Ambassador turned enforcer: the sheriff of press probity rides in

Published on Thursday 20 September 2007 00:11

'IDON'T regulate the Portuguese press, thank the Lord.

They are a law unto themselves, or a law unto whoever they are a law unto." Sir Christopher Meyer, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), is contemplating the biggest story of the year, which has dominated newspaper coverage for weeks. The continental nature of the story may be apt, as Meyer today presides over the two-day conference of the Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe, being held for the first time in its history in Edinburgh.

Delegates from 25 countries across Europe are in the capital to discuss an agenda ranging from regulation in a digital age to the more familiar issues of privacy and newsgathering.

The reporting of the Madeleine story has provoked allegations that the press has engaged in the wildest speculation while performing a 180-degree turn from overwhelming sympathy to virtually indicting Kate and Gerry McCann. What does Meyer think of what he has been reading?

"This has been quite a difficult story to report because of the absence of hard facts. The McCanns have deliberately - and I can understand exactly why they have done this and I probably would have done the same thing in their position - decided to do their very best to keep this high profile in order to ensure the most is done to try and find out what happened to their daughter. If you do that, you attract a lot of media coverage and that is what has happened."

Is Meyer, a lifelong diplomat, saying in a silken way that if you sup with the devil then you need a long spoon?

"You can say this, except that everything I have heard directly and indirectly from their media operation has been pretty positive about the British media, but maybe not so positive about media from other countries.

"The Portuguese newspapers have certainly been used as a conduit for stories. Once you decide to go high profile - and theirs is a high-profile story, there is no getting away from it - then you are going to get a load of public attention, including the wildest stuff on the internet and blogs, which has nothing to do with mainstream media."

While the McCanns have had "one or two concerns" over UK newspaper reporting, Meyer says the couple have made no complaint.

A former UK ambassador to Washington, 63-year-old Meyer took over as head of the PCC in 2003. That job was thought to suit Meyer's deft touch as one of the watchdog's principal tasks is ensuring that newspaper editors comply with the industry's selfregulation code while fending off opponents who accuse it of being too lenient on the industry that funds it.

However, the PCC's workload now extends to far more than the excesses of the red-tops. Earlier this year, the watchdog assumed regulatory authority over the audio-visual content of newspaper websites, an increasing area of interest as more and more newspaper companies shoot their own news footage or strike supply deals with TV firms.

Meyer says the model of self regulation is perfectly extendable to the offshoots of newspapers, but wants to see media owners go further.

"I have a personal crusade at the moment, which is all to do with trust and how the ordinary punter - and I include myself as an ordinary punter - can distinguish online from what is reasonably reliable and for which there are remedies if they get it wrong, and what is complete load of speculative rubbish."

His remedy is a PCC logo that could be displayed in a top corner of a newspaper's web offering to demonstrate that it "does subscribe to some basic standards". Meyer adds: "If you are online and you are trying to find out stuff - and that includes the Madeleine story - one thing you will know that if you are on a newspaper's website, first of all it has the integrity of its own brand.

"But if at the same time you know it subscribes to the code of practice, you will know there are certain fundamental principles the newspaper observes and there is a remedy if it goes wrong."

Scotland has already been a test bed for the PCC's new powers over audio-visual content. At the end of July, it upheld a complaint from John Ogilvie High School after the Hamilton Observer published mobile phone footage shot by a 16-year-old student in a classroom, taken to demonstrate what she claimed was a lack of discipline in class. The teenager said she took the footage to explain her poor results to her parents. The PCC's objection was not to the story itself - it agreed the report was of "considerable public interest" - but that it featured other pupils who were identifiable and could not have known they were to be part of a newspaper report.

The PCC yesterday discussed a second newspaper case - Meyer will only say it concerns a regional newspaper - and says, so far, such cases have only arrived in "dribs and drabs". So is he more troubled by the current newspaper fixation of sourcing stories from YouTube?

"What you've got to do here is get 'back to basics', to use that immortal phrase. When we were in discussion with editors and publishers about responsibility for AV material on newspapers' websites, we had to use some common sense. You can't hold an editor responsible for absolutely everything accessible through the paper's website.

"If an editor takes a conscious decision to pull in material from YouTube and stick it on the website and say 'here's a story', then of course the PCC code will click in. The criterion is editorial control."

While digital media looms large in Meyer's thoughts, he dismisses apocalyptic predictions that newspapers will expire to be replaced by their web offerings: "I certainly am not of the school that believes online is going to wipe out print altogether. I think the two will coexist and that this not a question of Darwinian survival of the fittest. They will live together."