The press are still drinking in the Last Chance Saloon – and always will be

Raymond Snoddy says whatever the outcome of Leveson, the debate will continue forever over what is fair, what is reasonable, what is in the public interest and what is not…

The Hackademics have struck again. Hard on the heels of publishing Mirage in the Desert: Reporting The ‘Arab Spring’ before the Arab summer was barely over, the top team of media academics and journalists have produced The Phone Hacking Scandal – Journalism on Trial, months before the Leveson Inquiry has completed its task.

In it very harsh things are said about the popular press. In his preface John Lloyd, director of journalism at the Reuter’s Institute attacks the “swaggering arrogance” of the popular press and denounces as “absurd” the Press Complaints Commission idea that freedom of expression “is itself a public good”.

Kevin Marsh, former editor of the Today programme, has even more ferocious things to say about a tabloid press “whose business model has become so dependent on trashing the reputations of ‘ordinary people’ – as well as celebrities, politicians and people in public life – that it is now nothing other than a machine to convert harassment, intrusion, misery, sneering and mockery into cash.”

Another former editor of the Today programme, Phil Harding, in the book and also in person at last night’s launch, took a more measured approach. Freedom of expression was, of course, a public good and intrusion into individual privacy could be justified in the public interest.

There should though be a sliding scale – the greater the intrusion, the greater the public interest needed to justify it. But then how do you define what constitutes the public interest as opposed to what the public is interested in?

This time round Harding ducks the task of producing his own definition, other than to review previous attempts and pointing out it has to be a multi-faceted concept. Harding, the former controller of editorial policy at the BBC, is now thinking of taking a deep breath and trying to produce THE definitive definition of what constitutes the public interest. He should send the volume to Lord Leveson as soon as possible.

Harding may not yet have the final answer to the conundrum but he has a litmus test to offer – a story that divides journalists down the middle. It is the David Blunkett affair with married Spectator publisher Kimberley Quinn who had a child of disputed parentage. Later there were rows over a fast-track visa application for Mrs Quinn’s nanny and a rail warrant supposed to be for MP’s spouses.

Right to publish in the public interest or not given that neither the visa nor the rail warrant could have been known about in advance?

Harding says publish but by a narrow margin, arguing that the constituents of a Labour MP should be able to know that he was having an affair with the publisher of a right-wing magazine. Author and journalist Glenda Cooper came down on the other side of the fence over Blunkett – as many other journalists have done.

Cooper has been looking into the ethical issues of Facebook use and believes that many users of the social networking site still have some expectations of privacy and do not want to see pictures intended for friends and family plastered all over the tabloids. She cited the case of Rebecca Leighton, wrongly accused of interfering with saline drips, who was portrayed as a party loving girl after Facebook pictures of her on a night out made the papers.

Professor Steven Barnett from Westminster University believes that the press has little to fear from a system of regulation similar to that of television. “If regulation ‘chills’ television journalism how does one explain the information and investigation records down the years of programmes such as Panorama, World in Action, This Week, Dispatches and Unreported World – as well as news analysis programmes such as Newsnight, Channel 4 News and the Today programme?” asks Barnett.

And ironically it is the loosening of such regulation that has allowed ITV to produce fewer of such programmes.

There is an enormous diversity of views and information in ‘The Phone Hacking Scandal’. It is a must read for Lord Leveson and anyone interested in the tortured issues involved in the future of the British press.

It is, however, a broadsheet view of the publishing world and there is no case for the defence of tabloid and popular journalism. Though as Paul Connew, former deputy editor of the News of the World, conceded last night, there was indeed a period of three or four years when the lunatics really did take over the asylum.

What now for press regulation?

There was general agreement that the press has to be more accountable, that a more robust version of the PCC has to have the powers of investigation and probably the power to fine papers who deliberately or repeatedly break the rules.

While independent of legislation such a body would probably need a degree of statutory underpinning. Something in fact a bit like the body suggested by the current chairman of the PCC Lord Hunt to Lord Leveson last month.

Rather like the Hackademics – John Mair of Coventry University and Richard Keeble of Lincoln – Lord Hunt has got his retaliation in early, trying to form the agenda before the concrete starts to set.

There was no trace of support for last night for the ideas of two national editors Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail and Chris Blackhurst of The Independent – merely incredulity. They suggest the answer lies in the licensing, registering, call it what you will, in some form of journalists.

Maybe once you could have taken the equivalent of a press pass away but in the age of the internet and the growing democratisation of communications such a thing is not only undesirable but completely impractical.

Whatever the outcome of Leveson, the debate will continue forever over what is fair, what is reasonable, and what is in the public interest and what is not.

It was more than 20 years ago that David Mellor said the press was drinking at the Last Chance Saloon. Last night Bob Satchwell, director of the Society of Editors and a former assistant editor of the News of the World, said the press were still drinking up in the Last Chance Saloon – and always would be.

The Phone Hacking Scandal: Journalism On Trial. Edited by Keeble and Mair. Published by Abramis