In my lectures I’d talk about Britain’s stringent libel laws, the restrictions imposed by the contempt of court laws, the all-embracing nature of the Official Secrets Act, the (still) absence of a Freedom of Information Act and the general atmosphere of secrecy and privacy that seems to inhabit too many corners of British public life. I’d also talk about the power of interventionist proprietors, the attentions of regulators and a host of other factors which combined together to ensure that, to most journalists at least, the phrase “the power of the press” had a distinctly hollow ring about it. I still hear that ring but now I hear it echoing in the ears of a “victim” of the media rather than as a journalist.

I came to experience life “on the other side” when I found myself facing Fleet Street’s finest in my guise as spokesman for Lord Levy, the Prime Minister’s personal envoy to the Middle East and chief fund-raiser for Labour, who found himself blinking in the light of unwelcome publicity when the Sunday Times “revealed” that in the last financial year Levy, a relatively wealthy man, had paid tax of just £5,000. (In fact, he hadn’t, the real figure was actually £34,000, but that’s another story). I had met him a few weeks before in his role as President of Community Service Volunteers, and being the only journalist he knew he asked me to help him out of his “little local difficulty”.

The intensity of the press interest in the story (it ran hard for three weeks and dribbled on for another month or so) was surprising. In an average day, I’d take between 20 and 30 calls – requests for interviews, comment, new information and so on. Weekends, with the Sunday Times in full cry, were particularly busy and I became something of a dubious late-night fixture at the newspaper stand outside Kings Cross Station in central London, waiting for the first editions of the Sunday papers to arrive. So, as a relatively experienced journalist, what were my problems?

First, there’s the fact that in a story such as this one is very much in a reactive mode – waiting for the next development, trying to second guess in which direction the story might be moving. Certainly one can adopt one’s own strategies – briefing friendly journalists, setting up interviews, launching initiatives – but ultimately one is waiting for the phone to ring, waiting to be confronted with the latest “revelations”. And these calls would always occur at a time, and with a deadline, that made finding the relevant rebuttal information virtually impossible. However, the real sense of powerlessness lies in the simple dilemma that confronts almost everyone caught in the headlamps of national publicity; namely, should one respond with a detailed point-by-point rebuttal of the allegations being made or does one just sit tight and say as little as possible? Providing the media with more information invariably extends the duration and amplifies the magnitude of the story. The other danger of responding in detail is that the more information one offers the more one provides leads for journalists to chase – and even where no wrong-doing or illegality has been involved, as was the case with Lord Levy, there are many legitimate reasons (including those of family privacy and commercial confidentiality) as to why one would want to seek to limit the amount of material finding its way into the public domain.

Danger

But it is perhaps in the area of corrections and apologies that one’s sense of powerlessness is the most pronounced. One such example during the Levy campaign involved my dealings with the Daily Mail. At one stage the newspaper, which had been particularly vitriolic, ran a story which was riddled with inaccuracies. Most damagingly the Mail claimed that the Inland Revenue were to launch an inquiry into Lord Levy’s tax affairs. Under the headline, “Taxman Homes in on Levy” the paper claimed that “Lord Levy faces the prospect of an Inland Revenue investigation into his tiny tax bills.” This story was hung on a quote from the Revenue that “if there is any truth in the rumours then the Inland Revenue will be looking into it.” The Revenue confirmed to me that they DID give that statement to the Mail – the only problem is they gave it in answer to the question: “Are you going to investigate the rumours that the leak of Lord Levy’s tax returns came from the Inland Revenue.”

Once I had established the truth of the matter I was confident I had a strong case to take to the Press Complaints Commission, if necessary. However, I first sought to get the Mail to publish a retraction and apology. After several days of hard negotiation and argument I won the agreement of the paper’s Executive Editor for a right of reply in which Lord Levy would be given a full page to put his side of the story; they also agreed to run an apology, the wording of which was, after much haggling, agreed. When the “apology” appeared the wording was completely changed and read as if the Daily Mail had simply been reporting wrong information received from the Revenue. When I demanded to know of the Executive Editor why the wording had been so radically changed he simply said: “The Night Editor didn’t like our original wording – editorial freedom, I’m sure you understand.”

But there was worse to come; the second part of the deal also fell apart. Lord Levy and I constructed our 900 words of his “right of reply” and faxed it off to the Daily Mail; obviously, the piece represented a positive statement of Lord Levy’s position and an attempt to move the story on to the wider political implications. A few hours later a reporter from the paper phoned, wanting some quotes about the latest developments in the story. When I said that he should extract the quotes from the article that we had just submitted he told me that they were not going to use the article since it “didn’t add anything new to the story”. I was furious and after several more calls to Mail executives, and more disingenuous references to “editorial independence” I was faxed a list of 10 questions all about tax, which, if Lord Levy would answer, they’d be happy to consider publishing. It was, in the words of a senior source at the Press Complaints Commission “.. more an offer to undergo a written interrogation, than a genuine offer of a right of reply.” It was an offer none too difficult to refuse.

Even when one achieved an agreement on the wording of an apology and understandings about prominence, these undertakings were invariably broken. I succeeded in gaining three apologies from national newspapers during this campaign and all three were placed in positions inside the paper that were almost invisible to the naked eye. The insult of the original inaccurate or malicious story was bad enough, but what was almost equally infuriating was, after hard hours of negotiations and raised expectations, to discover that it had all been a waste of effort since the original prominently displayed story, and not the small apology about inaccuracy, was bound to make a more long-term impact in the public’s mind. Nor is the “power of the press” in any sense diminished by an awareness of the alternative courses of action open to protagonists. Taking disputes with newspapers to court is usually ill-advised. First, there is the potentially vast expense involved but second, and far more important, is the fact that by doing so one ensures that allegations that were made many months, or even years ago, are resurrected in all the national press and run with prominence over many days. And at the end, even a favourable verdict, which gets a single day’s coverage in a newspaper, in no way out-weighs the combined negative impact of the days or weeks of court hearings. In terms of public perception the daily repetition of the charges, even if they are later found to be false, remains long after the vindicating verdict has been forgotten.

Regulation

So what is to be done, if anything? It’s far easier to say what shouldn’t be done. I am not arguing for greater censorship, nor for increasing the self-regulatory powers of the Press Complaints Commission, nor even for sending the editors of national newspapers to prison (tempting as it is). I am arguing for recognising that there is a very real problem regarding the treatment of individuals by newspapers; second, I am asking journalists to recognise that, their “power” should be exercised with “responsibility”; and third I am suggesting that the newspaper industry might have a lesson or two to learn from the broadcasters in terms of effective and responsible regulation. Broadcasting is regulated by a number (some would say too many) regulatory bodies. By and large they work. They police the airwaves and both the public and the broadcasters respect their decisions. They only have powers to intervene after a broadcast has been made but, as the Independent Television Commission demonstrated when it handed out a £1 million pound fine against Carlton TV for the quasi-documentary “The Connection”, they do have some very real teeth.

There is an important issue to be considered as to what the law should do in the event of a media organisation refusing to pay a fine. With broadcasting it’s somewhat easier, they can be taken off the air by the appropriate authorities. But do we want editors going to prison? Newspapers do not need, and nor should they require, a licence to publish. However, it seems to me that an element of statutory regulation, to work alongside the best aspects of self-regulation, might prove a beneficial mix. Self-regulation should be the first stage of the process but if that fails to curb the excesses of a publication then an outside body, with some statutory powers, might be empowered to intervene. The details are for another time. I doubt that even the whiff of a possible £1 million fine would eventually have stopped the Sunday Times from publishing their original story, but it might have made the editor pause just a little longer for reflection about the consequences of running a story that might just turn out to be substantially untrue.