Page 287 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
At least once every decade since the Second World War, parliamentarians have threatened
legislative controls and the industry has responded with tightened self-regulation and
resolutions of good behaviour. The first of the post-war parade of professional regulatory
bodies came into existence at around the time Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.

When it was established in 1953, the first self-regulatory body of the Press, it must be said,
had all the appearances of an ‘unwanted’ baby. Those who brought it into the world, the
proprietors and journalists of the newspaper industry, had spent the previous four years
filibustering in the apparent hope that the self-regulatory body called for in 1949 by the first
Royal Commission on the Press could be avoided.

However, the climate changed drastically in 1953 when a Private Members’ Bill that would
have had the effect of imposing outside control was introduced into Parliament. Not for the
last time, the newspaper industry reacted swiftly when faced with the threat of statutory
regulation. The result was the General Council of the Press.

Although it was enough to fend off Parliamentary interference, the Council, in its early days,
was a poor imitation of what the Royal Commission had seen as necessary – i.e. a voluntary
body that would administer a ‘code of conduct in accordance with the highest professional
standards’. Lack of proper funding and the absence of any lay membership on the Council,
along with a noticeable absence of enthusiasm from the press itself, made it fairly ineffective.

Reforms in the shape of an independent chairman, increased finances and a 20 per cent lay
membership were squeezed out of the industry in 1962 after the second Royal Commission
on the Press attacked the Council’s poor record and once again raised the threatening spectre
of a statutory body of control.

Although the performance of what by then was known as the Press Council improved
drastically, the last Royal Commission, which reported in 1977, still found much to criticize.
Once again, funding and lay membership were increased. From 1977, the stature of the
Council grew year by year, as indeed did the amount of work with which it dealt. Although
it stopped short of laying down the comprehensive code of conduct that was suggested by the
last Commission, it issued Declarations of Principle on privacy, payments and financial
journalism which defined the limits of acceptable behaviour in these important areas.

In the late 1980s, however, a clamour for legislative moves against the Press once again
found a large level of support at the Palace of Westminster. Public and parliamentary disquiet
had been fed by a stream of complaints about breach of privacy, harassment of individuals
and their families, inaccurate reporting and intrusion. Some of the complaints were true and
some were false, but their overall effect was to stir the politicians into real action.

In the 1988–1989 Parliamentary Session, two separate Private Members’ Bills, one on
privacy and the other concerning an enforceable right of reply, won considerable support and
made it through the committee stages of the House of Commons.
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