READING THE riveting testimony to the Leveson inquiry into the British press certainly, and properly, induces anger.
But also, unfortunately, a sense of guilty pleasure. The mix of celebrity, sex and scandal, of gossip, of ordinary people traduced and then raging against the power of newspaper barons, of the latter’s and their minions’ pettiness and vindictiveness, criminality and amorality, all of these ingredients are part of the successful cocktail that sells millions of papers every day. And, yes, there is a danger in the “qualities” moralising about their rivals. “Serious” papers stoop to carrying juicy trials, and not because they are holding power to account, but because readers love it. They sell papers. However when such stories become the end in itself, the essence of papers, when letting in the light and scrutinising our leaders is no longer even part of the agenda, then the public tolerance for the very wide freedoms we enjoy will dissipate. The losers will be all the press, and ultimately, the danger is, democracy. The urge to regulate will become irresistible.
Leveson's inquiry may represent in Britain that dangerous tipping point. All the bounds of decency have been broken, not to mention criminality and mendacity on a breathtaking scale. Rights, dignity, trampled on. Privacy, be damned. And not alone by the late unlamented News of the World. A culture of anything-goes was pervasive, justified on the basis of a spurious "public interest", an attitude reflected most crassly last week by former NoWhack Paul McMullen at the hearing: "Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in. Privacy is for paedos. . .".
The blurring of the distinction between "public curiosity" and "public wellbeing" has served to discredit the latter as a justification for press freedom. As the BBC's Kevin Marsh mused recently, "Is it anything short of a miracle that here, now, in England we have . . . established the right to know which Premiership footballer has slept with which Big Brothercontestant?"
What is to be done? Getting their retaliation in ahead of the report, defenders of press freedom have argued rightly that instead of attempting to legislate content, a move that would threaten not just the tabloid culture but real investigative journalism, the emphasis should be on the prosecution of journalists who break the law. Failure to do so, and the cosy, corrupt relationship between some police and sections of the press, were among the most glaring failures in the NoWcase.
But the problems go far beyond just the enforcement of the law. Much of the press’s egregious behaviour has been perfectly legal, though in breach of journalistic ethics. Inevitably the finger must also point at the abysmal record of press self-regulation and the industry’s toothless Press Complaints Commission. The UK could do worse than look at the model of independent regulation represented by the Press Council of Ireland whose majority lay membership structure has proven a credible alternative to threatened State regulation.