Media standards
- 4 Jun 07, 02:20 PM
I鈥檓 catching up with the first series of Life on Mars 鈥 that鈥檚 what media on demand is all about.
It is, of course, brilliant. Our 21st Century hero Sam Tyler takes PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act) and post-Scarman, post-McPherson, post-Bichard, post-Morris attitudes and procedures back into the policing Wild West of 70s Manchester.
His 鈥榞uv鈥, Gene Hunt, is unencumbered by the niceties of collecting evidence and thinks 鈥榪uestioning鈥 is another word for 鈥榖loody good hiding鈥.
Sam Tyler calls Hunt: 鈥An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?
Hunt鈥檚 reply: You make that sound like a bad thing.鈥
To make this series about the police, you have to time-travel 鈥 albeit only cognitively and coma-based.
You could make a similar series about the British press (call it 鈥楲ife on The Sun鈥 maybe??) without leaving 2007.
The former News of the World royal reporter, Clive Goodman, is ; the information commissioner, Richard Thomas, says more than 300 other journalists do the same kind of thing; a few years ago, the it was ok to pay policemen for confidential information; entrapment and intrusion are routine.
Where the British press doesn鈥檛 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鈥檛 for fear of its stories failing any test of verification.
Oh鈥 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 from the newspapers鈥 own court, the Press Complaints Commission.
And yet, the British press remains unembarrassed.
In the US, newspapers have responded to scandals with a thorough examination of standards and practices. Almost every paper in America 鈥 no matter how small or local 鈥 now has a written code of conduct, many have a readers鈥 editor or ombudsman; corrections are increasingly prominent and swift.
The debate over the press is much more developed there, too, led by the universities, schools of journalism and organizations such as the or the , assisted by an army of bloggers.
A new(ish) entrant to the (emerging) UK debate (joining other newcomers such as the , and, of course, the 91热爆 College of Journalism 鈥 no public link, yet) is the 鈥 actually, it鈥檚 been going a while but its website is very new. So is its approach.
The MST鈥檚 director, hopes the site will be:
鈥a properly independent public space where people can have an informed discussion about news coverage鈥
鈥 especially standards; accuracy, fairness, context, sourcing and ethics. This week鈥檚 topic, for instance, is: 鈥 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 and .
It鈥檚 impossible to know whether this venture will be part of bringing newspapers鈥 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 鈥 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.
(Update 5 June: The Guardian did appoint as its readers' editor in 1997, a move which was followed by a handful of other papers.)
Kevin Marsh is editor of the 91热爆 College of Journalism
When we set about making the three part 91热爆2 series Power to the People we knew we were in for a rocky ride. The premise was simple enough: take a group of angry people who feel they've been pushed too far and no-one is listening to them, and follow them as they stage a symbolic act that helps them to finally be heard. 
The results were incredible. The comments about all three programmes showed that the idea of people taking a stand and fighting back really struck a chord with the public and never more so than the stunning response to the Zimmers (our band with a combined age of 3,000) who entered the charts at number 26 last week and has been watched by over two million people on YouTube.
