PCC (Slight Return)

Baroness Buscombe has pre-empted the collective response heading her way. Reported here on Roy Greenslade's blog.

She says: "My point was that, as there is already pressure to increase regulation of the internet, it is important to make clear that this must not lead to some form of statutory interference.

"Rather, a system of self-regulation (such as exists by the PCC for newspapers) would be more appropriate, if any bloggers wished to go down that route."

Hmmm. And the advantages to bloggers of such a route would be what?

Remember the newspaper industry signed up for the PCC facing the loaded gun of statutory regulation.

Despite what Baroness Buscombe says, there is no impending statutory regulation of blogs and so no perceived need by bloggers to run into the regulatory embrace of the PCC or anything like it.

Why the PCC could never regulate bloggers (and shouldn't even try)

There has been much chatter about Baroness Buscombe's comments on Ian Burrell's Blog regarding the PCC and regulation of blogs.

She is quoted as saying the PCC should "consider" whether the PCC should seek to extend its remit to the blogosphere (Burrell's quotation marks intact there, just on the word consider).

Cue righteous indignation from, among many, Iain Dale, a collective response which had attracted a couple of hundred signatures at the time of writing this, and a more sceptical view from Guido Fawkes' Blog.

I don't know just how seriously this has been considered by the Press Complaints Commission. But those who think it has any likelihood of becoming a reality misunderstand just what PCC is and also cannot really understand the nature of blogging and the internet.

To appreciate what is onvolved you have to go back to the birth of the PCC. This was the late '80s early '90s, there was a widely-held beliefe among some politicians that the press, particularly the then tabloid press, was out of control. David Mellor, minister of state for culture memorably said that the press were 'drinking in the last-chance saloon.'

There had been a circulation war raging between The Sun, Daily Mirror and The Star and the tactics employed to outdo one another gave ammunition to those who believed there needed to be statutory regulation of the press.

The then regulatory body - The Press Council - had been discredited, its adjudications ignored by papers, and even attacked in print by the same papers. It was seen as offering little or no protection to those who found themselves in the pages of the papers.

The Calcutt Committee of Privacy, in its report to Parliament, stopped short of recommending statutory regulation of the press and its recommendations were accepted - self-regulation was to be given a last chance.

So how does this relate to bloggers? Well, if you look back at when the PCC was established there was a political will supporting its establishment and remit - indeed many wanted to go further and have it on a statutory basis. There was a demand for what it was going to do.

Where is the demand, political or public, for the regulation of bloggers by the PCC?

Of course, it might be coming from some quarters of the newspaper industry who see bloggers breaking stories and doing things they think they can't. But as for politicians or the public - nothing of any note. The idea that any politician is going to alienate 10m plus bloggers by putting the PCC in as their overseer is ludicrous.

Furthermore, the PCC is a self-regulatory body, not statutory. Bloggers would have to sign up to be regulated by it and I can't see that happening any time soon.

To be imposed upon bloggers it would have to be put on some sort of statutory footing (cue squeals of outrage from the newspaper industry who would fight that tooth and nail) And they would have a very hard time making the logical case for statutory regulation of bloggers whil retaining self-regulation of newspapers.

But just how would it impose its will upon something as mercurial as the blogosphere?Overseas hosting would mean evasion of its clutches would be a simple matter. Blogs would spring up and disappear before any adjudication could be made, no matter how 'fast free and fair' it might be.

Also, what makes the PCC think it has the capacity to govern so large and diverse a group as bloggers?

If they think they can do it, they'd better start recruiting now.

The Lowry, Salford and The Pitmen Painters

Off to The Lowry in Salford Quays, Manchester, at the weekend to see a production of The Pitmen Painters.

Written by Lee Hall, he of Billy Elliott fame, it is based on the true story of a group of miners from Ashington, who, inspired by a WEA lecture, took up painting themselves and became a feted artistic group.

It was a good production, funny, poignant, moving at times and definitely worth seeing. Hall has great fun with the language of the miners and the confusion it causes to their tutor. One memorable line to the bemused tutor being: "Ye dee dee ort deen't ye?" Trans: "You do do art, don't you?"

And when the brass band started playing Gresford - The Miners' Hymn commemorating the disaster that still resonates in Wrexham, you'd have to be an unfeeling soul not to get a lump in your throat.

But then came the touch that for me detracted very slightly from a great play. As the play finished the slides that had shown us the miners' works of art, turned to text, informing us that their hopes of a "University of Ashington' had not been realised. Their pit had closed in the early '80s, and that Labour had abandoned its commitment to workers' ownership of the means of production.

It was just a bit clunky, a bit like a great big hammer blow of political pointmaking, when so much had been concealed before in the story itself.

I don't need a subtitle at the end of the play to tell me the socialist miners of the 1930s and '40s might feel betrayed by the way the Labour movement has abandoned its principles.

I'm slightly suspicious of plays, films or books which tell a story and then rather clumsily say: "Right, here's the moral and here's how you should think about it." Let people decide for themselves having seen it.

Having said all that, it was still a great production and worth catching on its UK tour. It's on at Sheffield's Crucible this week.

Cameron has got me confused

I don't think the teaching of history, so often the cause of hand-wringing by those sections of the press who retain a devotion to the memorising of dates, has got so bad that we have forgotten who won World War II.

And even if the state sector lets its young charges do double glue-sniffing rather than list the King and Queens of our great nation, I suspect Eton would make sure its pupils know who was victorious.

So, that's why David Cameron's assault on the Human Rights Act has me a little puzzled.

You see, because it is based in Strasbourg, the European Court of Human Rights is therefore confused with all things European by those swivel-eyed sections of the media who cannot hear the word Europe without having an attack of the vapours.

The slight historical problem for Mr Cameron is this. The convention was brought into being by the British, to afford our poor European neighbours the same common law rights we had enjoyed for centuries and had just defended from the beastly Hun.

It was born in the smoking ruins of Europe and a central role in its drafting was taken by DAvid Maxwell-Fyfe, a Conservative, and a brilliant lawyer whose cross-examination of Hermann Goering is considered to be one of the greatest in legal history.

So, the ECHR, a Churchillian scheme to stop the Europeans sending each other to the gas chambers again, and drawn up by a Conservative lawyer. What's not to like about that if you're a Tory?

It must be because it's in Strasbourg. Perhaps if it had been sited in Bognor they'd be more comfortable with it. Maybe if it had been called the British Convention on Human Rights for our European Neighbours, they could have lived with it.

The Human Rights Act is nothing more than a restating of convention rights in English law. To repeal it will mean that UK courts no longer need to take the HRA into account. But, we are still signatories to the ECHR, so Strasbourg would still remain as a court of ultimate appeal on human rights.

Unless of course Cameron plans to withdraw from the ECHR. An unthinkable proposition that would put us on a par with pariah regimes such as North Korea.

And not, I would suggest, a fitting way to treat the legacy of Winston Churchill.

Simon Kelner's farewell to the Neath Guardian

Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief of the Indy and Independent on Sunday, started as a trainee on the Neath Guardian.

Here in an article printed in its last edition he remembers the beginning of his career and mourns the closure of his first paper. Reprinted in Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog

The Bravery of The Sun

Courageous move that by The Sun, backing the Tories, or rather, abandoning Labour.

How upset Labour  are depends on where your bullshit detector points between Harriet Harman's, rather tepid "we're all angry but we won't be bullied" rant; rumours that Brown berated Sun execs with a four-letter tirade and Labour spin that it doesn't really matter.

Look, Labour, or rather Tony Blair, would not have courted Rupert Murdoch the way they did if it didn't matter. But perhaps they were taking the Sun Tzu approach of keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. Either way, after the paper's declaration in 1992 that "It's the Sun Wot Won It" when John Major defeated Neil Kinnock with a little help from his friends at Wapping who exhorted the last person to leave Britain if Kinnock won to turn off the lights.

But that was 17 years ago, when the internet was just being born and things have changed in the way people relate to newspapers.

Not that newspapers had as much impact as they would have you believe if you take account of this study which states that while papers might hold some sway over individuals, it would be wrong to overstate their influence on the outcome of elections.

A view echoed by Alistair Campbell, who writes on his blog: "...people will make their own minds up. What a daily paper urges them to do will figure marginally if at all in that judgement, and provided Labour continues to defend the record, take the fight to the Tories, and set out the forward policy agenda with clarity and vigour, the battle ahead can still be won."

My point is that back in 1992 The Sun might get away with claiming its part in the Conservative victory. But now, in a political scene no longer dominated by print media, where 24-hour news and internet sources are far more likely to break political news than The Sun is, it's a brave move for a dead-tree outlet to claim as much influence as it does.

Of course, if the gamble pays off then it will no doubt run a suitably self-adulatory headline the next day. But what if they don't?

What if the economic recovery is just round the corner and its effects are felt before the next election? What if the electorate decides that on balance things are looking up and they don't want to gamble on the Tories?

The Tories will weather it of course and hope to be back next time. But for the paper that backed them and failed to get Cameron into Downing St it could be far more devastating. An unmistakable sign that the paper had been emasculated and its political influence was at an end.

Neath&Port Talbot no more

On BBC Wales this morning talking about the closure of the Neath and Port Talbot Guardians, which have been announced by Media Wales, a division of Trinity Mirror.

The company has blamed the economic downturn for the closures, which will result in the loss of 13.2 jobs (who's the .2?)

One might forgive the company this sad decision, had it, during the times of massive profits, ie five years ago, invested in its newspaper operations to make them a more attractive proposition to readers and advertisers. Now, in a time of not-quite-so-massive profits, decisions to close loss-making operations might have been justifiable.

But let's just look at what the senior management of this company have done in the good times to equip Trinity Mirror for the bad times that now afflict them.

Their 'big idea' was to send in the time and motion men. Blokes with reams of paper, who surveyed every inch of the business looking for fat to trim so that it could post the even-bigger profits its shareholders demanded.

Every newsroom had a visit from these people. Who came up with stunning ideas like: "Rather than check, rewrite and add to press releases, why not just cut'n'paste them into the paper, saving time and money?" Brilliance like that is beyond price.

As a result newsrooms were slashed. Not through redundancy, but by non-recruitment of trainees and non-replacement of staff. A gradual process of attrition that has left these places understaffed and lacking in experienced reporters.

And that was in the times of plenty. Ad revenues were good, circulation was in a gentle but manageable decline. These businesses were very, very profitable.

Then the bad times come round and what's their big idea now? More cuts. This time redundancies which, understandably, have been seized by some veteran journalists who were the heart and soul of these operations. And who can blame them leaving newspapers where their knowledge, contacts and expertise are treated with such contempt by national management?

Now we get closures, such as the ones announced in Neath and Port Talbot.

But here's the thing. Not so long ago the BBC was planning a network of ultra-local TV output. The regional newspaper industry squealed for all it was worth at a plan which they said was using the licence-fee to duplicate services they were already providing. The BBC's plans were abandoned, to the delight of the newspaper industry.

That argument holds water as long as you are not closing newspapers. Where are the people of Neath and Port Talbot going to get their news now? (Incidentally there are 130,000-plus people living in Neath and Port Talbot, if you can't run a profitable newspaper there then one wonders where you can run one at all)

From TM's 'digital platforms' - I don't think so. From the Western Mail? - can't see it getting down to the nitty-gritty of parish pump stuff from Neath somehow.

If TM cannot or will not give local communities the service they want, then I hope the BBC's ultra local plans are revived and this time the protests of newspaper corporations are ignored.

On the radio, again

On BBC Radio Wales tomorrow morning, 8.45am, talking about the closure of the Neath&Port Talbot Guardian.