Page 288 - Law and the Media

Professional Regulatory Bodies
Early in 1989, with the writing fairly clearly on the wall, the editors of all national
newspapers met at the Newspaper Publishers Association in London and emerged with a
written declaration that:

We, having given due consideration to criticism of the Press by Parliament and
public, accept the need to improve methods of self-regulation. Accordingly, we
declare today our unanimous commitment to a common Code of Practice to
safeguard the independence of the Press from threats of official control.

Like Neville Chamberlain, the editors quickly found that ‘peace in our time’ was not quite
so easy. For the Government it was too little, too late.

A few months later, the Secretary of State for National Heritage set up a committee under
David Calcutt QC to:

. . . consider what measures (whether legislative or otherwise) are needed to give
further protection to individual privacy from the activities of the Press and improve
recourse for the individual citizen.

The Report of the Calcutt Committee on Privacy and Related Matters was published in June
1990. Although it recommended against the introduction of a statutory right of privacy, it
effectively placed the press on probation:

The press should be given one final chance to prove that voluntary self-regulation
can be made to work.
(Paragraph 14.38)

The government let it be known immediately that it accepted Calcutt’s findings. Writing in the
Times on 22 June 1990, the Home Secretary, David Waddington, stated that the newspaper
industry had a 12-month period ‘to put its house in order or face tough statutory controls’.

Calcutt recommended that the existing Press Council should be disbanded and, in its place,
a Press Complaints Commission should be set up. That Commission should:

Concentrate on providing an effective means of redress for complaints against the
press
Be given specific duties to consider complaints of unjust or unfair treatment by
newspapers or periodicals and of infringement of privacy through published
material or the behaviour of reporters
Publish, monitor and implement a comprehensive code of practice for the guidance
of both the press and the public
Operate a hot-line for complaints on a 24-hour basis
In certain circumstances, recommend the publication of an apology or a reply in
favour of a successful complainant
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