During the Leveson report’s gestation period, the closure of ranks among the media against any form of real change progressively intensified. What we were presented with was a pseudo-choice between self or statutory regulation. What we ended up with was a set of modest proposals for a self-regulatory body with statutory underpinning. But it has been decried as an open door to state intrusion not seen since the repeal of censorship and stamp duties.

In the midst of this fervour, it may be forgotten that Hackgate was about first and foremost institutional corruption of the gravest order between the media, police and politicians of all colours, which testimony to the inquiry has underlined. The result has been a media that is not adequately accountable and does not do its job adequately of holding others to account. Leveson only partially and tangentially pays attention to this heart of the matter.

The press themselves have sought to emphasise that the problem facing Lord Leveson was solely to do with the behaviour and ethics of (some) journalists. Even within this narrow framework, there were growing complaints that his remit was too wide and not appropriate to the extent of the problem; that British journalism is, on the whole, a robust and vigorous defender of the public interest. Within this narrative, the Guardian in particular is hailed as the champion of a pluralised press that can deliver accountability of itself.

But a genuinely democratic and accountable media system cannot be upheld by one or two titles with relatively minor readerships. What’s more, these titles have failed comprehensively to promote public interest journalism in other areas. For instance, the Guardian’s disastrous handling of Cablegate in 2010 (the series of US diplomatic cables released in partnership with WikiLeaks) resulted in stories about Gadaffi’s mistresses gaining more prominence than those about the government undermining the Iraq Inquiry to protect US interests, or misleading Parliament over the banning of cluster bombs.

The real problem for democracy is not so much that bad journalism gets published, but rather that good journalism often doesn’t. Finding alternative ways to regulate press ethics – which has occupied the near exclusive focus of Leveson’s report – will deal only with a marginal and surface symptom of a much broader disease that has seen the space for real, professional journalism in the public interest progressively diminish. It’s about decades of unchecked concentration of media power and a resurgence of press baronism; it’s about structural declines in circulation exacerbated by the migration of readers and advertisers online; and it’s about incessant closures and cutbacks to operational journalism across all platforms and sectors, but most acutely affecting those areas central to the media’s democratic role: investigative and local journalism.

In the event, Lord Leveson was perhaps inevitably circumscribed by the terms of debate established by the press. In essence, that debate consisted of a pseudo conflict between the victims of press intrusion on the one hand (who, despite the exceptional cases like the Dowlers and McCanns, are by in large an elite cadre of celebrities and public figures) and on the other, an alliance of media owners, editors and journalists propagating a misguided libertarian evangelism. It was as if the most important issue facing British democracy is how to balance the privacy of individuals with the free speech rights of media proprietors. Not the endemic corruption exposed between the highest levels of politics, police and media. It is this corruption which enabled the phone hacking cover up to endure for the best part of a decade and has fostered the malaise which has undermined the integrity of our most important public institutions.

It is for this reason – over and above the uncertainty as to whether Leveson’s modest recommendations will be implemented – that the struggle for media reform goes on. The next stage is to maximise pressure on politicians to support Leveson’s recommendations, but also to build on an emerging consensus among grassroots and civil society groups that tackling plurality is the only way to effect meaningful change. Specifically, by introducing media ownership thresholds that trigger public interest obligations and/or divestment; and by recommending new ways to fund and support journalism that serves the public interest over profit. Both of these goals are in keeping with the broad principles regarding plurality which Leveson outlined. But he shied away from making explicit recommendations and wrongly deferred to Ofcom, the government and industry stakeholders.

Clearly, the most important stakeholder in the question of plurality is the general public. It is imperative that we do not allow the ownership question to be side-lined because of technicalities. Media concentration is notoriously difficult to both measure and apply remedies to. But this is not a reason for abandoning policy altogether and there are certainly historical and contemporary precedents elsewhere on which to base a renewed approach to ownership regulation; one that takes into account the emergence of new oligopolists in the digital domain, whilst acknowledging the enduring capacity of legacy media to dominate public conversation.

It is precisely this capacity which has enabled the whole issue of ownership regulation to be marginalised from the debate. It has fostered a view of new rules as unrealistic or unfeasible which has found its way into the discourse of politicians and even campaigners who are nonetheless committed to substantive reform. The press has opted to engage these voices on its own terms, allowing editors to espouse a sense of libertarian defiance whilst continuing to dance to the strings of their owner-bosses.

It is telling that even those, like Peter Preston, who acknowledge the enduring fear of politicians to contravene the will of the press, at the same time emphatically demand that the press be left alone. Yet the fear of politicians – exemplified by Labour’s recent recoiling from earlier calls for ownership caps – should itself be a warning sign for media reformers.

Politicians will not be able to counter the dominant narrative emerging from a closing of ranks among the press without a concerted mobilisation of grassroots pressure. An IPPR poll six months ago suggested that a sizeable majority of the public support statutory limits on media ownership. Regardless of whether Leveson’s recommendations will be implemented, now is the time to establish and expand a movement for change that gives voice to this silent majority.

There are perhaps few issues that provoke a broader spectrum of opinion than media regulation. Familiar lines between left and right become blurred and no one seems to agree on what is really meant by media plurality, freedom or the public interest. In his calls for evidence in regards to media reform proposals, Leveson has unwittingly induced a focus on difference rather than core common principles. But there is certainly a wide consensus that something needs to be done about the concentration of media ownership which has fostered the kind of awkward and insidious relationships between media and political elites so vividly exposed by the Leveson hearings.

A media reform coalition is seeking to build on these core principles and engage broad support for real change in favour of real journalism. It has emerged from a cross section of civil society and campaigning groups including Hacked Off, Avaaz, the National Union of Journalists, 38 Degrees and the Coordinating Committee for Media Reform. Together, these groups are mobilising to maximise pressure on Parliament in support of new laws that will promote a genuinely democratic and accountable media.

James Curran
There seems to be general agreement that the reign of the Murdochs is over. Peter Oborne, the Telegraph’s consistently insightful commentator, exults that the air of public life is now cleaner. Those close to Ed Miliband crow with seeming justification that the Labour leader changed the political weather by taking on the Murdoch empire. The malignant influence of Rupert Murdoch in coarsening public life, presiding over a network of backdoor political influence and pushing his Tea Party views wherever possible through his media empire, has seemingly been exorcised.
This view may be right if the Murdoch dynasty sells up its UK press group, if Ofcom recommends a reduction of its BSkyB holdings and, above all, if Murdoch runs into legal difficulties in the US. But this is a lot of ‘ifs’. Meanwhile, the Murdochs have a plurality of voting shares in News Corp, and a lot of influence still to dispose – something not lost on the wily Scottish nationalist leader, Alex Salmond, who has continued his courtship with them even as Leveson unfolds.
It is also argued that the rise of the internet and social media have eroded the Murdochs’ power based on press and television. This is a view that Rupert Murdoch has publicly endorsed. It makes his power more acceptable by portraying it as a thing of the past.
This is enormously misleading. Leading newspapers and TV organisations have established very successful news websites, supported by cross-subsidies, large news-gathering resources and prominent brand names. In 2011, these ‘legacy’ media and content aggregators accounted for all 10 of the most visited news websites in the UK, and nine out of 10 in the US. Content aggregators like Google tend to give prominence to mainstream rather than alternative news sources. Appearing on the first page of search results, these mainstream sources are the ones that tend to be consumed.
Even if the Murdoch family is vanquished, the conditions that gave rise to its influence have not fundamentally changed. Ownership of the press is highly concentrated. Politicians, with party machines hobbled by loss of membership, and now arousing distrust rather than stable party loyalties, will continue to need favourable press coverage.
The mere changing of the media guard will not eliminate the underlying structures that give rise to the disproportionate influence exerted by media magnates. If the Murdochs sell up their UK press group, they will find a buyer – because News International not only still makes money as a single entity, it also, as the largest British national press group, offers a platform for political influence. Its sale will merely introduce a new entrant in a long line of press oligarchs, to join Rothermere (Mail), the Barclay brothers (Telegraph), and Richard Desmond (Express).
That is why we need to shrink media moguls’ power through effective anti-monopoly controls. There should be a limit of 15 per cent on control of the total revenue of the core media industry. In the case of designated sub-markets, market share of more than 15 per cent (up to a ceiling of 30 per cent) should incur public service obligations. These should be content-neutral and concerned with process. Their aim should be to promote internal pluralism, and limit the centralisation of power within media organisations (by, for example, introducing a conscience clause in journalists’ contract of employment, and securing staff representation on the board of directors).
Hoping that the Murdoch phenomenon will go away with the personal humbling of Rupert Murdoch is wishful thinking. We need to tackle the conditions that give rise to the Murdochs of this world in the first place. And that means the centralisation and concentration of press and media power in Britain – far greater than in Germany or the US – needs to be curbed.
James Curran is chair of the Coordinating Committee for Media Reform

Donnacha DeLong
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the end of the Wapping dispute. After 13 months of strike action, the dispute by the print unions ended in defeat in February 1987. Murdoch had won; the unions were gone from News International.
However, 2012 is also the year when the unions returned to Wapping. The first NUJ chapel since the dispute began in 1986 has been formed in the Times. And, more surprisingly, in his evidence to the Leveson inquiry on 26 April, Rupert Murdoch himself said that journalists were free to join the NUJ and if a majority of journalists wanted to do so, he’d accept their democratic decision and recognise the union.
What a distance we’ve come in a year in which Murdoch’s bid for full control of BSkyB collapsed, the phone hacking scandal led to the closure of the News of the World and the establishment of the Leveson inquiry, and the Press Complaints Commission abolished itself. And it’s not over yet. Major politicians including Cameron, Blair, Brown and Jeremy Hunt are still to appear before the inquiry as I write. Who knows what further skeletons will fall out of the closet when they do?
But Murdoch isn’t the only problem in the media. While Ofcom looks at whether the Murdochs are fit and proper persons to own broadcast media in the UK, another proprietor was given a green light to do so only two years ago. Richard Desmond, whose journalists twice complained to the PCC about the paper they write for, in 2001 and 2004, owns the Daily Express and Daily Star. In 2006, the NUJ chapel rose up and prevented publication of a page mocking Islam. Yet Desmond, despite this, was regarded as ‘fit and proper’ to buy Channel 5 in 2010.
Elsewhere major newspaper groups – Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror and Newsquest – have been sucking the lifeblood out of the local newspaper sector and, in Trinity Mirror’s case, the Mirror newspapers. Staffing cuts year on year for nigh on a decade have decimated the ability of these papers to cover the news and have eaten into their circulations. Many are still profitable, but not profitable enough to pay off the insane debts these companies have built up with years of bad investments.
Enough is enough. It’s time for people to come together and rebuild the media on our terms. No more monopolies, no more huge multinational corporations – proper media for the people and owned by the people.
Donnacha DeLong is president of the NUJ and an online journalist

www.manchestermule.com

From Mule to co-editor of New Internationalist, by Hazel Healey
After a spate of one-off spoof papers like Hate Mail and Manchester Evening Newt, I decided to make the jump into full-time journalism. The editorial team was horizontal from the start, with all the challenges which come with that – fights to the death over coverlines in Tim’s girlfriend’s back yard. Our early editions suffered from heroic but amateur layout and a hazy sense of what we wanted from the paper.
It quickly became clear that unless we were saying something new and our material was unique in some way, we may as well not bother. But slowly a group was coming together with the right skills, vision and, importantly, determination to make the paper work.
I ended up moving to Madrid but kept working on Mule through Skype. Sweating it out in public internet shops with greasy keyboards justifying edits was heavy going, but I soldiered stubbornly on until a baby gave me the ultimate get-out clause. By then we were playing to our strengths as a local paper, breaking small-time investigative stories, and I’d bowed out on the international focus.
After working freelance for the mainstream media in Spain I came back for a co-editor’s job at New Internationalist magazine. It’s a co-op and so I find myself arguing over cover lines once more but in a stable 30-year-old organisation – oh, and with a salary too. I got my international focus back, but the lessons I learnt from Mule – ways to keep content fresh, value young, sharp writers with political nous and making sure readers learn something unique from your paper – are ones I draw on every day.

Michael Calderbank (Red Pepper) There’s a danger that the response to phone hacking will be taken really narrowly: ‘why was it allowed to happen, how to clean up this specific practice?’
Dan Hind (author, The Return of the Public) That is certainly the line that most of the media will be most comfortable with.
Fiona Swarbrick (National Union of Journalists) I think if it is narrowed down in that way then the obvious and easy conclusion will be that this is about a few nasty journalists acting unethically.
DH It is striking how narrow and constrained the response has been so far, in both print and broadcast.
MC But clearly that is only the surface. We need to know what were the forces at work structurally that pressured media environments into accepting that normal journalistic standards could be waived.
Dave Boyle (Co-operatives UK) Indeed. The context in which journalists are expected to remain faithful to the profit motive, editorial chains of command and a set of ethics will be neatly forgotten. We have to be wary of positing a golden age. There wasn’t a golden age, or if there was it had gone by the 1960s.
DH There is a temptation to think that everything would be okay if we go back to the good old days of World in Action, the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ team, and so on. The kind of well-intentioned liberal press culture that was stronger in some respects in the 1960s and 1970s didn’t do what was required of it. It couldn’t stop the rise of Murdoch or the new right.
FS I’m not saying this in a purely ‘good old days’ vein but it was certainly a different scene when the industry was more highly unionised. The NUJ code of conduct held sway, the print unions refused to carry ads for South African Airlines, etc.
DH The most important difference was that the trade union movement was a major media player through the Daily Herald until the 1960s. Closing the Daily Herald and its rebranding as the Sun is arguably the beginning of the end for the post-war settlement.
Aidan White (former general secretary, International Federation of Journalists) The unions were some sort of restraint on the excesses of employers in those days, certainly. Wapping was clearly when it all changed, particularly because it opened the door to levels of corruption that were unheard of before.
FS That was certainly the point where it broke at News International (NI) and you could extrapolate that to the whole industry. Central to the dispute was the desire to derecognise the unions – not just an economic but a political decision by Murdoch.
MC What have been the commercial pressures on journalists since then? Presumably many less staff and the remaining staff having less time?
FS It’s important to understand the culture at NI. When people are both delighted to have a job on a major title and terrified of losing it, and ethics are not prized highly, it is inevitably going to lead to this sort of transgression. It’s rich that the editorial leadership of the paper claims to have no knowledge [of phone hacking]. I don’t know how that sits with a culture of fear. There is not, for example, a problem of bad timekeeping at NI, because people are too scared to do the wrong thing. It seems to me that these same journalists would not chance doing something so risky without sanction from their managers.
Peter Lee-Wright (Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre) Our researchers found hundreds of journalists all complaining of being tied to desks, required to scrape stories from other sites, not free to leave the office to chase leads. Desk jockeys – but better than being unemployed. It is no coincidence that Nick Davies revealed this in Flat Earth News before going on to break the phone-hacking story. The two are intricately connected.
DH But the people bribing police and bugging phones weren’t the same as those being pressured to generate more and more churnalism, were they?
FS No, it wasn’t junior staff in general. But the stakes to be in rather than out of a career only get higher as you get more senior. I’m not excusing it but I think it is certainly about the structure.
PL-W A dependent staff accepts the local terms of engagement – just like the style bible, or the doxa [French sociologist Pierre] Bourdieu writes about. People find it easier not to question the local modus operandi.
AW We need to create a working and professional environment where journalists can act freely.
FS Maybe protection in the form of a conscience clause?
AW A conscience clause is absolutely essential – or at least formal recognition of the right to act according to some agreed code of practice and ethics.
FS I have been wondering how a conscience clause could work in practical terms. Maybe as an adjunct to whistleblowing protection?
AW It should be part of contractual arrangements and allow someone to break with any policy or editorial instruction without fear of victimisation.
DB I presume newspapers could be regulated to respect such clauses as a condition of continued registration?
AW We should be looking for a number of policy changes – a conscience clause; new limits on monopolies; a new structure for self-regulation; perhaps a new body to encourage standards and improved training; and also matters related to internal democracy with genuine independence for editors. We need a completely new framework for accountability in the media. Not one framed only in law but the sort of co-regulation that exists in Denmark, where there’s a self-regulating media but the regulatory council can go to law when it needs to enforce its judgements.
PL-W A 2007 Ofcom survey found 73 per cent of the UK public in favour of media regulation to ensure impartiality, 80 per cent to ensure plurality. But the big circle to square is that regulation is generally nation-bound, while many of the key players are global. Deregulation has accelerated that, and the Press Complaints Commission is only a local distraction in a bigger picture. Even [Sir David] Calcutt, whose 1990 inquiry recommended the establishment of the PCC, disowned it three years later.
AW I think that a framework of laws that does not encroach upon editorial independence but sets down clear rules that oblige media owners to be transparent about their activities and to respect journalists’ and consumers’ rights is a starting point.
PL-W Murdoch has given us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to question the direction of travel. I was astonished how quickly the Murdoch argument – about public service broadcasting not only being inefficient but an unwarrantable brake on free trade – gained traction. Now we can talk about other objectives than profit.
AW For regulation to work – and I favour forms of self rule on matters of content – it is necessary to prohibit opt-outs by media that don’t want to toe the line. The decision by Express Newspapers to quit the PCC was scandalous because they only did so in order to follow an unethical mode of journalism that had brought them into direct confrontation with their journalists.
MC Is the PCC dead in the water? What comes next?
DB Something that can’t be dipped in and out of, so that if the secretary of state rules you into the ambit of the new body, then you’re bound to implement its policies and be bound by its rulings.
AW The PCC is not dead, but needs to be killed off. Any new structure must be multi-platform. In an age of converged media it is absurd to have different forms of regulation of content when it is the same stream of information being delivered in different ways. What comes next could be a more progressive institution – less focus on policing and more on advocacy for high standards, media education and promoting best practice in journalism. Mediating disputes should be improved by insisting on internal procedures that deal with complaints quickly, fairly and transparently.
DB I think that’s right. Regulation shouldn’t involve central oversight of operations. Stipulating internal procedures that make the right outcomes more likely seems a better way forward.
PL-W We need to find a public interest test that ensures plurality without rendering a business worthless. Any new system needs to find a way of marrying the various imperatives, possibly being less concerned about cross-media ownership, allowing expansion where the public interest is met.
AW We also need to recognise that the media standards and ethics debate feeds into a general concern about corruption and lack of morality in public life. There’s a narrative here that needs to be addressed. How do we create responsible use of information in an open media environment and how do we maintain scrutiny of the centres of power to eliminate the sort of corruption exposed by the phone hacking scandal? These questions are current in all western media systems where market changes and convergence have rendered much of the old structure of media regulation obsolete.
PL-W The truth is that no one is making money from newspapers. No one has found a way of commodifying their online propositions, outside the specialist sectors. Even Murdoch is struggling. His real business is TV subscriptions and advertising. News is a loss-leader he was all too willing to sacrifice to secure his aborted takeover of BSkyB, and he could close Wapping tomorrow without great loss – he’s already moving to smaller premises. Whatever system evolves has to recognise the interconnectivity of the media business.
FS Exactly, news is not a big-profit proposition. So we need a model that is not driven by making profit but by producing news.
DH The more ‘virtuous’ news is, the less profitable (and the less friendly to profit-making) it becomes. You can make money out of celebrity gossip, not so much out of investigations into the financial sector.
AW This is very important. There needs to be recognition that journalism in the public interest or as a public good will require new forms of funding – levies on advertising, perhaps, or even money from the public purse. We need to recognise that the market will not deliver the information pluralism that democracy needs.
PL-W There is a model being moderately successfully tried by the Bureau for Investigation in the US that relies for its investigative journalism on trust and foundation funding before finding the appropriate journalistic platform for distribution. Scandinavia and the Netherlands use forms of public support for secondary local newspapers to ensure plurality. But our problem seems to be supporting the primary sources, local or national.
DB Any new form needs to be from a source that will exist as long as there are people who want news – which means either the state (directly, or through levies) or through people themselves.
MC But central state direction is not good for pluralism either.
AW State direction is always to be opposed but looking at community-driven systems that receive state support might be useful. That’s why some form of public support will probably have to be figured into the equation.
DB My fear with charitable/trust funding is that I’m not sure how much such funding there is for ‘virtuous news’. I think we’d reach peak grant funding fairly quickly.
PL-W We don’t have the philanthropic resources the US has but it might be a good time to tap these billionaires who have been offering to pay more tax. At least they could see the results!
FS There isn’t one model for this. It would be good to have different types of owners as well as different owners.
PL-W The first Leveson ‘seminar’ is on economics, and there is no doubt that addressing these business issues, and accompanying concerns about cross-media ownership, should precede all else. Unless there are realistic options on the table, the corporate lobbyists will have an open field to press the deregulatory case.
DH Market institutions and public service ones have failed in the last decade, and demonstrably so. Now we’ve exhausted all other options, I think we should try democracy.
PL-W What people want remains the most problematic part – it is not necessarily what we want to give them. The problem is a compound of
multi-platform explosion, information overload, and consumerist distraction, which has undermined conventional production and distribution models. Some form of responsible stewardship – aggregation in the communal interest – needs to be considered as a way of defraying production costs, just as television supports independent production.
DH Well, I propose that we take public money and make it available to journalists whose proposals secure a certain threshold of public support. It would establish a direct patronage relationship between the citizen and the journalist and allow people excluded from publicity to mobilise in their own interests. The idea of being able to fund a journalist to investigate wrongdoing at the council, or whatever, is a straightforward proposition for the public.
AW That’s certainly part of the mix but for it to work there would also have to be other revenue streams from local or state sources.
DB I was musing with Dan about a matched model, where public funds match those raised or invested locally via a co-op.
MC It’s important to remember the local aspect, particularly as the local press has been getting hammered. The Mule collective in Manchester (see next page) is one such co-op already established. They could bid for public funds under your scheme?
DH Outfits like that would benefit from direct public support of the kind I propose. Any publication that actually connected with its audience would.
PL-W No one will like this but I suspect the long-term structural answer is in to some degree decoupling production and distribution, as imposed on the BBC and ITV. The 500-channel TV set and the internet have destroyed the unitary organ model but what could come out of this are newspapers as production houses of talent, from which digital distribution allows people to source their favourite bits, whether they be football coverage, arts reviews or political comment, and revenues revert to producers. I agree that some form of state-organised/sponsored quality/plurality threshold should ideally be factored in to offset lowest common denominator drift, but there will never be any way of forcing people back to reading the way we did.
AW The important point is that people should have access to reporting that is not available today. You can’t find public interest journalism of the kind we are talking about even in the middle of the night when the shopping channels hold sway. The point is to encourage this form of journalism and then make it available.
DB It seems to me that the media organisations that exist and thrive in the world we’re trying to envisage will be the better for being structured around accountability, public interest and – as recipients of public funds – have controls on what they do with generated surpluses. Co-operatives would fit well here.
DH First, describe the failure of the media and reach a mass audience with that description. Second, propose a clear alternative that is an actual alternative. That’s how the left wins this debate.
PL-W The challenge is to seize the agenda, excite and involve the public in demanding more from this process, so that the Leveson inquiry cannot allow the government to kick real reform into the long grass. It is a matter of tapping public anger and making real connections with other stories sidelined by commercial fiat to alert the public to possible alternatives – whatever they may be.
MC We need to be convincing at the level of detail but not leave everyone cold. The raw lobbying power of the corporates will take a lot of resisting. It’s a positive starting point that the Co-ordinating Committee for Media Reform is coming together (see box), linking experts with campaigners.
FS Yes, the heat needs to stay on from the public or we will have severe difficulties.
AW Sure, but we need to recognise that the field is open. The public are part of the game now in a way that they never were in the past. The left has an opportunity to take the initiative in an area of public policy where our voices have been largely ignored.

Tip of a larger problem
Dr Aeron Davis, one of the initiators of the Co-ordinating Committee for Media Reform (CCMR), explains the background to its formation
The phone-hacking scandal is the visible tip of a problem with much deeper causes. It is a consequence of larger trends. We need to look at the larger causes not just of phone hacking but many other problematic practices that have become standard in the past two decades.
Many academics and campaign groups have been concerned that the commercial pressures on newsrooms to deliver audiences and cut news-gathering corners have placed impossible pressures on journalists in their day-to-day activities. Phone-hacking is one consequence. There are many others: computer hacking, unattributed use of PR and newswire material, wholesale plagiarism from other news sources, over-hyped and inflated stories, planting stories and fabricated quotes. Many of us have first-hand accounts and/or experiences of such practices and journalists put under extreme pressures to deliver.
A large part of the problem is an equation of the ‘public interest’ with what the market delivers: what sells most is what is assumed to be in the public’s interest. The need to offer something that grabs the eye, by whatever means, supersedes all else.
But the same public, who are drawn to celebrities and scandals, also want to know about real political issues and how they affect them. In today’s complex, fast-moving society, the public, and indeed many ‘experts’, are unable to keep on top of what is happening in all areas and what is in their interest.
So news needs to be better at looking at things such banking and stock markets, energy issues, inner-city areas and deprivation, and many other subjects that are clearly of public concern but are only reported when there is a financial crisis or widespread rioting. These things are in the public interest but the public may not be aware of them beforehand and may not choose their news on such a basis.
The ownership and regulation question is key. Certain questions of ownership and basic regulation are not complex – if there is the political will, for example, to put limits on media ownership. But regulating private companies operating in a market, and on a range of content and practice issues, is more complex. It is also clear that the economics of the market model of news has been breaking down and is now in crisis – in the UK and elswhere. It is unsustainable – either leading to many news organisation collapsing or the alteration of news in such a way that it no longer resembles ‘news’.
News media are a key public interest concern in democracies, just like the judiciary or police service or education. If left to the market alone, and to some barely-enforced form of self-regulation, as with the banking system or MPs’ expenses, it will be corrupted and break away from its fundamental raison d’etre.
If the first step is recognition of the wider problems, the next is to look at and have an open debate about the many alternatives beyond the raw market. These include combinations of national and local, private and public regulation, funding and infrastructures.
Part of the CCMR’s remit will be to look beyond the UK and also to look at other professions. But first it is necessary to move away from the free market/freedom of the press mantra that is used to fend off all change. These two are not inextricably intertwined and there are many alternatives.

Co-ordinating Committee for Media Reform
In the light of the Leveson inquiry into the regulation and ethics of the press and the review to advise on a new communications bill, there is a real need to co-ordinate the work of advocacy groups campaigning to protect the public interest. The aim of the Co-ordinating Committee for Media Reform (CCMR) is to bring key organisations together.
The CCMR was initiated by reseachers at the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre and has been welcomed by many of the leading media reform groups, including the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, Voice of the Listener and Viewer, Media Standards Trust, National Union of Journalists, 38 Degrees, Avaaz, Compass, Coalition of Resistance, Media Wise and others.
For more details see www.mediareform.org.uk

On 24 January 1986, 6,000 newspaper workers at Murdoch’s News International (NI) – including printers, engineers, electricians, journalists and clerical staff – went on strike following stalled negotiations over a move to the newly-built Wapping plant. The response of management was to dismiss all of those involved; and so began one of the most protracted disputes in British labour industrial history, taking more than a year for the exhausted unions to finally admit defeat.

Wapping: 25 Years On challenges the mainstream account of the dispute. Delving into the long year of struggle from behind the barricades, it gives the workers’ perspective through an excellent collection of photos and union publications and detailed exhibits. Most importantly it recalls events crucial to the lead-up to the confrontation that are often forgotten in the official version of events.

The trigger for the strike ballot came in November 1985, when NI offered a take-it-or-leave-it deal to the unions – SOGAT, NGA, AUEW and the NUJ – stipulating the surrender of all trade union rights while giving management unfettered power over employees.

A move to Wapping, with its new, efficient and labour-saving print technology, would have inevitably meant hundreds of redundancies. Unsurprising therefore that in public memory the dispute is primarily preserved as a clash between intransigent unions and the inexorable forces of modernisation. Yet central to the exhibition is the charge that these technological changes were used as a smokescreen for Murdoch’s real plan, which was to emasculate the workforce in order to lower costs and boost profits – an objective he would achieve by deception of the workforce.

After early negotiations had come to a standstill, NI management assured the unions that the Wapping plant would be used to produce a new newspaper, The London Post, that was in the offing. But in the meantime they secretly manned the plant by recruiting through electricians’ union EETPU. From January 1986 EETPU workers, protected by the police, would cross picket lines to ensure that not a single day’s production of the four titles – The Sun, The News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times – was lost.

The London Post never hit the newsstands. And, shortly into the dispute, the extent of the management conspiracy was revealed in a leaked letter in which NI’s lawyers advised the company to catch workers on the hoof by issuing “piles of dismissal letters at exit doors” as soon as the strike began. Murdoch’s plan all along, say the organisers of the exhibition, was to move production of all the NI newspapers to Wapping – without the existing, heavily unionised workforce.

As with the miners’ strike the preceding year, the entwinement of industrial relations with politics was fully derobed at Wapping. Not only were the array of Thatcher’s anti-union laws wielded to limit pickets to six and bar other workers taking solidarity action, but protests were marked by scenes of brutal police violence as they guaranteed the passage of newspaper-laden trucks out of ‘Fortress Wapping’. In their most naked form the forces of law and order were visible in their role of defending the interests of capital against labour.

On another level the exhibition is a celebration of the courage of strikers and their families, as well as the local people and trade unionists from around the country that attended demonstrations in their droves. Images of women linked arm-in-arm and young children wrapped up against the cold serve as a reminder of the human tragedy caused by the destruction of livelihoods.

A criticism that could be fairly levelled is that it glosses over the issue of technology as well as ignoring the reputation of print workers, held by some, as greedy and abusive of their industrial power.

But for Anne Field, who was on the national executive committee of SOGAT at the time, it is a question of setting the record straight:

“This is the story of the workforce, whose account of the dispute has been written out of history. We want to give an unsanitised version of what happened from those who went on strike, their families and the local people who supported us.

“It was the employers who committed the sin and we want to try to rebalance the view of what really happened”.

The legacy of Wapping can be seen as twofold. Most memorably it was the last stand of militant organized labour in the country, ringing the death knell of the powerful trade union movement that stood as a bulwark against Thatcherite policies. Yet at the same time it ushered in an era of intimate cooperation – and arguably a closer aligning of political interests – between the press, government and police: a cosy and corruptible arrangement that would unravel with this summer’s News of the World phone hacking scandal.

Available at the exhibition is a commemorative edition of the Wapping Post – the mock red-top newspaper produced by strikers for strikers – which draws lessons of how the events of yesterday came to have a bearing on the press and politics of today.

Wapping: The Workers’ Perspective will be touring the country. 

The exhibition is currently in Manchester at the People’s History Museum where it will be running daily until 18 November. Future dates and venues:

BRIGHTON: 28 November – 1 December, Unite national sector conferences

LONDON: 5-16 December, weekdays only, Unite London + Eastern regional sector conferences.

LONDON: 9-31 January 2012, Bishopsgate Institute

For more information see:

www.cpbf.org.uk

www.unitetheunion.org

www.nuj.org.uk

The exhibition is organised by Unite the Union/GPM Sector, National Union of Journalists, Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and the Marx Memorial Library.  Photo by Andrew Ward (Report).