'pretty *essential* editing'.
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@0:27:20 - KH speaks, outlining Index on Censorship's position.
@0:42:10 - MH raises Private Eye editor Ian Hislop's stance that the press should be accountable firstly to the criminal court and secondly to the public, its readers, and that should be that.
Also Hislop apparently suggested that some News of the World readers should be invited to the Leveson proceedings to give their reasons for reading the News of the World in their millions all that time. Lord Justice Leveson declined to entertain this idea, which kind of sums up his attitude to the public at large.
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@0:46:35 - MM points out that criminal acts committed by the press often are unknown to the victim, may never come to light and, if they do so, either cannot or will not be pursued by the police due to a lack of evidence or financial/time costs.
Civil law cases, i.e. libel and privacy cases, have to go to the High Court which is well beyond the means of most people.
However it is difficult to see how establishing a regulatory body or watchdog would help with this. If journalists can hide criminal activities from their peers/the public/the police, they are hardly likely to reveal them to a regulator.
On the other hand, a diverse press - which we desperately need - might be able to hold *itself* to account by investigating its rivals and their claims. Any regulator is going to achieve the *opposite* of a diverse press, though, by chilling the scope of investigative journalism and scaring journalists away from risk-taking.
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@0:50:08 - KH points out that the Defamation Reform Bill is intended to act as a vehicle for enabling compensation for press harassment and libel, and that it is therefore unnecessary to have a *press regulatory body* doing a job best suited to the police.
While I would agree with the point that it is a bizarre idea to have a body regulating the press be responsible for public redress, I find myself deeply uneasy with a lot of the contents of the Defamation Bill and think it is not the champion of individual freedom that Index on Censorship seems to hold it up as.
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@0:50:54 - the discussion opens to the floor...
@0:55:45 - RP reckons that politicians don't come up with radical ideas because they are running scared of the press!
I think politicians don't *have* any radical ideas and the press is just filling the resulting vacuum with its vacuous monologue.
@0:56:36 - RP: 'The problem we have with our newspapers is that they don't declare "we're coming from this perspective - this isn't the whole story, this is the part of the story that suits our argument"...people...think they're getting news, the facts...[this] perverts our social debate and I think that's a broader issue than criminality at a specific moment in time. I think as a society we have a real issue with that, and I think that that is something that Leveson will hopefully address.'
Digest: people are too dim to spot the truth among the lies and know the difference between 'facts' (which are identical with news) and opinion, us dumb folks are getting confused and need Leveson to come along to separate truth from fiction and tell us how to think.
@0:58:54 - Audience member points out that the PCC is an elite institution set up by the press that has the effect of shutting ordinary people out. His solution is to, um, create another elite institution set up by Leveson that will have the effect of shutting ordinary people out.
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@1:00:56 - 'John'. Hmmm. 'John' is a problem, for a start being just plebs we're not allowed to know his full name. Let's call him 'Sir John' (SJ), there are enough Lords and Sirs buzzing around all of Leveson's movements, and he certainly acts like one.
After missing the whole point about the First Amendment he continues:
'I think a lot of people in the United States would love to have a broadcast regulated environment that would stop Fox News from destroying Public Discourse.'
A lot of people like himself, that is, who would love to have Public Discourse trammelled within the respectable confines of BBC-alike mantras approved by the likes of SJ.
Perish the thought that Public Discourse should be made off with by Fox News and descend among the herds of snorting and cavorting sheeple who might boot the poops of dissent and irreverence all over Sir John's shiny shoes as he picks his way across the uneven fields of democratic debate on his way to his next appointment as Director or CEO or Chairman of whatever.
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@1:01:05 - MH quips: they'd want something as boring as the BBC instead?
Ouch.
God bless the BBC, says Sir John, who apparently works for Al Jazeera and loves Ofcom's stranglehold over investigative journalism (surprise surprise).
MH quips: like Newsnight?
Ouch again.
SJ reckons that's a cheat. Or cheap.
(actually I don't think it *was* cheap, both in terms of the besieged BBC's reputation loss and in terms of the alleged 185k payable by them to a wronged and furious Lord McAlpine, but there you go...)
SJ retorts that perhaps we should be talking about MH and ITN. MH calls his bluff. SJ immediately changes the subject and accuses both MH and KH of displaying a cavalier disregard for 'minorities and third parties' bullied by the press who are seeking redress from 'independent' regulators like Ofcom.
I'm more concerned with SJ's cavalier disregard for the majority of society and his willingness to advocate the use of 'minorities and third parties' as human shields behind which the freedom of the press can apparently be attacked with impunity.
This top-down technique for establishing 'social justice' (and the related one of blackmailing people into agreeing that their freedom must be given up in exchange for 'empowering' those less well-off than themselves) is now so absolutely ingrained into mainstream political thinking on societal change, that every time I hear a plea on behalf of 'vulnerable/minority groups' I hope that someone finds where that stink is coming from and shuts it off as quickly as possible, before more precious civil freedoms disappear down the toilet.
What SJ and all the other m'lords and m'ladies don't get is that it is a perfectly consistent position to both have sympathy for victims and *at the same time* robustly resist any attempt to use them to set an agenda.
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@1:02:58 - MM thinks that the rights of the individual are forgotten in comparison to the rights of the free press. He gives examples of the wrongly accused - 'What are they to do?'
Putting aside the fact that the free press is made up of individuals with rights, people are often wrongly accused of all sorts of things. That's part of life. And the whole Trial by Media thing doesn't help. But that's part of life, too. The tyranny of 'popular opinion' always *has been* part of life.
How is a Regulatory Body supposed to make these things disappear? Short of chilling publicly-visible reporting and the subsequent debate out of existance, which is just as likely to result in miscarriages of justice, just behind closed doors.
In a democracy the only legitimate approach to creating a freer, fairer, improved platform for debate can be from the bottom up, not from the top down. It is, of course, true that doing things that way is a lot more difficult than calling in an elite of the great and the good to do it for you. But it is also, of course, true that it *always has been* difficult - at least no-one gets hanged for it these days.
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@1:07:09 - MH is the only one that gets it: 'Freedom of expression is an *indivisible right*!'
@1:08:16 - MM: 'Leveson specifically says, no regulator should be able to stop anyone from publishing anything.'
So the golden question. *Why do we NEED one?*
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@1:08:32 - MM gets J.S. Mill's harm principle catastrophically wrong. Mill was a passionate advocate of *self determination*. Determination. By *selves*, not by Leveson, a Regulatory Body, MM or anyone else. This absolutely fundamental freedom principle is conspicuously and disdainfully ignored throughout this entire 1.5 hour discussion.
The harm principle caveat is 'so long as it causes no *physical* harm to others', with the *physical* qualifier being necessary in the modern therapeutic age because of the aggressive expansion of the idea of harm into the sphere of the psychological, an idea that Mill would not have found recognisable, because once people have to be protected from 'psychological harm' you can wave the project of self-determination goodbye.
And if anyone doesn't get the difference between mental and physical harm, I volunteer to come and whap them around the head with my copy of 'On Liberty' until they do.
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@1:09:25 - Member of the audience reckons as laws are reactive, we want a regulator to create an environment where injustices do not happen in the first place.
Problem is of course they still will, but with a gagged press you will never know.
@1:10:30 - The same audience member lets slip a very revealing comment. He reckons in order to appoint regulators to decide what is in the Public Interest, we should set up a sort of 'senate clearance' system where a senate is appointed to pass these regulators. This process would not need to be subject to votes by the public, because of course, none of us would be interested in it (!!)
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@1:13:10 - KH points out, rather belatedly, that not shutting down press coverage on crimes has led to their solution, so the media can play an important role here.
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@1:13:58 - Howler from RP (they just keep coming), who (possibly due to a moment of airheaded introspection) wasn't paying enough attention to have noticed Sir John's dig at MH (@1:01:25).
'I would love', he says, 'to see Mick or you, Kirsty, at the centre of a media firestorm and the victim of this and see if you would sit here and be quite as blase about the right of the individual.'
Well. Let's say (for the sake of argument) that you happened to be the editor of a small, one of a kind publication with a handful of staff and a microscopic budget, and that you happened to get sucked into just such a media firestorm, and that a huge and powerful entity (say ITN) happened to decide to bankrupt you and liquidate your publication.
Clearly, in such a situation it is a given that you would turn tail on a principled defence of free speech and run whimpering to the fold of the Leveson sycophants?
Clearly, it's a given that *Rich* would, anyway...
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@1:16:40 - MM thinks Leveson was a good idea for embarrassing media moguls into compliance/behaving. He thinks having 'this thing' where people have to explain what they are doing is a 'healthy, democratic thing'.
I think people explaining what they are doing is a 'healthy, democratic thing' when it's done in the open court of public opinion. Not when it's done in the closed inquisition of Lord Justice Leveson.
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@1:17:21 - An investigative reporter joins MH to make an insightful, clear-headed total minority of two:
'If you take as your initial premise that democracy won't exist if you don't have healthy investigative journalism, which is a view I subscribe to, what do we know about investigative journalism? We know that at the moment it is on its knees, good public interest investigative journalism, because there is not enough resources. Right. So there is an irreconcilable paradox here because, on the back of the appalling behaviour of the News of the World and other organizations there is this huge backlash occurring, that is heading towards legislation. What will that do? That will crack down on and legalize the whole process of investigative journalism.'
He makes the point that difficult judgement calls have to be made which sometimes break the law in order to break an important story. If you have to continually argue every point with a lawyer, this will kill off investigative journalism because no-one will bother.
Quite right. Even though some investigative attack dogs may have the repulsive habit of occasionally chewing on a plebian leg or two, I would rather, on balance, they be left to run free out there.
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@1:18:55 - Reiteration of the argument made by SJ earlier. I.e., we have to protect Children And The Vulnerable by regulation.
Speaker then follows this argument through to its logical conclusion:
'The local news blog, if it writes something that might actually be true, but rather an invasion of my privacy, may hurt me more because it is local, because all my friends read it: why, still, the question remains, why are we regulating 10 particular newspapers, and not everybody else?'
So there we have it. Where this line of thinking ultimately leads to: because free expression is, indeed, an indivisible right. If the '10 particular newspapers' don't get it, *nor does anyone else*. Everyone must therefore be regulated and censored.
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@1:24:36 - RP argues that most people who buy the tabloids wouldn't do so (would 'rather not') if they knew what went into making the stories.
Like all incurable snobs, he is magically and singularly immune to the brainwashing influence of the megalomaniac corporate zeitgeist out there. This gives him superhuman powers of perception and the authority to decide what the rest of us get to see, read, hear, think and say.
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@1:25:42 - MH closes with an argument about the first principle of a free press.
If you don't want to listen to all the discussion just listen to these last few minutes, as he makes the only points that *really need* making by anyone throughout the whole debate here.
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END
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