illegal practices - a case for press regulation

It's some time now since there was a bubble of utterance
that over 300 newspaper and magazine employees, at all
levels, across a range of publications, have been handling
information on members of the public in ways which are,
to put it bluntly, illegal.

Ah, what an enlightening, and open, frank, contrite and
remorseful stance comment in the aftermath of this has
taken.

It certainly makes it very clear that one "hot potato" in the
journalism world is a closed subject. Rather like the good
ol' cowboy builders who leave a job half done having caused
damage that costs more than original estimate came to in
the first place it marks journalism out as a trade, rather than
a profession. And a cheap and tawdry one at that.

Where are the pliers of these illegalities?

Why is that over 300 news-sector workers can have been
found to be flagrantly, knowlingly, and blatantly, breaking
the law, yet there is no public interest to be satisfied with
a discussion of the whys and wherefores thereof?

Just a little bubble of minimal, and actually highly ambiguous
comment, and then people mooch around staring at their shoes
for a while then carry on as though nothing has happened.

Indeed.

Unfortunately there are ramifications of this. For a newspaper
employee to be buying information from their little cottage
informants, twitching the net curtains so to speak, asking
for dirt to be dug and running off with trousers full of soil,
getting what precisely they pay for in some cases and many
senses, and then using it in their capacities as private
individuals, surely, constitutes unwanted and unsolicited
attention entirely consonant with the forms of such laid
out in the anti-stalking laws of the late 1990s.

Which makes it a crime.

Now, this is rather odd considering that the stock response
of our professional, up-to-date, switched-on, responsive, modern
Police Forces when encountering the terms "stalking" and
"journalists" in a proximal syntactic texture is a reflex "Ah,
no, you see, that's a CIVIL matter."

And it's not.

As such, the way the news media have handled this matter
pertaining to criminal malpractice, presumably because no
title can claim to be innocent so they can't all gang up and
scapegoat one particular stable or title or competitor, is as
strong a case as needs to be made for press regulation.

Self regulation clearly is not working.

Broadcast media such as television, radio, commerical web
and other electronic services, telephone canvassing for sales
or research, trading in general, banking, all are subject to
external regulation.

And it remains somewhat tautological that nobody who was
serious about self-regulation would object to being regulated
by inspection--particularly not given the glut of experienced
and time-served professionals at a loose end in the sector
at time of writing.

An outfit in the engineering sector, seeking some kind of
external verification for its quality assurance system, would
be audited by someone with relevant industry experience.

It's really not the same thing as being given the wave through
by an in-house employee, nor as opening all one's commercial
secrets to the title round the corner with whom one is in direct
competition.

Surely it is only those who use self-regulation as a smoke-
screen obscuring their own, maybe several and varied, illegal
activities, who can object to sensible authordontic intervention
by qualified and experienced, but impartial, ombudsbods.

As the civil courts really are not, necessarily, the place to
start, perhaps the journalists could serve the public interest
well by at least briefing the police on this in one or another
of their meetings each week...

....then again, there's far more than a handful of gongs that're
minging, and its only ever one who actually has to understand
the offside rule, and comment on whether what they saw last
weekend really was cricket on each title...

G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2007 SIPSTON
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date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 05:32:49 -0700 author: FCS