Enquête sur les critères de la presse, l'intrusion dans la vie privée et la diffamation (3)
Aux entités et autorités appelées à déposer sur l'affaire MC, le Comité parlementaire posa deux questions auxquelles répondre par écrit.
1) Pourquoi le régime d'auto-régulation n'a-t-il pas été utilisé, pourquoi la PCC n'a-t-elle pas eu recours à sa propre enquête et à quels changements cette affaire a-t-elle donné lieu dans l'industrie journalistique ?
2) L'action pour diffamation gagnée par les MC contre l'Express Group et d'autres journaux indique-t-elle que le régime d'auto-régulation accuse une sérieuse faiblesse ?
Auditions de Roy Greenslade et de Nick Davies - 21.04.2009
(...)
Aux entités et autorités appelées à déposer sur l'affaire MC, le Comité parlementaire posa deux questions auxquelles répondre par écrit.
1) Pourquoi le régime d'auto-régulation n'a-t-il pas été utilisé, pourquoi la PCC n'a-t-elle pas eu recours à sa propre enquête et à quels changements cette affaire a-t-elle donné lieu dans l'industrie journalistique ?
2) L'action pour diffamation gagnée par les MC contre l'Express Group et d'autres journaux indique-t-elle que le régime d'auto-régulation accuse une sérieuse faiblesse ?
Auditions de Roy Greenslade et de Nick Davies - 21.04.2009
(...)
Q433 Adrian Sanders : That (le fait que les "bons" reporters pour les rédactions soient ceux qui écrivent de bonnes histoires, même fausses) is extremely
depressing. We did have an example with the McCanns when they
were before us.
Roy Greenslade : The McCanns are
a classic case. I know Nick wants to address you on this so I
will just do this very shortly. The McCanns is a perfect example
where reporters were encouraged to get a story or several stories
and their only source for most of those stories were other journalists
in Portugal who were themselves receiving probably unauthorised
and inaccurate leaks and then they would be spun by British journalists.
The whole McCann saga is an indictment of our competitive nature
of journalism, of 24 hour news and also of the PCC for failing
to stamp on it at its outset. Perhaps Nick wants to come in now.
Nick Davies : It is the PCC point
that I wanted to get into but perhaps that is not where you are
with your questioning.
Q434 AS : How effective do you think the PCC is in upholding standards?
ND : I would say the PCC's
performance is so weak that it threatens the concept of self-regulation.
If the PCC does not lift its game then the whole notion of self-regulation
is going to be discoloured by them. The McCanns is one of numerous
examples. I was reading yesterday, in preparation for coming here,
the evidence when Christopher Meyer was being questioned by Mr
Farrelly and he was saying, for example, We could not contact
the McCanns directly when the story broke because we did not know
their phone number. That is pathetic. That is bad faith
on Mayer's part. He is in touch with all those editors who have
all their journalists down on the ground there. It really, really
is not difficult to use those editors to ask those journalists, What is the street address in Portugal of this family so
that we can write to them direct and ask them to complain so that
we can then get involved? In answer to your questions he
was saying, What could we do? What were we supposed to do?
This is the PCC that wants to be able to claim that newspapers
respect it, that it matters what the PCC says. What they could
have done, if they were acting in good faith and not bad faith,
is contact that family, invite them to make a complaint and then
put out a clear public statement to these journalists: you have
a clause in your code of conduct that says you have to tell the
truth; it looks to us that you are breaking it and we are now
handling complaints from this family, we are going to go into
it and we are going to name names. Why did they not do that? Because
they are not really there for the readers and the victims of the
press over and over again. They do not stand up as a genuinely
independent referee. Over and over again they end up sidling towards
defending the bad practice of the media.
RG : I agree but let
us specify some areas that are wrong about the PCC. I said that
it was founded specifically to overcome the fact that we were
going through a bout of particularly bad behaviour in the 1980s
from the tabloids, particularly the News of the World and
particularly at that time the Sun (which is less true nowadays
I ought to say). There have been different phases and periods
in the life of the PCC and in my view it has done some things
that are pretty good because it has made journalists very conscious
of the idea of their being a code. It only came to light in 1991
when the PCC actually began after we drew up the Code in 1990;
Meyer calls it a "healthy teenager" but it still is
only a teenager and it has a way to go to mature. They have done
some things well but they are not and never are really proactive
enough. They will say that this is due to funding or they will
say it is because they do not have phone numbers, but they are
not proactive. So it does mean that when there are feeding frenzies—let
us admit that the ultimate feeding frenzy was the treatment of
the McCanns and, by the way, Robert Murat—they are allowed
to go forward because they fail to be proactive. The famous telephone
call between Meyer and McCann about whether he advised him to
go to law or not has been somewhat obviscated I think. The truth
is that at that point Meyer could have said Look, you're
worried; we're going to take some action. If you want to go to
law later that is your view, but instead the PCC attitude
is If you're going to go to law we are having nothing to
do with it. I think that is wrong. I think that self-regulation
should mean that they get involved irrespective of whether that
person goes to law or not. That is item one. I also think that
the way the PCC operates is all about smoke and mirrors. It is
all behind the scenes; it is all about resolution and arbitration
rather than adjudication so there are only 45 adjudications and
3968 complaints last year. That is far too small a proportion
to be credible. Christopher Meyer said in an interview I did with
him a few weeks ago, We would love to adjudicate more; nothing
would please us more than to adjudicate, it would be easy to do.
We could simply say, no, we are going to adjudicate, but it would
bring us into disrepute. It would bring the PCC into disrepute
with its funders; it would actually mean that there were clashes
between the PCC—as there were with the Press Council—and
the industry that set it up and it would not do it any more. That
is the fig leaf that goes on at the moment. Then there is the
opacity of the PCC. Apart from the smoke and mirrors setting,
it is not a public body so we cannot look at it through the Freedom
of Information Act as we can other self-regularly bodies. The
IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) is a public body so you can actually check on what people
are doing in terms of really, really amazing complaints relating
to the police, but you cannot in terms of people who complain
to the PCC. Christopher Meyer's argument is that if you did that
then fewer people would complain but it has not stopped people
complaining to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. We
are not saying that the names of those people and what they write
would ever be revealed in the press; what we are saying is that
it would test much more clearly about how they are going about
their work and what they actually do and whether the resolution
is working. To offset that they set up the independent charter
commissioner. The independent charter commissioner is appointed
from within the chairmen of the PCC. I do not know whether that
means independent or not but the next one is going to be former
Black Rod Sir Michael Wilcox, himself famously subject to a PCC
complaint on one occasion. Again that work is carried out quietly
and behind the scenes. So in every way there are questions about
its independence. If you look at who appoints who within the industry,
apart from the fact that the independent commissioners who form
a minority on the commission, everything else is self-selected
and self-appointed by the chairman or by the chairman of PressBof
which funds it.
ND : It is that word that
Roy has just used that is the important one, their independence.
They are not sufficiently independent to do their job properly;
they are not functioning as an independent referee.
(...)
Q470 Chairman: Is Paul Dacre a public figure?(Q469 was Is a public figure somebody who lots of people in the public have heard of)
RG : Yes, Paul Dacre
is a public figure. I think editors and publishers are.
ND : It actually comes back
to the public interest point. I am thinking that you could have
somebody who is not inherently a public figure but becomes a public
figure because it is in the public interest that they are. The
man who is storing firearms in his house so that he can go out
into the street and massacre strangers, it is in the public interest
that we should be able to treat him as a public figure and say
that without risk of him suing us. He has become public because
of what he is doing.
Q471 Ch. : So did Gerry McCann become a public figure?
ND : In that he should have
been exempted from the standard protection against libel. Both
of these concepts, public figure and public interest, are fuzzy
but I think public interest is probably more helpful to deal with :
is it in the public interest for Gerry McCann to be exempted from
libel protection? I do not think it is. He does not have power
over people, does he? People do not need to know. The man with
guns in his house we need to know about; politicians we need to
know about; we need to know about editors.
(...)
Q475 Paul Farrelly: The highest profile case of ordinary people using the CFA was the McCann case. They could not have done it otherwise.
RG : They have been
transformed, as we have described, into public figures.
ND : They would not have
been able to sue unless the CFA was there for them. They could
not have afforded the lawyers.
RG : No, I do not think
they would have done.
(...)
Q490 Ch. : Can I just come back to the McCann case because that was one of the main reasons for our inquiry. That is probably the most serious libel committed by a large number of papers although only one finally reached the court in recent times and has caused deep concern. First of all, do you think it was a one-off, that it was such an extraordinary case, that that kind of thing could not have happened elsewhere? Secondly, given what has been revealed by the extent to which papers were just making up stories do you think that they actually learned lessons? Did they sit and take a long hard look at themselves and say, "We must never allow this to happen again?"
RG : I do not think
so. I do not think the lessons are easily learned in that matter
and indeed many newspapers have got away with things because they
were not sued. They just chose to go for the most obvious examples
in the Express newspapers. By the way, when you talk about
the McCanns you must include Mr Murat as well who was severely
libelled throughout. I think it was an extraordinary case but
which brought to light what goes on at a lower level day after
day after day, which is irresponsible behaviour and the publishing
of stories which are inaccurate. In that sense, although it was
an extraordinary story and an extraordinary episode in the life
of the press, it was not one which in some ways was an aberration
and will never happen again and that was an aberration that had
never happened before. It is in fact part of the on-going culture
of popular journalism in Britain.
ND : I would agree. You
have to look at the underlying drivers here. There was a similar
case with that guy who was killed in the bush in Australia and
his girlfriend was blamed by the press. The guy who died was called
Falconio. Do you remember that case? It is rather similar. There
is a crime, we do not know what the answer is; okay, we will blame
one of the players. There was a ghastly press campaign against
this poor girl and she was completely innocent. The underlying
drivers are what I wrote the whole book about, the underlying
drivers commercially driven organisations desperate to sell papers
and get ratings, feeding off each other's sources of information,
not checking. It is that commercial pollution that has occurred
which is very, very common. The McCann case was particularly big
and particularly cruel but not unusual in the drivers behind it.
You ask about lessons learned, there is no reason to think that
lessons have been learned because, if anything, commercial drivers
have become more powerful because of the financial problems than
now encroach on newsrooms.
Q491 Paul Farrelly: The tabloid press has said that the McCann case was a one-off so that is a refreshing counter-argument. There are inaccuracies that may not affect people's whole lives; with the McCanns of course it did affect their lives. There is also the question of whether it is accurate or is irresponsible and I just wanted to read into the record another case recently, the way the British tabloids treated the daughter, Elizabeth Fritzl, and the Sun in pursuing her to her new home, published a pixellated face. Then on 11 March the Daily Mail actually felt the need to publish the name of the village where she lives. The Austrian press referred to our press as "Satan's reporters". Florian Klenk of the Falter newspaper in Vienna, in the case of Elizabeth, has said that their new existence has been destroyed thanks to the British reporters who have divulged the name of her village. Is that not another example, when there is such a big story like this, that every new fact, every new angle is a fresh lead and a fresh headline, and nobody steps back to ask Should we be doing this?
RG : That is a very
good example of Mr Whittingdale (président du comité parlementaire CMS) asking whether they had learned
any lessons. That would suggest that no lessons at all have been
learned. By the way, just to add to your record is the fact that
the chequebook came out and there were offers to Mr Fritzl for
his story which completely runs against the spirit and letter
of the code of conduct.
ND : As a secondary point,
the Mail disclosed the name of the village on 11 March;
two days later the Express did the same and the Independent
followed by Scotland on Sunday. So it is not as if it was
just the freakish Mail; they led the way but others were
perfectly happy to follow.
RG : This is a really
good example of how feeding frenzies take off in that one paper
does something and the others feel they have to catch up or at
least feel that this is in the public domain therefore we are
justified in doing it. In no time that creates a vicious circle.
In many ways the McCanns—the case which was an extraordinary
example—is merely the tip of an iceberg in the sense that
this is fairly common stuff. I have great respect for the Independent
and I know that Nick does, but is it not disgraceful that a newspaper
of that sort would feel able to do it and it felt able to do it
because it would use the defence that it was already out there.
That is not responsible. It should actually have been critical
of the Mail for having done it in the first place.
