Kevin Marsh of the BBC College of Journalism holds forth on The Editors blog about some of the grimier aspects of Brit journalism and steps being taken to address the situation.
He opens by referring to a Brit TV series called Life On Mars about a fuck-the-rules kinda cop.
You could make a similar series about the British press (call it ‘Life on The Sun’ maybe??) without leaving 2007.
The former News of the World royal reporter, Clive Goodman, is in jail for bugging (royal) mobile phones; the information commissioner, Richard Thomas, says more than 300 other journalists do the same kind of thing; a few years ago, the Sun’s editor told MPs it was ok to pay policemen for confidential information; entrapment and intrusion are routine.
Where the British press doesn’t fuse fact and fiction, re-shape evidence to support obsessions with house prices, mobile phones, cancer or the death of Diana, it relies on sources it could name but doesn’t for fear of its stories failing any test of verification.
Oh… and anyone trying to correct even the most blatant falsehood faces either a lengthy, costly, unpredictable struggle in Her Majesty's courts or what usually amounts to a haughty brush-off from the newspapers’ own court, the Press Complaints Commission.
And yet, the British press remains unembarrassed. ...A new(ish) entrant to the (emerging) UK debate (joining other newcomers such as the Reuters Institute, POLIS and, of course, the BBC College of Journalism – no public link, yet) is the Media Standards Trust – actually, it’s been going a while but its website is very new. So is its approach.
The MST’s director, Martin Moore, hopes the site will be:
“a properly independent public space where people can have an informed discussion about news coverage”
… especially standards; accuracy, fairness, context, sourcing and ethics. This week’s topic, for instance, is: 'Are the media presenting the dangers of wi-fi radiation fairly?’ Panorama does not escape unscathed.
He also wants it to be a place where people (readers, viewers and listeners as well as journalists) can confront the press with challenges and propose solutions.
It’s impossible to know whether this venture will be part of bringing newspapers’ ethics and practices up to the journalistic equivalent of Sam Tyler standards. It may well be that pressure from formerly passive, newly active audiences has a greater effect – lippy bill-payers can be persuasive.
But it would be good to think that if the British press is to change its ways, it does so following something approaching intelligent critique and the kind of open debate the Media Standards Trust is offering.