Recently (Jan. 2017) many UK newspapers have carried editorials and opinion columns about section 40, which they claim will end press freedom
in this country.
This arises from the Leveson inquiry, which found that the same answer could be applied to two of the
most important issues identified.
A: People with limited finances who are libelled or
have their privacy illegally invaded by newspapers find it impossibly
expensive to take civil actions against those papers. They are
effectively deprived of access to justice. (A typical court fee is
£10,000 up front, even before you add in lawyers’ fees.)
B: Over the past 60 years there have been several public
inquiries and commissions into press misconduct. At each of these it
was clear that the press had failed to enforce even its
own codes of ethical practice, and recommendations were made for
improvements, or for a new regulator independent both of press
control and government influence.
But each time, the commercial press, owned by a
handful of wealthy men, refused to comply. Making cosmetic changes, and falsely claiming the new arrangements were a big
improvement, but carrying on as before. They have done the same with Leveson, rebranding the discredited PCC as “Ipso”, which is largely the same people working to the same model.
The Leveson inquiry stopped short of recommending that papers should be compelled by law to
join a “good” new regulator but gave them a final chance
to put their own house in order. Leveson proposed a fair, effective and independent new regulator, which could be set up by the press themselves, which
would offer a cheap arbitration service to settle legal claims.
"This is the part that is seldom or never mentioned when newspapers talk
about section 40. Through this arbitration service a person could have
their case against a newspaper dealt with very quickly (in less than a
day) and at very low cost (less than £200) without either side having to
suffer the vast expense and stress of going to court."
"If a newspaper chose not to join this “good” new regulator, and so
deprived claimants of this low-cost system of arbitration – forcing them
instead into the expensive courts – then that newspaper should have to
pay ALL the costs of the court case, even if they won the case. The idea
was that recalcitrant newspapers would be incentivised to create a
“good” regulator."
The carrot incentive (which papers are not reporting) was that was that by joining the new regulator, newspapers would have much greater freedom to
publish important investigative journalism. "Hitherto, if a paper had an
important story about a wealthy and powerful person, they might
reluctantly decide not to publish because the threat of being dragged
through expensive court actions was too great. A wealthy oligarch would
only need to win once to bust the paper. With "the new system, a litigious oligarch would first be offered
the new cheap arbitration system. If he took this option, the matter
would be settled at a tiny fraction of the time and cost for the
newspaper. But if he insisted on going to court (as is his right) he
would have to pay his own costs even if he won.
This is why
investigative journalists such as Nick Davies (who broke the phone hacking story in the Guardian in the first place) are so keen on the Leveson recommendations, in full.
"This solution was voted into law (as section 40 of the Crime and Courts
Act) by big majorities in parliament in March 2013. But a law that has
been enacted by parliament still requires the subsequent pressing of a
green button by the secretary of state. This is known as “commencement”
and is a formality in 99% of cases. This government, under intense
lobbying from the corporate press, has so far not commenced the law."
A recent YouGov poll commissioned by Hacked Off found
that 93% of Guardian readers with an opinion on the matter agree with the Leveson system or something stronger. In the face of all this, and in the face of an astonishing volume of disinformation
and misinformation on this issue, it’s vital that people who care about
the standards and practices of the national press make the case for
full Leveson. For those people, here is something to click.
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Source: Hugh Grant 'Section 40 will curb media abuses and protect the press from litigious oligarchs' in The Guardian, 11 Jan. 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/11/section-40-media-abuses-press-regulation-justice
