Following a lengthy summer sojourn, MediaPaL is back. Over the next couple of days we'll be posting some 'catch-up' blogs reviewing briefly what's been going on in various areas over the last six weeks, before returning to daily(ish) links and comment from next week. For the most part, the catch-up posts will be referencing only but they may prove interesting reading for those who've been similarly awol.
One of the long-standing problems regarding the law of contempt (quite apart from the rights and wrongs of its substance), has been the perception that the Attorney General (and Government more generally) is often politically loathe to upset the red-top newspapers by bringing any action. The result is that the apparently stringent British law is rendered a somewhat different beast by under/non-application (on which see this from the New York Times).
In this regard, something that slipped under my radar in the last week may have an important bearing. In its Green paper on the Governance of Britain, Brown's new government has promised to review the role of the Attorney General. Concerns arise because the Attorney General acts both as a Government Minister (chief legal adviser), and as the guardian of
the public interest in a number of different areas (including the bringing of contempt proceedings). It is easy to see how any incumbent may confuse or conflate the public interest with that of the government of the day. A consultation is promised soon, and the Government has also stated its intention to take seriously the views of the Commons Committee on Constitutional Affairs that has been undertaking its own review.
On the day after Sir Christopher Meyer emphasised that journalistic lapses are inevitable, there is much in the newspapers on press and media types behaving badly. First off, the BBC has had to apologise to the Queen on account of its misrepresentation of an episode during the Queen's recent tour of the US (1,2). While shooting the Queen in formal garb, the photographer Annie Leibovitz suggested that she removed her crown for a 'less dressy' picture. A trailer for a BBC documentary on the Queen's year was cut in such a way as to imply that the Queen had then stormed out of the shoot. This didn't happen, but the Queen's face - stilled on the Guardian website - nonetheless tells a story in itself. No sign yet of an equivalent apology from the Guardian for its description of the episode as "a very royal flounce".
Next up, a US female television journalist - who was caught on video wearing a swimsuit at the home of a man whose wife disappeared two months ago, a story she had been assigned to cover - has described the episode as a 'horrible mistake' (1). She maintains that she had been taking her children out for a swim when she got a call from the man's sister, and chose to kill two birds with one stone (the latter being the hope of becoming friendly with the family in order to get to the bottom of the story). She insists that it was wrong for competiting stations to insinuate some form of relationship. She doesn't seem to concern herself, however, over the implicit intention to engage in emotional manipulation of her subjects.
Finally, a paparazzi photographer has been convicted of assaulting Heather Mills Macartney by grabbing her shoulder in order to twist her around for a better shot. I confess that when I first read this story I dismissed it as a fantasy on the part of Ms Mills, given that her own father is alleged to have described her as being a stranger to the truth. Clearly, I was wrong. The Guardian informs us that the defendant possessed 132 prior convictions for dishonesty - so Mills was trumped and thumped ...
There is an interesting note in the Guardian today explaining the vexatious fact that tv on demand downloads are generally only accessible using specified software tools. It seems its all down to the relative strength of the DRM systems associated with each, and the insistence by content rights holders that material is protected as well as possible.
The House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport has published the report on its inquiry into self-regulation of the Press. Among the conclusions in its summary were, first, that "to dispense with the current form of self-regulation and to rely exclusively on the law would afford less protection rather than more", and that "any move towards a statutory regulator for the press would represent a very dangerous interference with the freedom of the press". While the former notion seems obvious, the underpinning of the latter escapes me.
The report did note, however, that "if the industry is not prepared to act unless a breach of the law is already shown to have occurred, then the whole justification for self-regulation is seriously undermined". In short, editors should pull their fingers out.
The Committee hasn't closed the book on the issue. It promised that the area "raises serious and complex issues which may merit abroader investigation than we have been able to undertake here... particularly in the light of the recent speech by Tony Blair about the behaviour of the press and the regulatory framework for the industry... [the subject] deserves careful examination in the future".
More on this anon...
The campaigning group Save Kids' TV has launched a viral campaign online depicting our bleak collective future if proper funding is not restored for children's programming following the restrictions on junk food advertising. To date, the video has had 17 views (with another version having 12), but its worth a look even if just for the laughs...
Some time ago I commented on the withdrawal of a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission by Kate Middleton against the Daily Mirror, and how this had let the regulator out of a difficult predicament. Well, according to the Guardian, Ms Middleton is still facing regular pursuit by the paparazzi to the point were she has made formal complaints to the police.
Interesting excerpts from the article include quotations from the photographers involved - "we are sorry Kate we are having to do this, the newspapers are all pressing us for photographs"; "we are not doing so [stopping] because we know you aren't going to do anything" - and more importantly, the idea that the PCC has been deploying its behind-the-scenes entreaties to warn off editors. Clearly these injunctions are falling on deaf ears, which somewhat gives the lie to the PCC's regular claims over the effectiveness of this persuasive capacity. Oh, and there's also a repeat of recent reports that Kate and William are an item once again... who said the broadsheets haven't gone tabloid!
