Media standards
| 14:20 UK time, Monday, 4 June 2007
I’m catching up with the first series of Life on Mars – that’s 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 ‘guv’, Gene Hunt, is unencumbered by the niceties of collecting evidence and thinks ‘questioning’ is another word for ‘bloody good hiding’.
Sam Tyler calls Hunt: “An overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline-alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding?
Hunt’s reply: You make that sound like a bad thing.”
To make this series about the police, you have to time-travel – albeit only cognitively and coma-based.
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 ; 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’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 from the newspapers’ 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 – no matter how small or local – now has a written code of conduct, many have a readers’ 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 91ȱ College of Journalism – no public link, yet) is the – actually, it’s been going a while but its website is very new. So is its approach.
The MST’s director, 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: ’ 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’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.
(Update 5 June: The Guardian did appoint as its readers' editor in 1997, a move which was followed by a handful of other papers.)
Comments
I just wish retractions and apologies were given equal prominence to the original article. If the piece that the newspaper was found to have been lying about was on page 1-5 then there might deterrent if the paper had to apologise across pages 1-5 instead of tucking it away at the bottom of page 27.
"Intelligent critique and . . . open debate?"
You mean, like what's found in non-MSM blogs around the world?
We have a saying here: never reprint anything from a British newspaper, ever, since it's likely 90% lie and 10% exaggeration.
In fact, one of the local reporters exclaimed last month that he was happy to hear that Reuters was being purchased by a Canadian company, since that would likely mean there would be a reliable print source *at last* from the UK.
The reason that 'Life on Mars' has been so popular is because people like Hunt's style. His outlook, dispite its faults, compares very favourably to Tyler's mealy mouthed modern approach.
Similarly the 'get stuck in' ethos espoused by our tabloids compares favourably to the tepid PC guff we have to put up with from the 91ȱ.
Thank God for our tabloids. They bring a refreshing honesty to our journalism. They don't pretend to be impartial either.
There is a kind of integrity in the way they go about their business which is totally absent from your more polished 91ȱ coverage.
91ȱ sort yourselves out !!
It seems a bit hypocritical of the 91ȱ to complain about the standards of newspapers when many of the big political and criminal stories are broken by newspapers and then followed by the 91ȱ. And given that the 91ȱ is refusing to publish its own report into Middle East reporting, has it own biases and has shaped stories to fit the news p'haps it could ponder the old saying about glass houses and stones...
It seems a bit hypocritical of the 91ȱ to complain about the standards of newspapers when many of the big political and criminal stories are broken by newspapers and then followed by the 91ȱ. And given that the 91ȱ is refusing to publish its own report into Middle East reporting, has it own biases and has shaped stories to fit the news p'haps it could ponder the old saying about glass houses and stones...
This is shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.
The lack of fact checking, accuracy and straight reporting is pretty absent in general within the UK media. I try and use it as little as possible.
Recently I've begun watching ABC news a lot. I find their approach quite good in that there's no real agenda, just the news.
Sadly even the 91ȱ is now more interested in controversy than fact. The coverage today of the launch of the new logo for the London Olympics was wholly negative on 91ȱ news. At least on Channel 4 News the author and Seb Coe were allowed to put the case for the logo. ON the 91ȱ, it was knock knock knock.
Couldn't you at least give them one day to put their case then take the more considered reaction in a few days time? Didn't balance used to be opart of the deal?
You cannot hope to bribe or twist -
Thank God! - The British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
- Humbert Wolfe
It's hardly earthshattering news to state that the media in all its forms (including the tabloids with their 'refreshing honesty' [sic], the broadsheets, and the 91ȱ) will always place a 'good story' over a true one, and will subsequently balk when challenged upon it. This has always been the way of things from the beginning of news reporting.
It therefore remains the responsibility of the readership to scrutinise the messages we receive with a weather eye open for embellishments, 'shadings' and outright lies, and to demand accountability as much as possible.
Perhaps the American system, fueled as it is by fear of litigation, is not a suitable model for the UK, but if the PCC is not fit for purpose let's have it out and put in something better that serves the interest of the public and not the news industry. If a story is proved false, let's have a real and prominent retraction. We deserve the truth, and not just another pretty story.
The trouble is that very few 91ȱ or other journalists have any significant scientific training, and even worse seem to have a total blind spot towards statistics, especially those relating to risk.
A good example was on the Today Programme today, where in a discussion of a report on children's lack of freedom to play, the presenter was combative towards the contributor who pointed out the tiny risk from "stranger danger" compared to other risks, and gave an easy ride to Esther Rantzen's playing up of parental fears.
"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."
This from the 91ȱ? I've long ago lost count of the number of times I've tried to correct YOUR "blatant falsehood"s, and gotten exactly nowhere.