By Matt Buck, currently engaged as engraver to @tobiasgrubbe

If…

1. Rupert Murdoch revives the News of the World, but online-only.

2. Nick Davies loses his job at the Guardian, but joins the revived News of the World as part of its investigative team.

3. The Guardian poaches the “fake sheikh” Mazher Mahmood from the Sunday Times.

4. A trend develops for floundering local newspapers to be bought out by local entrepreneurs, returning control and vested interest to their communities.

5. The Leveson inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the UK press concludes nothing needs to be done about unethical and/or illegal media practices, as they are redundant because everyone is publicly revealing everything about themselves on social media sites like Facebook anyway.

6. Journalists are officially declared to be bloggers, thereby ending a perennial (and very tedious) debate.

7. The Guardian launches a paywall.

8. Richard Desmond, founder of Northern & Shell and owner of Express Newspapers is knighted in the New Year Honour list and becomes chair of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

9. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and is appointed National Security Adviser to the Obama administration.

10. Facebook buys the Daily Mail, as part of a number of strategic acquisitions of ‘accordant’ news outlets throughout the world.

Thanks to Matt Buck for permission to use his excellent cartoon.

• Frontline Club on its meeting to discuss Vaughan Smith’s support for Julian Assange
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• Independent: Vaughan Smith – ‘Why I’m sheltering Julian Assange’
• Swedish prosecutor seeks arrest of WikiLeaks founder in rape case

The debate around the need for reform of the UK’s self-regulation of the press returned to the spotlight this week, as industry representatives joined to discuss the issue at the Society of Editors conference on Monday and Tuesday. Following the event we spoke to a number of leading journalism figures, to hear their views and find out where the industry may go from here.

In this week’s #jpod news editor Rachel McAthy speaks to editor of the Independent Chris Blackhurst, group managing director of Northcliffe Media Steve Auckland, director of the Press Complaints Commission Stephen Abell and director of the Media Standards Trust Martin Moore.

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

• #jpod: How Apple’s Newsstand is revolutionising the publishing industry
• #jpod – Celebrating Local Newspaper Week: Innovations in digital at the regionals
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• #jpod – Assessing the impact of the Freedom of Information Act and its future
• Northcliffe Media selling Staffordshire titles

Guardian's Alan Rusbridger speaking to the Leveson inquiry. Still taken from video

The Leveson inquiry into press standards heard from key industry figures today, including representatives for the National Union of Journalists, the Guardian and the legal representative of alleged “victims” given core participant status.

Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the NUJ spoke first, describing the Press Complaints Commission as “little more than a self-serving gentleman’s club, and not a very good one at that”.

She also accused the system of having “failed, and abysmally so”. Her full statement to the inquiry has been published on the NUJ’s site here.

The inquiry also heard from editor-in-chief of the Guardian Alan Rusbridger, who has posted his statement in full online.

Near the beginning of his statement Rusbridger highlights the shifts which have taken place within the industry and are affecting journalists:

We also live in a world in which every reader becomes a potential fact checker. Social media allows anyone to respond to, expose, highlight, add to, clarify or contradict what we write. We have the choice whether to pretend this world of response doesn’t exist, or to incorporate it into what we do.

The more we incorporate it, the more journalism becomes, as it were, plastic. There will be less pretence that we are telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth about a story, frozen at the moment it is published – what Walter Lippman in 1922 called the confusion between “news” and “truth”. A journalist today lives with the knowledge that there will be an external reaction to much of what she or he writes within minutes of publication. Journalism today is often less a snapshot, more a moving picture.

Video of today’s hearing is available to view on the Leveson inquiry website here.

• Leveson inquiry has cost £2m so far
• Newspapers and PCC deny Baroness Buscombe claims
• Friday deadline for core participant status for next Leveson inquiry module
• Met police representatives and crime reporters before Leveson inquiry this week
• Leveson inquiry releases witness statements

Baroness Buscombe, outgoing chair of the Press Complaints Commission, singled out the Guardian during a talk at City University last night, accusing the paper of misquoting her “non-stop” for three years.

Responding to a question from Guardian data journalist James Ball about her comments on enforced regulation compliance, Buscombe demanded to know what he was going to tweet and repeatedly said “Have you got that Guardian?”

See a full report from media law blogger Judith Townend on Meeja Law at this link.

And a report from Jon Slattery here.

• Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?
• Financial Times: PCC chief demands meetings with national newspaper publishers
• PCC defends phone hacking report: ‘We can’t do things that the police can do’
• Press Complaints Commission to join Twitter; wants to explore social network debate
• Independent: PCC would act on ‘a whiff’ of new phone hacking

Revelations about the extent of the phone-hacking scandal have fuelled discussion about the state of self-regulation and possible reform. Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, has created a thought-provoking list of seven possible ways in which the system might be reformed, from scrapping regulation altogether to full statutory regulation. Moore has weighed up some of the pros and cons of each idea and intends for them to serve as a framework for discussion of the issue.

The list:

1. Abolish the PCC, without setting up a replacement
2. Reform the existing PCC
3. Create an independent regulator
4. Extend a watered down Ofcom to cover all major media organisations
5. Create a professional body for journalists
6. Withdraw all media regulation, but reform, extend, reduce and clarify existing media law
7. Create a new statutory regulator for all media

See Moore’s post on the MST website for his introduction and the full reasoning behind each idea.

• BroadcastNow: Ofcom warns ITV could lose £64m a year on regional news
• First local TV stations planned by Hunt to be licensed by 2012
• PCC rejects ‘not a regulator’ claim
• Ofcom: where does it stand on internet regulation?
• Ofcom to allow product placement on UK TV

The Press Complaints Commission has responded to an article published yesterday which claimed that the body was just a mediator and not a regulator. The piece, by Brunel University’s professor of screen media and journalism Julian Petley and published on the New Left Project site, calls the PCC “merely a body which deals with complaints about the press, the equivalent of the customer services department of any large corporate organisation”.

As the PCC misses no opportunity to remind us, it regards what it calls self regulation as preferable to any other kind of regulation, especially statutory regulation. As the Commission is financed by the very publications which it is supposed to be regulating, this is hardly surprising. However, the PCC cannot with justification present itself as a regulator given that (a) it was not established as a regulator and consequently (b) nothing in its Articles of Association suggest that it is meant to perform a regulatory function.

Read Petley’s full article at this link.

PCC director of communications Jonathan Collett responded to the piece today, rejecting the idea that the body is merely a mediator and not a regulator. Collett calls the New Left Project article a “lively read” but claims it is “undermined by being based on several false premises”.

Julian Petley is obviously wrong to try to characterise the PCC as merely a mediator and not a regulator. He is wrong to suggest there is nothing in the PCC’s Articles of Association to suggest it performs a regulatory function when those articles actually specifically state that the PCC has responsibility to: “consider and pronounce on issues relating to the Code of Practice which the Commission, in its absolute discretion considers to be in the public interest”.

Read Collett’s full response at this link.

• Rusbridger: ‘If we want a PCC that is effective we will all have to pay more’
• Media Standards Trust: watching the PCC
• Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?
• PCC’s credibility under attack
• TimesOnline: CMS select committee report to call for ‘radical shake-up’ of PCC

The Press Complaints Commission has published new guidance aimed at members of the public who need help coping with with media attention after the death of a friend or relative.

Newspapers and magazines regularly publish stories about people who have died, particularly if the death has happened in unusual circumstances. There are generally entitled to do so, provided that they abide by the terms of the Editors’ Code of Practice. However, media interest can cause distress to those grieving, and the PCC has now issued practical guidance to ensure the interests of members of the public are properly protected.

The commission says it has consulted widely on the issue, working with outlets including Facebook, the Samaritans, MPs and the police, to ensure the resulting guidance is helpful and relevant. The guidance is also said to reflect the views of newspaper and magazine industry members.

See the new guidance here.

• Links for ICO’s call for senior public officials’ (including BBC) salary bands to be publicly available
• Marc Vallée: The Met’s new photography guidelines
• Marc Vallée: Police cite Public Order Act 1986 and order media to leave G20 memorial protest
• Revised guidance on live court reporting due Wednesday
• Judge bans use of Twitter in Raoul Moat accomplices case

The Financial Times reports this morning that the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Lady Buscombe, has demanded individual meetings with every publisher of national newspapers in the UK, including the Financial Times itself.

The face-to-face meetings are in an attempt to seek reassurance “that ethical scandals which have afflicted the industry will not be repeated”, according to the FT.

In an interview to coincide with publication of the PCC’s annual review, Lady Buscombe told the FT that “trust in the system was of paramount importance” after it had been undermined by scandals involving phone-hacking and other illegal journalistic methods. Trust was “one of the most important principles” of self-regulation, she said, adding: “If we are going to have trust in the system, I need [the publishers'] assurance that, whether it’s phone-hacking or any activities like that, it will never happen again.”

See the full FT report here… (may require registration)

• MediaGuardian: Alan Rusbridger resigns from PCC code committee
• ‘Questions need answers’ from NotW, says PCC chair
• Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?
• Solicitor Mark Lewis considering legal action against PCC
• PCC defends phone hacking report: ‘We can’t do things that the police can do’

Listen below for this week’s news round-up from Journalism.co.uk’s senior reporter Rachel McAthy and sign up to our iTunes podcast feed for future audio.

This week’s jpod reports on permission being granted to Attorney General Dominic Grieve to begin proceedings for contempt of court against the Sun and the Daily Mirror, Max Mosley loses his bid in the European Court of Human Rights for prior notification but intends to appeal and the Press Complaints Commission upholds a complaint against the Daily Telegraph and its secret recording of Liberal Democrat MPs.

There is also more information on Journalism.co.uk’s fourth news:rewired event, noise to signal, which takes place on 27 May at Thomson Reuters, Canary Wharf.

• Gately’s partner makes PCC complaint over Jan Moir column
• 21,000 complaints made to PCC over Jan Moir article; highest number in Commission’s history
• Pulse: Press Complaints Commission to investigate Daily Mail over GP pay claims
• British journalist loses appeal against jail sentence in Singapore
• Press Gazette: Dutch court says tapping of journalist’s phone was illegal

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who has been and remains a vocal critic of the Press Complaints Commission, argued last night that the regulatory body should be supported and improved, not scrapped, and said the press will need to pay more to if it wants an effective regulator.

Delivering the Anthony Sampson lecture at City University London, Rusbridger, who resigned from the PCC code committee in November 2009, did not let up in his customary criticism of the body, calling it “ineffective” and its 2009 report into phone-hacking at the News of the World “utterly feeble”.

“How, MPs reasonably ask, can we as an industry argue that self-regulation works when it evidently failed quite spectacularly over phone hacking?”, he asked.

In March last year, speaking at a debate on self-regulation in the House of Lords, Rusbridger suggested the PCC might be “flying the wrong flag [and might be] better to rebrand itself as a media complaints and conciliation service and forget about regulation”.

But he argued last night that self-regulation remains preferable to statutory regulation, and called for the PCC to take a tougher stance on issues such as phone hacking.

He asked why it hadn’t written directly to News International over Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal, to ask “why are you paying fees of someone likely to be involved in illegal activity?”.

The PCC, he said, needed to “do something which showed a vertabrae”.

I can’t imagine a fine than would scare News International, they’re just so big and rich. What scares them is the truth, they’re are scared of the truth coming out.

I put it to Rusbridger after the lecture that one of the things required to strengthen the regulator and allow it to undertake proper investigations would be better funding, and asked if, alongside his criticism of the body and calls for it to be improved, the Guardian should lead the way in making a greater financial contribution.

It’s difficult, it’s not lavishly funded and it’s clearly not set up to do something like a big investigation into phone hacking. I think if we want the kind of PCC that’s going to be effective we are all going to have to pay more. But that’s a pretty tough message if you work on the Yorkshire Post or the East Anglian Daily Times. Why should you pay more when by and large you’re not doing things that are going to require fantastically expensive investigation?

He acknowledged that the PCC did not have the funds to undertake thorough investigations, investigations “with teeth”, and said the press would have “to be a bit more creative about the way that we fund the PCC”.

It can’t just stagger on as it is, being completely ineffective because they shrug they’re shoulders and say ‘we haven’t got the power and we haven’t got the money’.

See Rusbridger’s full lecture at this link.

• Alan Rusbridger: ‘Weak press self-regulation threatens decent journalism’
• Martin Moore: seven models for reform of self-regulation
• Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?
• Comment is Free: Phone hacking – select committee must move quickly, says Paul Farrelly
• MediaGuardian: Alan Rusbridger resigns from PCC code committee

Guardian media and technology editor Dan Sabbagh reports this afternoon that reporters’ and newspapers’ Twitter feeds are expected to brought under the regulation of the Press Complaints Commission later this year.

According to Sabbagh’s report, Twitter accounts that include the names of publications and are clearly “official” – he cites @telegraphnews and @thesun_bizarre as examples – are likely to come under regulation, but reporters’ individual work accounts could also be brought under the commissions’ ambit.

The PCC believes that some postings on Twitter are, in effect part of a “newspaper’s editorial product”, writings that its code of practice would otherwise cover if the same text appeared in print or on a newspaper website.

A change in the code would circumvent a loophole that – in theory – means that there is no form of redress via the PCC if somebody wanted to complain about an alleged inaccuracy in a statement that was tweeted. Last year the PCC found it was unable to rule in a complaint made against tweets published by the Brighton Argus.

Full post on MediaGuardian at this link.

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The Press Complaints Commission has appointed Lord Grade of Yarmouth, His Honour Judge Jeremy Roberts QC and Michael Smyth CBE as public members of the organisation.

In an announcement today the PCC said it received almost 3,000 applications for the positions following its advertising campaign. The appointments were approved by the commission last week.

The new members, which includes a former executive chairman of ITV and BBC chairman in the form of Lord Grade, will each serve for a three year period.

Commenting on their appointments Baroness Buscombe, chairman of the PCC, said, “The commission has been very pleased at the level of interest shown in its role and its work and the very high quality of the applications received.

“These are important and significant appointments for the PCC. We are delighted to be able to appoint these three substantial figures from such a strong field and I am confident that all three will do much to contribute to the work of the PCC and will help ensure that the reputation and credibility of the PCC remains strong.”

• ‘Questions need answers’ from NotW, says PCC chair
• Buscombe continued: ‘We have a dysfunctional democracy’
• PCC chair addresses issue of privacy in online media
• Newspapers and PCC deny Baroness Buscombe claims
• MeejaLaw: Outgoing PCC chair takes a swipe at the Guardian

Following news that Richard Desmond’s publisher Northern & Shell had withdrawn all of its titles – including the Daily Mirror and OK! Magazine – from the PCC’s self regulatory system, the Media Standards Trust has posed the following open questions to Northern & Shell, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and the Press Board of Finance (PressBof). Republished here in full.

Northern & Shell

• Will you guarantee to offer the same levels of protection to members of the public – such as families who have suffered a suicide – as you did when covered by the PCC code?
• If a member of the public feels harassed by a journalist claiming to work for Northern & Shell, what should they do?
• If you discover that a high profile public figure is pregnant before their 12 week scan, will you protect their privacy as other newspapers have agreed, or just publish the story?
• Will your publications continue to write to the PCC Editorial Code, or is Northern & Shell opting out of all existing codes of self-regulation?
• How should a reader go about making a complaint about something that is written in one of your titles?
• When the Media Standards Trust wanted to make a complaint to the Daily Star, it found that the newspaper did not make public the name of its editor or a phone number for anything other than the newsdesk. Will the affected titles now make clear how to contact the editor and/or provide a clear internal complaints system?
• What motivated your withdrawal and on what terms, if any, would you return to the system overseen by the PCC?

Press Complaints Commission

• What impact will Northern & Shell’s withdrawal have on the PCC’s overall funding? Given that the amount contributed by national newspapers is kept secret, it is currently not possible for those outside the industry to work out what effect the exit will have.
• Will the PCC be able to maintain the same level of service on a lower budget?
• In its statement – and for the first time – the PCC revealed some of the publications not covered by the PCC (i.e. Northern & Shell publications). Will the PCC now publish a list of all those that do subscribe?
• Was Northern & Shell clear as to what motivated its withdrawal? And, if so, is it clear under what terms it might return to the system?

PressBof

• This is the second time in two months that the PCC budget has been hit (the first being the libel settlement and costs in November 2010). PressBof was not transparent about the cost of the first (and did not respond to the Media Standards Trust’s letter requesting further information); will it now be transparent about the cost of the Northern & Shell withdrawal?
• PressBof has previously refused to provide any assurances on what this means for the PCC’s level of service. Will it now provide assurances that the level of service the PCC provides will be maintained?
• Given the importance of national newspaper contributions to the sustainability of the PCC, will PressBof now lift the secrecy surrounding those contributions, and publish information on who pays for the PCC and how much each pays?

Martin Moore, the director of the Media Standards Trust, said: “The withdrawal of Northern & Shell raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of the current system of self-regulation. The PCC and PressBof need to reassure the public that they will continue to have adequate avenues of complaint. Northern & Shell needs to be clear as to how it will, in future, fulfil its obligations to its readers and to the broader public.

“The Press Complaints Commission argues consistently that it exists as a better alternative – and deterrent to – statutory regulation. It now needs to explain what impact Northern & Shell’s withdrawal will have on the general public, and what it plans to do to ensure the comprehensiveness and sustainability of press self-regulation.”

Update

The MST reports on its PCC Watch site that the PCC and PressBof have responded to their questions.

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If only people knew more about the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), says its public affairs director Will Gore, they could learn to love it.

The body was set up in 1991 from the ruins of the Press Council, but Gore says that despite having existed for nearly 20 years, there are still “massive issues of perception” around it.

“There are a lot of people who don’t [know how effective the PCC is],” he tells journalism.co.uk. “The encouraging thing is that of the 60-65 per cent that did have a view on effectiveness in the last survey, three quarters thought the PCC was effective or very effective.

“When people know more I think they have quite a positive view.”

Gore, who has worked at the PCC for 10 years, cites the view that it is run by the newspaper industry as one of the most common misconceptions.

“When you actually explain to people that all of the staff here are non-journalists, that the majority of committee members are nothing to do with the industry … they go ‘Oh okay, it’s not quite what I thought.’”

He’s also keen to dispel the idea that the PCC won’t consider headlines or third-party complaints on points of fact, although he admits it used to be “much stricter” on who could complain. Contrary to what its detractors claim, he says, the PCC does make a difference to newspapers’ reporting.

“If you look at newspapers 20 or 25 years ago, the level of intrusiveness into the lives of ordinary people is not as severe as it was, the levels of outright discrimination against individuals is not as severe as it was, the homophobia that was so prevalent and a lot of the racist attitudes have improved,” he says.

One common criticism of the PCC is that it has no power to fine newspapers for serious or repeated breaches of the Code of Conduct, but Gore says that this “massively underestimates” the impact of the PCC’s adjudications on newspapers and editors.

Even if fines were introduced, he doesn’t believe it wouldn’t prevent the worst reporting – after all, there are fines for libel and breaches of Ofcom’s code, but it doesn’t stop the rules being broken.

In fact, he says, the PCC’s option to demand an explanation from a publisher for repeated breaches has led to people losing their jobs, although he’s reluctant to give any details of private disciplinary matters.

Gore is also critical of people who don’t trust the PCC and so refuse to complain to it, saying that “to use that as an excuse to not bother complaining is a bit lame”.

“I’m not saying the PCC is a perfect organisation and I’m not here to sit around and defend the British press, but our view is that we want to encourage people to engage with us so we can engage with the industry and continue to raise standards.”

Newspapers, he says, rarely deliberately print stories they know aren’t true, and claims the “vast bulk are just cock-ups, or when something’s been left out and it changes the meaning”.

“The misconception is that newspapers will run stories to increase sales and it’ll increase sales so much that it doesn’t really matter what happens in terms of adjudication. It’s hard to see that a newspaper would make so much more money out of an outrageous story. If you put on 10,000 in sales and it’s a newspaper that sells for 20p, that’s nothing.”

He admits that the prominence of corrections, particularly for front-page stories, is still an issue, but insists that it’s improved since he started at the Commission.

“When I was first here we did let newspapers get away with an apology on page 36 and that has absolutely changed.

“We have had a number of occasions where there has either been an apology or a trail on the front page. Things are going in the right direction.”

Staunch opponents of the PCC are unlikely to agree, but Gore is adamant that, despite criticism, self-regulation remains the best system of accountability for the press.

“There will always be occasions when people make complaints to us and are absolutely convinced they’ve got it right and we don’t uphold it and people will then say ‘This just shows the PCC doesn’t deal with headlines or doesn’t deal with photos’.

“I think actually the system we currently operate is effective.”

Jamie Thunder is a student on the Investigative Journalism MA at City University London. He runs the blog http://exclarotive.wordpress.com/ and can be found on Twitter @jdthndr.

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The Press Complaints Commission has decided that a payment made by Express Newspapers in April 2009 to Nicola Fisher, who had claimed she was assaulted by a police officer during the G20 protests, did not breach the Editors’ Code of Practice.

According to the PCC, following an interview with Fisher the Daily Star and Daily Express published articles where Fisher outlined her allegations in detail and she was paid for her involvement in the story. At the time of publication the police officer had been suspended, but not arrested or charged with any offence. Later in the year he was charged with common assault, pleaded not guilty and was cleared of the charge in March this year.

The PCC launched its own investigation into the matter and announced in its adjudication that there had been no breach of Clause 15 (Witness payments in criminal trials) on the grounds of sufficient public interest.

At the time of the interview – while Ms Fisher had already spoken to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) whose investigation was in its preliminary stages – proceedings against the officer were not active, not least because his identity had yet to become known. The CPS had been made aware of the payment to Ms Fisher – who would not have agreed to the interview without remuneration – through her representative. There was no question of her evidence being embellished (as she had already given her statement to the IPCC before her interview). In addition, the trial took place before a District Judge rather than a jury.

The newspapers said that the police tactics and conduct during the G20 protests was a matter of legitimate public interest: the IPCC had received over 270 complaints about the actions and Metropolitan, City of London and British Transport Police during the demonstrations. Given the actions of the police, including their controversial practice of ‘kettling’ and the death of Mr Tomlinson, it was right and proper that Ms Fisher’s account be published. The footage of the incident had been widely disseminated on the internet and, at the trial, the officer did not deny the assault; rather, he defended his actions on the basis that he had used reasonable force in all the circumstances. While he had been acquitted of the charge, the decision had come in for some considerable public criticism.

• BBC Radio 4: The Jean Charles de Menezes IPCC leak
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• NUJ highlights unlawful seizure of cameras by police