Leveson Report in United Kingdom

By Francis Bennion:

On December (2012), The Times published a letter from me suggesting that the best way
to implement the Leveson Report, while maintaining press freedom, was for the media to
think of themselves as a profession and, like many professional bodies, get themselves a royal
charter from the Privy Council. I was once chief executive of the Royal Institution of
Chartered Surveyors (RICS), and that was just what they did back in 1881.

The hallmark of a profession is that it has a code of ethical conduct drawn up by its
professional body, breach of which is punishable by that body. I have suggested the formation
of a professional body called the Chartered Press Institute (CPI). As with the RICS and many
similar bodies, the CPI would be set up by a royal charter overseen by the Privy Council, an
ancient body descended from the “wise men” who were advisers to the monarch before
Britain became a constitutional monarchy. Its website says: “Much of the day-to-day work of
the Privy Council Office is concerned with the affairs of Chartered Bodies, the 900 or so
institutions, charities and companies who are incorporated by royal charter. The Privy
Council also has an important part to play in respect of certain statutory regulatory bodies
covering a number of professions and in the world of higher education.”

I know from my RICS experience that the Privy Council office has a very light touch and
seldom interferes. Its supervision, were that office in place now, could not be said to prejudice
press freedom.

The members of the CPI would be trained journalists who had undergone qualifying courses
set by the institute. As is the case with surveyors and surveying, non-members would be free
to practise journalism, but the charter would make them subject to the CPI code of conduct
and its penalties.

What press freedom means is freedom from government or legal interference. I do not mind
Mr Cameron borrowing my idea, but I do not care for the way he has done it. Instead of
newspaper figures themselves putting together the substance of the royal charter, it has been
done on their behalf by the Government. On Monday, having cobbled together a draft royal
charter, the Coalition, aided by Labour, staged a three-hour Commons debate on it. Few in the
chamber had even seen the draft, which had been produced in the small hours the night
before. I am a member of the MCC, and I call this the “MCC” draft, the initials standing for
Miliband, Cameron and Clegg.

The MCC draft is a puzzling document, very different from what I had envisaged. It starts:
“There shall be a body corporate known as the Recognition Panel.” Not, as one might expect,
“the Press Recognition Panel” or “the Media Recognition Panel”. Just “the Recognition
Panel”. Very strange.

And it gets worse. The purpose of the Recognition Panel is to deal with the recognition of
Regulators. “Regulator” is defined as a body set up by the media for the purpose of vetting
their publications. The panel‟s business is to be carried on by a board. The chairman of the
board is to be chosen by an independent appointments committee (editors and publishers are
excluded, as are MPs and government ministers, but not the BBC).

The idea of the media being regarded as an independent, self-regulating profession has been
lost. In 1969 I published a book called Professional Ethics. It described the way free
professions used to produce their codes. There was no such thing as a bossy Recognition
Panel, or anything like it. Senior members of a profession disciplined their members if they
failed to live up to their own code. This method served the public well, and the leading
professions were highly respected.

We need to remember, by the way, that we live under the rule of law. It is the law that is the
citizen‟s chief protection. Extreme misbehaviour by journalists, such as phone hacking and
harassment, is dealt with by the criminal law. Lesser misconduct, such as trespass or
defamation, constitutes the civil wrong that lawyers call a tort. Both kinds of law are
administered by the state. If their remedies prove inadequate, that should be dealt with by law
reform measures.

Other types of misbehaviour by journalists are best dealt with by their fellow professionals –
people with accumulated wisdom about their area of work – applying their own wellrehearsed
ethical standards. If that is not thought sufficient in a particular instance, the
solution is to widen the legal remedy. Imposing measures like the MCC draft is neither
necessary nor wise. By subjecting the entirety of the media‟s own code to interference by
outsiders it places at risk many of the code‟s provisions that are harmless to the public as well
as the few that might be found objectionable.

Source: Daily Telegraph 20 Mar 2013 pp. 14 and 21

In The Times, he wrote 2 days later:

“When on Monday 25 March 2013 the House of Lords considers the Commons amendments
designed to implement the Leveson report I hope they will reject them as being contrary to
the rule of law.

I say this because they would use unlawful means to punish any newspaper proprietor who
failed to participate in the scheme of media regulation thought up by the Government and
proposed to be implemented by a Royal Charter drafted under Government supervision.
The unlawful means are twofold. They are (1) an interference with the powers of the courts to
award or withhold exemplary damages, and (2) an interference with the powers of the courts
to award or withhold costs. Both amount to contempt of court, and together they represent a
kind of legalized blackmail (defined in the old case of Rex v. Gardner as “the attempt to
obtain money or other advantage by threats of injury to persons or property”)”
.