THE PHONE-HACKING scandal was not a failure of self-regulation in the press, a prominent former editor said yesterday.
Simon Kelner, the editor of the London I ndependentfor 12 years, said the phone-hacking scandal could change the face of the whole industry.
Speaking at the inaugural National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) journalism awards yesterday, Mr Kelner maintained that self-regulation of the press, which exists in both the UK and Ireland, was not perfect but government regulation was not the answer either.
He accused British prime minister David Cameron of acting out of self-interest in setting up the Leveson inquiry which was originally to inquire into phone-hacking at the News of the World, but has had its remit extended to examine the culture and practices of the press including the process of self-regulation.
He said Mr Cameron was motivated by his desire to deflect from his own involvement with Rupert Murdoch and his decision to appoint Andy Coulson as his press spokesman.
He also said the British political establishment was going after the press because of its discomfort over the way its expenses were uncovered by the Daily Telegraph.
He accused the Press Complaints Commission in the UK of being “scandalously asleep at the wheel” when it investigated phone-hacking but said that the Metropolitan Police was ultimately at fault for not investigating it properly.
He also noted that it was investigative journalists and not the police who brought the full extent of the phone-hacking scandal out into the open.
He stressed that the News of the Worldserved the market "bloody well" as people continued to buy it for its gossip about celebrities and footballers, but that was not to condone its phone-hacking practices.
Self-regulation of any industry is imperfect because there are commercial vested interests and with the press there are bound to be excesses, but blaming it for the phone-hacking scandal was like blaming the General Medical Council, the UK medical watchdog, for Harold Shipman.
Mr Kelner quoted the words of Thomas Jefferson who said that if he had to choose between democracy and the free press, he would choose a free press because without it there would be no democracy.
He questioned the belief that the public needed more powers to protect themselves from the press given that the libel laws did that already.
He also said that he could not answer the question as to whether societies needed newspapers, but society certainly needed journalism to monitor the centres of power and expose wrongdoing.
Despite all that had gone on, those who worked in newspapers were “exceptionally lucky” and journalism remained a “noble calling”.
Minister for Communications Pat Rabbitte said the rise of social media would have “profound consequences” for journalism, but he said journalism had a critical role because of and not despite the chorus of voices.
The Minister quipped that the newspaper body only invited him to the awards because they could not afford Seán Gallagher.
The chairman of the judging panel, Michael Brophy, said there was an “extraordinary quality” to the level of entries to the competition and he and the rest of the judging panel were “staggered” by the number of high-class articles that were put forward for consideration.
He said there was a tendency for people in the newspaper industry to think that the best days were in the past. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
The entries provided a “defiant challenge” to the belief that the days of great journalism are numbered, he added.
