Ros writes in Liberal Democrat News, 8 February 2008

Alastair Campbell Ate My Ermine! House of Lords Select Committee Shock!

Most Parliamentarians will tell you that the Select Committee is one of the most interesting aspects of their work in Westminster. Last year I joined the newly created House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, and we’ve been meeting weekly to take evidence on our major inquiry into media ownership and the news.

The outcry over Rupert Murdoch’s ever extending press empire does not abate, but there are many other issues to consider as new technologies blur the lines between the different types of media and commercial pressures mount on the producers of news.

There’s been quite a lot of outside interest in our evidence sessions, and last week’s second witness, Alastair Campbell, proved to be a particular draw. To my surprise, I found little to disagree with in his take on the British press. His analysis of the parlous state of the relationship between politicians and the media was one which would have resonated with most of us. What was missing, predictably, was any sense that he recognises the role he might have played in bringing it about. The one admission he did make was that, with hindsight, his continuation of a media strategy developed in opposition into the early Downing Street years was a mistake.

The whole question of spin is discussed in a pretty one sided way though. Campbell, his Tory and even Liberal Democrat equivalents, along with press officers from myriad organisations, are paid to portray their employers in the best possible light. It is surely the job of the media to see through the spin and challenge them on behalf of their audience/readership, and I become increasingly worried by the lazy approach to political dialogue by our press.

The first evidence session, with Christopher Meyer, Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), raised some interesting issues relating to redress against the newspapers and their websites. The PCC purports to be an independent body holding the press to account against a Code of Conduct. So far so good. Unfortunately, the PCC is funded by the industry itself, and the Code of Conduct is drawn up by a committee dominated by the newspapers themselves. In a situation where the Editor of the Daily Mail sits on both the editorial board and on the PCC, and where the Executive Editor of News International is on both the editorial committee and the funding committee, you have to wonder at the rigour of the regulation. The supporters of self-regulation need to demonstrate how the roles of setting and policing the rules from within can be reconciled.

The remit of the PCC is pretty much limited to complaints brought by the public on the grounds of accuracy, privacy, harassment and so on, leaving swathes of potential difficulty unregulated. We talked about the recent case of Katie Price, aka Jordan, who complained about Heat magazine’s appalling treatment of her disabled son. She withdrew the complaint after reaching a settlement with Heat, and the PCC took no further action. They ignored the fact that a further 143 complaints had followed, many of those from individual parents concerned that their disabled children had suffered as a result. The PCC seems fixated on dealing with single complaints with individuals, and isn’t really geared up to upholding a more general concept of public interest.

Regulation of the media in this country is a bit of a mess. The PCC does half a job of regulating the newspapers, Ofcom regulates broadcast media, but not the BBC which is regulated by its own trust, the Advertising Standards Authority does its bit, and the Competition Commission gets involved in the whole question of mergers and acquisitions. The realities of global capital flows and the rapid development of new forms of media have left the regulatory framework a long way behind.

The expression “power without responsibility”, applied to the media, is as valid today as it was when it was written two decades ago.