What lessons will we take from Leveson?

MEDIA & MARKETING:In the context of the Minister's overflowing in-tray, the more pertinent Leveson sessions, however, are not the ones that zero in on press regulation, but the ones devoted to the political handling of media mergers, writes LAURA SLATTERY

PAT RABBITTE has been watching the Leveson Inquiry, by which I mean he’s been keeping an eye on it, not that he’s glued to the online feed.

Although there’s no evidence that the “more odious practices” of the British press ever took place in Ireland, the hearings and future findings of Lord Justice Leveson “are important for all of us here”, Rabbitte told the Press Council at the launch of its annual report on Monday. Leveson may make recommendations “that could have application here”, he noted.

But which of the many Leveson sessions have been of particular interest to the Minister for Communications?

Was it the sorry tales of phone hacking victims such as the Dowler family and the much-slandered McCanns? Was it when Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, conceded that columnist Jan Moir’s take on the death of Stephen Gately “could have benefited from some judicious subbing”? Or when former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks was interrogated by counsel to the inquiry, Robert Jay, about her publication of a story about the cystic fibrosis diagnosis of Fraser Brown, son of Gordon and Sarah, then aged four months?

Indeed, if the Leveson box set is ever released it will be packed with lowlights showcasing the worst of press behaviour. But that’s not all the inquiry has exposed. The spotlight on relationships between the political elite and the media one has not always been kind to the former, as the grilling of today’s Leveson rabbit, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt (or “embattled culture secretary” to give him his full title”) will doubtless prove.

A nadir of some kind was reached on Monday when Tony Blair’s reaction to being called a war criminal by a Leveson-invading protester was to make a theatrically sanguine wrist-flick gesture, as if the accusation was all a bit “meh” for him.

Rabbitte’s feelings towards the media shares some common ground with that of Blair, in that both have professed themselves unhappy with specific genres of press reporting. In Blair’s case, it was the overt fusion of news and comment, epitomised by the Independent’s one-time self-description as a “viewspaper”, that irked, while in Rabbitte’s case it is an alleged “race to the bottom” drop in standards of political reporting that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

“The impression is abroad that if some journalists wanted to file stories that rise above tittle-tattle and cynicism, they will be rejected by their editors,” he said – cynically – earlier this month, declining to give specific examples.

Leveson-watchers, Rabbitte included, are naturally beginning to speculate on how the ultimate endgame of the inquiry – its recommendations on the future regulation of the press – will pan out. For free press advocates such as education secretary and former Times columnist Michael Gove – who this week warned Leveson that the cure risked being “worse than the disease” – the attention paid to the model operated by the Press Council of Ireland must come as some relief, given that it mirrors the self-regulation of the now defunct UK Press Complaints Commission, but with a few crucial tweaks.

In their February witness statement, Press Council chairman Dáithí O’Ceallaigh and Press Ombudsman John Horgan tease through some structural and practical differences between the Irish system of self-regulation and that of the discredited PCC. Essentially, these differences revolve around the balance and exercise of power.

In the PCC’s case, it was the industry that appointed the chairman; in the Press Council’s case, the chairman is appointed by the council following public advertisement. The Ombudsman, who makes all the primary rulings on complaints, is a former journalist and an academic, while the Council, which serves as an appeal mechanism, is a mix of industry and “public interest” members. In their statement, O’Ceallaigh and Horgan insist that in deciding on appeals – and there was 22 of them last year, out of a total of 42 Ombudsman rulings – the Council has never divided along public interest/industry lines.

If reporting standards are, “tittle-tattle and cynicism” aside, less odious in Ireland than in the voracious British press, then it follows that editors of Irish publications might be less cut-throat than their UK counterparts when it comes to matters like manipulating the fine principles enshrined within self-regulation. The Irish system, in other words, may not be the right solution to the British problem.

In the context of the Minister’s overflowing in-tray, the more pertinent Leveson sessions, however, are not the ones that zero in on press regulation, but the ones devoted to the political handling of media mergers.

Yesterday, business secretary Vince Cable told the inquiry that he had received “veiled threats” from News International that his Liberal Democrat party would be “done over” if he didn’t make the right decision on its proposed takeover of BSkyB; and that well before he was uttering his self-destructive declaration of war on Rupert Murdoch, the company had tried to get him stripped of his role by proving political bias.

It’s hard to see Cable’s testimony as anything but a cautionary tale for someone who might feasibly one day find himself in the position of having to make the final decision on a media takeover – and for a society that then has to live with that decision.