Press Complaints Committee – not worth the paper(s) it passes judgement on?

Westminster’s Culture, Media and Sports Committee has recommended a whole new range of powers for the Press Complaints Commission, following an investigation into press standards and libel in the United Kingdom, during which the chairman of the committee referred to the PCC as being seen to “lack credibility and authority“.

Suggesting that the PCC should be renamed the Press Complaints and Standards Commission to better reflect its role as a regulator, it suggests that a deputy director for standards should be appointed.

Considering the current libel laws – about which science writer Simon Singh is currently petitioning the UK’s Court of Appeal, the committee does not come out in favour of a general law of privacy although there appears to be a growing campaign for this to be considered seriously by Westminster law makers.

Interestingly the committee also attack the publishers of the News of the World as ‘suffering collective amnesia’ over the extent of its recent illegal phone tapping, a practice reported widespread by the Guardian, but denied by the News of the World.

The critical report on the PCC follows recent controversy over Jan Moir’s treatment of the death of Steven Gately, referred to by gay rights group Stonewall as “dancing on the grave of a prematurely dead young man”. Following an investigation of this, the PCC concluded that the Moir article ‘just failed to cross the line’ in terms of breaching the PCC’s code of practice. Following this, Stonewall concluded that it was now “very difficult to recommend that anyone from a minority community makes a complaint to the PCC”

Recent critics of the PCC such as the Media Standards Trust have given evidence to the PCC’s review of governance  based on polls which they claim support widespread change to the way the organisation operates. According to their surveys 52% of the public would prefer an independent self-regulatory body rather than the current newspaper industry complaints body. This follows a major report in 2009 criticising the work of the PCC.

However, Sir Christopher Meyer, last year’s retiring chairman of the PCC dismissed the 2009 report at the time  as a “cuttings job masquerading as a serious inquiry” suggesting the PCC will continue to defend what some see as the indefensible but what they see as necessary and independent self-regulation.

New Attempts to Curb BBC News Delivery

A new twist to the battle between commercial newspaper publishers and the BBC has appeared in the call by the Newspaper Publishers Association to block the BBC from extending its iPhone news applications, which provide news free on a mobile phone.

Arguing that the launch of free news and sport applications by the BBC would damage the commercial market for news application, the NPA called on the BBC Trust to stop this development pending a ‘Public Value Test’ given the ‘unique and narrow commercial space’ provided by Apple’s iPhone Apps to commercial news providers.

Claiming that the BBC was preparing to muscle into a developing market and ‘trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers’, David Newell for the NPA echoed Rupert Murdoch and argued that the corporation’s on-line presence was a key obstacle to the development of paid-for models for online content provision.

Some time ago the NPA was successful in blocking an attempt by the BBC to launch a network of local news sites, claiming that this would impinge on their own plans in this area.

Critics of the NPA would point out that the only result of this has been to block improvements to local coverage that would undoubtedly have resulted from the BBC’s move into this area.

We are still waiting for the services to appear from local commercial providers. It seems however that it will be a very long wait.

BBC news is already provided free via several applications that can be downloaded at no cost  from the iTunes store, and free news feeds are available from most BBC web sites

Google is no newspaper vampire

Or at least that’s according to Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO in a long interview with Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland.com. In a week when Rupert Murdoch seems to have slightly eased his attacks on  ‘Internet News Thieves’ Schmidt claims that Google actually helps newspapers by pointing its visitors to ‘sources of quality content’. He further claims that only existing mainstream news institutions have the resources and established trust to do deep journalism. Surprisingly although he acknowledges that new online publications have emerged and that there are journalists working independently of large companies, his faith, according to Sullivan is ‘still with the old school, so to speak’.

Schmidt also claims in the interiew that critics often target Google, when their real target is the internet:

“I think in this case Google is a proxy for the internet as a whole. So the people would make the same statements about the Internet as they do about Google. Substitute the internet for Google and you get that idea. And because we play such a central role in information, we’ve become somewhat used to being blamed for everything. In some cases people don’t understand that we’re a conduit to other people doing things. They think Google did it when in fact somebody else did it and made it available.”

In terms of solutions, one that he suggests is Google Fast Flip. Readers can try it here.

Rupert to the Internet: It’s War

Rupert Murdoch has started a war on the internet that he cannot win according to his own biographer Michael Wolff. Writing in the latest copy of Vanity Fair Wolff suggests that Murdoch’s problem is partly due to the fact ‘he really doesn’t understand the internet’.

“You get a dreadful harrumph when you talk to Murdoch about user-created content, or even simple linking to other sites. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t want it. Every conversation I’ve had with him about the new news, about the fundamental change in how people get their news—that users go through Google to find their news rather than to a specific paper—earned me a walleyed stare”

Taking the example of Murdoch’s greatest on-line asset – Jeremy Clarkson, who reputedly is responsible for 25 percent of Times on-line traffic – Wolff points out that event if there are enough ‘fanatical Clarkson readers’ who will pay enough to make a ‘paid Clarkson more valuable than a free, ad-supported one’, Murdoch’s gain is Clarkson’s loss – which will be most of his readers and their ‘constant and addictive feedback’.

Meanwhile the latest to support Murdoch’s War on free content is Financial Times managing director Rob Grimshaw. Talking to the Association of Online Publisher’s conference in London he claimed that  most publishers will have no option but to charge for online content. In this he was echoing the sentiment of Financial Times chief executive, John Ridding, who last week advocated paid-for as the only way to safeguard quality journalism.

Ridding had claimed: “I simply can’t see how its possible to make a pure advertising-funded model work unless you have enormous scale and really I’m talking about a billion page views plus per month.

According to the Press Gazette, which reported this story a survey of AOP members last week had suggested that almost 70 per cent were looking at charging online. However, a Harris Poll last month found that just five per cent of readers would be willing to pay to access news websites.

BBC – safer under the Conservatives?

The BBC appear to be safer under the Conservatives than under Labour – or at least that seems to be the impression which Jeremy Hunt, Tory culture secretary, wished to give in a recent interview in the Guardian.

Interestingly he rejects the recent Murdoch-owned Sunday Times call for the BBC news website to be cut back although argues that the BBC should be careful about expanding its website out of areas that are strictly news.

He also strikes a populist note, pointing out that 47 BBC executives earn the same as, or more than, the prime minister’s £197,689 salary, and that this area would be under scrutiny following a change of Government.

Stressing that the BBC’s independence is sacrosanct, Hunt does not however argue where cuts should take place.

The previous day in a letter to the Guardian Labour Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw had argued that his attack on the BBC the previous week had been misunderstood.

The Guardian editorial had claimed Bradshaw, had signally failed to give the BBC the kind of political support it deserved.

Clearly Jeremy Hunt is trying to play down the links between Murdoch and the Conservative Party in the run up to the election. His public approach is a nuanced one, although the sincerity of his claims must be under doubt given the dreadful track record held by the Conservatives in their previous dealings with the media when in office.

His position has been strengthened somewhat by the recent intemperate attacks on the BBC Trust and the BBC by Labour’s culture secretary Ben Bradshaw.

However it will be interesting to see how Media is dealt with at the Conservative Party conference next week.

Labour may scrap BBC Trust before Charter Review

According to a report from Broadcast Magazine The row between the BBC Trust and the government has now intensified to the extent that  Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw has suggested he could scrap the Trust before the next Charter Review.

Bradshaw had already raised the Trust’s hackles with his speech to the Royal Television Society’s biennial convention in Cambridge, in which he claimed the governing body’s dual role as ‘regulator and cheerleader’ was unsustainable.

The BBC Trust answered that it should not be judged on its performance until the next Charter Review, ‘many years down the line’, and BBC sources said the governing body was safe until then.

However, Bradshaw later told Broadcast that the Trust was not necessarily safeguarded until the 2017 review, and that it could be changed at the next licence fee settlement, in 2013, instead.

He said he had held talks with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who agreed that the BBC’s governance system should be changed, and indicated he would seek the BBC’s backing in scrapping the Trust before the Charter Review.

Bradshaw, who is a former BBC reporter, was reluctant to say whether the government would push the change through without BBC agreement.

His comments followed a heated exchange with BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons, in the Q&A session after Bradshaw’s speech, in which Lyons challenged the government for not talking more about licence fee payers and asking the public whether they would like the licence fee returned to them.

Lyons, who was visibly angered, said: ‘It is money which you raised for one purpose and now want to use for a different purpose. It’s about honest taxation.’

However, other leading industry figures welcomed Bradshaw’s statement. Former Endemol executive Peter Bazalgette said it was ‘the most considered and elegant speech from a Culture Secretary since Chris Smith’.”

This claim from Bradshaw comes hot on the heels of James Murdoch’s intemperate attack on the notion of Public Service Broadcasting, claiming that “The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit ” and is in line with increasing moves by Labour and Offcom to allow top slicing of the licence fee – albeit starting with the un-used portion of the fee originally ring-fenced for help with the digital switchover. Some critics of this approach believe that it is essentially a back door method of undermining the BBC and preparing the way for increasing access to the British market of News International.

Murdoch’s big gamble on pay to view websites

According to a report in the Press Gazette the most recent poll into what news website readers would pay for access to news sites is…………… as close to zero as possible.

A Harris Poll had asked over 100- people in the UK about their attitudes, with respondents who read a free news site at least once a month giving the lowest possible amount in each category – annual subscriptions under £10, a day pass costing under £0.25 and per-article fees of between 1p and 2p. On Monday results released from the poll revealed that 74 per cent of those surveyed said if their favourite news service started charging to access content online they would switch to a free alternative. Just five per cent said they would pay to continue reading. However 48 percent did report that they would consider paying if the option was part of a deal that allowed reduced subscriptions to a hard copy of their paper.

With News International unlikely to contemplate reduced subscriptions, but rather to go for the all of nothing model, these figures suggest the scheme is unlikely to succeed. This must be good news for all those who reject an approach that sees news reporting as nothing more that a money making business rather than a public service. We need other models – Murdoch’s model does down democracy….