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On press freedom day, remember the dead – and the need for common sense On press freedom day, remember the dead – and the need for common sense
(about 20 hours later)
Today is Unesco's Press Freedom Day, with journalists round the world saluting the 32 of their number who have died on duty already this year: six in Somalia, six in Pakistan, five in Syria, with Russia, Mexico and the usual bloody suspects weighing in behind. But here in Britain, of course, press freedom poses rather different challenges. Will the Privy Council, come 15 May, rubber-stamp the politicians' favoured royal charter on press regulation or the alternative devised by papers themselves (including Britain's 1,100 local journals)? The latest chink of common sense emerged on World Press Freedom day on Friday, appropriately enough. Journalists around the globe were remembering the 32 of their number who have died on duty already this year. The World Association of Newspapers, assessing threats to open reporting, singled out Britain, post-Leveson, as a cause for concern. And David Cameron, with Ukip to worry about, did the pragmatic thing. He dropped 15 May as the day the privy council had to decide between royal charter 1 (as agreed over Kit-Kats with Hacked Off) and charter 2, which Britain's local papers and magazines, among many others, have signed up to.
David Cameron, it's said, is hanging tough. He's sticking with the late-night-pizza charter agreed by the parties and Hacked Off in Ed Miliband's office. No delay, no more negotiation. And no question, alas, of where such determination will lead. There'll now be a few weeks of assessment and consultation more; and, if you're cynical, you can already see the long grass of summer growing. But, for once in such matters, cynicism seems rather beside the point.
Papers – whose participation should be "voluntary" according to Lord Justice Leveson himself – won't be signing up. They will risk the threat of "exemplary damages", preparing to fight any such court case in Europe, and push on with their own non-royal alternative instead. Then this parliament or the next will be stuck with legislating something non-voluntary, or sitting back and see how matters develop. Charter 2, when unleashed a couple of weeks ago, had two clear purposes: acting as backstop to show that the press wouldn't sign up voluntarily for charter 1; and, on the front foot, seeking the kind of direct negotiation between government and industry that could bring agreement at last. Both points have registered. Now, with Hacked Off hopefully taking tea and biscuits in a cafe far down Whitehall, we can move forward.
You can wax pretty hysterical about this, if you wish. Trades unions barons, bankers, press barons: roll them all into one. But it's actually pretty silly. The alternative charter – its recognition body headed by a retired supreme court judge, its various manifestations full of non-press majorities and vetted by public appointments authorities – doesn't in any sense give newspapers an effective veto: because the judge at the top of the pyramid, if cheesed off, could just walk away and bring the whole system crashing down. Common sense means compromise, give-and-take, teamwork. You want a whistleblowing hotline? Write it in. And Leveson's ideas on arbitration, the ones designed to make papers sign up that have sent the local press in the opposite direction? Try them and see. Discuss, mediate, agree – the real point of the papers' charter. Don't stand on your dignity. It isn't very difficult. A retired supreme court judge as the chief arbiter of compliance for press regulators, someone who can always bring the whole edifice down if he's thwarted or cheated; a whistleblowing hotline installed; trial periods to test whether enforced arbitration produces a tidal wave of lawyers hunting for fees (as the local papers fear); healthy majorities of non-press voices on the various committees that investigate and decide; open and mandarin-sanctified appointments systems.
Neither version, of course, touches the killing fields of Syria and Pakistan. But Unesco recognises most of the NGOs that have recoiled from Cameron's last stand. One thing does go with another if you want a solution that fits. This is not the "full Leveson". He didn't provide anything you could call full of wisdom about online news, for instance. His notions of obligatory press silence after celebrity arrest have just encountered the Stuart Hall amendment. There's no need to worship every dot and comma from his 2,000 pages. But there is, now, a need to get on. The press aimed to get its reformed body up and running by 1 July. HMG seems targeted, at best, somewhere around 1 July 2014. Too damned long. There will be other, and better, things to worry about next World Press Freedom Day.
Alone at the topAlone at the top
America's circulation bureau now adds print and digital statistics together to produce some heady sales figures. But strip online out of those figures – concentrate solely on print – and the top nation's top three stand in splendid isolation. At number one (for all his critics), Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal averaged 1.48 million buyers a day in the first three months of this year. USA Today, at number two, had 1.42 million. And the New York Times – 795,395 – trailed in third.America's circulation bureau now adds print and digital statistics together to produce some heady sales figures. But strip online out of those figures – concentrate solely on print – and the top nation's top three stand in splendid isolation. At number one (for all his critics), Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal averaged 1.48 million buyers a day in the first three months of this year. USA Today, at number two, had 1.42 million. And the New York Times – 795,395 – trailed in third.
It's a long way from there to the LA Times at 433,000 and the New York Daily News at 360,000. (If you want to try comparisons, Britain's top five, the Sun, Mail, Mirror, Express and Telegraph, manage 6.2 million a day between them.)It's a long way from there to the LA Times at 433,000 and the New York Daily News at 360,000. (If you want to try comparisons, Britain's top five, the Sun, Mail, Mirror, Express and Telegraph, manage 6.2 million a day between them.)