The Media Standards Trust is concerned with protecting the freedom of the press and protecting the public from harm. They are dedicated to achieving the fairest and most fruitful balance between these contrasting points.

Their report published this week, A More Accountable Press makes a strong and publicly supported case for more effective curbs on excessive breaches of personal privacy by some sectors of the press.

There are two routes towards this:

1.  Establishing an independent, regulatory body, with real powers, to replace the Press Complaints Commission.

2.  Persuading parliament to create new criminal law against of breach of privacy.

The report recognises that where laws such as the Data Protection Act are being flagrantly abused by a wide number of papers, prosecutions are rare.

This suggests that there is a lack of will among British Parliamentarians to see through statutory legislation (almost certainly through a reluctance to upset the major media players). It therefore comes to the conclusion that the best course is to press for a more effective regulatory body.

To back up its case, it has conducted surveys through YouGov that confirm that journalists are now the least trusted among a group of 23 occupational categories. A startling 70% no longer trust news paper editors. 75% believe papers frequently publish lies. Now, with so much raw news available through other media, the quality of news in papers is more important than it was, and the public is sympathetic to increased regulation.

The PCC is demonstrably reluctant to tackle major abuses and did nothing to punish the several papers that were accused of major misreporting in the Madeleine McCann case. Indeed despite being severely criticised and receiving substantial fines for it in the High Court, not one journalist or reporter is known since to have lost their job or even faced formal reprimand over the matter.

The MST Report points out that almost all other professional bodies in Britain have seen their codes of practice and self-regulation processes overhauled in the last ten years, while the PPC was set up as compromise measure in 1992, on the basis that if self-regulation was seen not to be working, a new body would be constituted. It is manifest to anyone in and outside the industry that in its current form it is not independent and it has no powers (or real desire) to impose meaningful penalties on miscreants. But, pusillanimously, 17 years later, Parliament is still dragging its heels over replacing what is clearly a dysfunctional body.

It is up to the public to make clear to their MPs that they’ve had enough of tabloid editors running amok over the personal lives of individuals, and that, other than in cases where a genuine, and clear public interest is being served by such revelations, press invasion of privacy should be severely punished.

A More Accountable Press

Part 1: The Need for Reform

Is self-regulation failing the press and the public?

Published by the Media Standards Trust

www.mediastandardstrust.org

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