Key questions for Leveson 2: What is the difference between print and broadcast media when it comes to regulation?

What is the difference between print and broadcast media when it comes to regulation?

So why does the print media get away with regulating itself, while the broadcast media is subject to much heavier state control and scrutiny? Is there any principled difference between the two that can carry the weight of their different status when it comes to regulation?

The only answer I can come up with is that it’s an accident of history. The print media arose through private ownership, while the broadcast media in the UK started out as a state-run enterprise. The state has slowly and perhaps reluctantly handed out the right to broadcast to the private sector, but only under a strict system of licensing and with clear rules and a statutory body to regulate it if it steps out of line. Meanwhile, the print media has resisted any attempts to have itself regulated by anybody but its own puppets and no government has wanted to take them on.

So we didn’t get here through any reasoned process. It’s just what happened.

The question we have to answer here is whether the type of system that covers the broadcast media is suitable for the print media. The trouble is, if we say yes, whether that places too heavy a burden on those who want to set up newspapers or other news outlets. How would this effect the internet, which is now the primary site for ‘citizen’ journalism? Would it mean that our freedom of speech could only be exercised through state-approved outlets?

How do we regulate the media in a way that respects everybody’s right to be a citizen journalist? Of course, you could question whether there is any such right – does the right to freedom of expression entail the right to be a citizen journalist? Is it that important for our society that everybody has such a right? My own gut feeling for what it’s worth is that it is important, so important that it shouldn’t be compromised by the fall out from the Leveson Inquiry.

So if there is going to be a heavier system of regulation, it has to be one that doesn’t interfere with citizen journalism. The key to this is understanding that what got us to the Leveson Inquiry was not what newspapers printed, but the way they went about finding things out. The Inquiry is having trouble distinguishing the two questions: (1) how newspapers go about getting their information; (2) the information they publish. But that isn’t surprising as it is, in fact, an extremely complex distinction, and in the end both issues are at stake when it comes to media ethics and intrusions into privacy. Privacy can be violated through the methods used to discover the information (e.g. phone hacking), but also violated through the publication of certain information (not only, importantly, information gained through illicit methods).

‘Citizen’ journalism is unlikely to violate privacy in either case, in that they typically don’t resort to the sorts of methods that have been criticised, and nor do they pursue the type of story that has upset but entertained the public so much.