Abstract
How the public's unhelpful views on press regulation somehow escape the attention of our national titles
Last May I published a report for the Media Standards Trust (MST), Press Coverage of Leveson, Part 1 – The Inquiry, a big-data analysis of every story relating to the Leveson inquiry from July 2011 to November 2012 published in every national newspaper. A second part, covering the period from the publication of the report to the summer of 2013 is currently under construction. While the analyses focus on the data at a micro level, certain trends in the coverage have become apparent. The most obvious of these has been the consistent tendency of almost all of the national press – individually, but with an aggregate effect – to filter out information and arguments that go against the interests of the press, while privileging statements, sources and facts that support them.
The Leveson inquiry and the tortuous Royal Charter negotiations that have followed it provide a unique environment to observe newspaper coverage of a significant public policy issue in which each participant among the newspaper industry has a stake, so the presence of a consistent tendency to filter out inconvenient information has implications for the ability of the British public to access a multiplicity of authoritative views on an issue that is already inextricably linked to levels of trust in the newspaper industry.
As the MST analysis showed, coverage of the oral phase of the Leveson inquiry was ubiquitous (nearly 1,500 stories) and largely ‘neutral’, in the sense that most stories didn't contain any judgments about the merits of the inquiry. In the stories that did contain a judgment, either by sources or by journalists, however, a particular argument was being made with increasing frequency: that the Leveson Inquiry amounted to a clear threat (insidious or accidental) to a free press, or worse. For every evaluative statement (by journalists or sources) that the inquiry was welcome or positive, there were approximately four claims that presented it in a negative light: 396 to 103.
This trend increased dramatically in the last 100 days before the report was published, once oral hearings had ended. As Table 1 shows, stories in the national press tended towards criticism of the inquiry, rather than support, neutrality, or a balance of viewpoints. Elsewhere the analysis showed that, of the 28 leader columns about the inquiry in the 100 days before publication of the Report, 23 contained only negative interpretations of Leveson, while three contained both negative and positive viewpoints and two contained no opinion. None put forward a purely positive or supportive view of the inquiry.
Tone of coverage during last 100 days before Leveson report
Other evidence suggested an instrumental purpose to some aspects of the coverage. A series of alternative models was submitted to the inquiry suggesting potential regulatory systems to replace the PCC. In the end, 13 of these were referenced in the Leveson Report in the section devoted to outlining the judge's thinking behind his finalised model. Going by the press coverage, however, the newspaper industry's own plan, proposed by Lords Hunt and Black, with incentives set out by the Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, was the only game in town, accounting for more than 90 per cent of all mentions of alternative models of regulation before the report was published. The coverage of this plan was also unquestioning: its substantial flaws (outlined in depth in the Leveson report and elsewhere) were never mentioned outside The Guardian.
Coverage of the Royal Charter debate
Leaving aside the coverage immediately after publication of the Leveson report (a study in its own right), coverage remained relatively muted following February 12, when the Conservatives published the first public draft Royal Charter. Twenty-one stories were published, with five leader articles, all expressing qualified support for the concept as “the best of a bad job” (The Times, February 13), or a “promising start” (The Independent, February 13). However, little over a month after that, David Cameron cut off Charter negotiations with Labour and the Lib Dems, prior to the Commons vote on the Crime and Courts Bill on March 18, prompting a return to a pattern of coverage reminiscent of the last days before the report.
In four days, no fewer than 63 articles, including 17 leader columns, were devoted to the alternative Charter options. Ten of 17 leaders were by papers from the News International, DMG Media, and Telegraph Media Group stables; every one was supportive of Cameron's decision and critical of the other side, with the “threat” frame deployed to full effect. The Daily Mail warned of “a grave and imminent danger” to a free press if Labour were to get their way (March 15), with “freedom of expression” being “consigned to the scrapheap of history for the sake of petty politics” (March 18).
The Times cautioned about an “unwise and unnecessary” threat to press freedom (March 15), while the Telegraph claimed the Labour/Lib Dem Charter was “more suited to an authoritarian nation” (March 15) and The Sunday Telegraph summed up the situation with the headline “Regulating the press by statute is the first step to censorship” (March 17). The morning of March 18 also saw the publication in several newspapers of (presumably expensive) full-page adverts by the Free Speech Network comparing Leveson's recommendations to life under Mugabe, Putin and other assorted dictators.
None of the leaders by The Guardian, Observer, Independent and Financial Times adopted an explicit stance, instead focusing on the details and implications of the deal. The asymmetry of coverage was again apparent: a small group of broadsheets adopted a conciliatory or non-partisan tone, while the majority were ferociously antagonistic towards one side.
This disparity continued after the late cross-party deal on March 17 that rendered much of the rhetoric (and the Mugabe adverts) of March 18 redundant. In the seven-day period beginning on March 19, 85 stories were published on the resulting Charter (see Table 2), with eight newspapers devoting their leader columns to the deal on the 19th. The 85 stories consisted of: 52 which contained only negative viewpoints on the decision or on those involved with making it; seven containing only positive viewpoints; 11 including both sides of the argument; and 15 that made or contained no evaluative viewpoints. Compared with Table 1 (above), this suggests that aggregate coverage during this period was even more negative than before the Leveson report was published.
Tone of coverage March 19 – 25, after cross-party Charter deal
With the launch of the rival Charter on April 25 by sections of the newspaper industry, the split was maintained. Forty-three stories on the Pressbof Charter were published, with the emphasis heavily in favour: leaders in the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, Times and Sunday Times, Sun and Mirror were all emphatically in support (“A truly independent regulator of the press” – Daily Mail, April 26; “The key to a fair and free press” – Daily Mirror, April 26; “A better way to regulate the press” – Sunday Times, April 28). The Independent and The Guardian offered no judgement on the merits of the Pressbof Charter in their leaders, instead focusing on the implications of the impasse.
These snapshots invite two conclusions. The first is that the pattern of coverage identified in the first part of the MST analysis of the Leveson Inquiry is maintained faithfully; the vast majority of newspapers took a uniform position on the issue of press regulation. Indeed, Table 2 suggests that the anti-Leveson line has been even more consistent since the publication of the report.
The second is that correlation need not equal either causation or coordination: the ability to express an independent editorial line is so utterly fundamental that it needs no explanation here. From the perspective of the public, however, the coverage of this issue hasn't represented a particularly diverse marketplace of ideas. This becomes more of a concern when the balance of coverage is compared with that of public opinion over the same period.
Coverage of public opinion
The filtering approach to covering Leveson may have had some merit, had the vast majority of public opinion not shown that not only does the British public in general disagree with the majority of newspapers on press regulation, but several polls have indicated that readers tend to disagree with the editorial line of the newspapers they read.
In total, 17 opinion polls have been conducted by various polling companies since May 2012 that have focused, at least in part, on press regulation (Table 3). All but three contained results that went against the press line on regulation. The remaining three consisted of a YouGov poll by The Sun in October 2012, and two polls by Survation for the Free Speech Network (the second dismissed as a “worthless propaganda exercise” by Roy Greenslade). Yet these three polls received almost identical coverage (17 articles), in terms of detailed descriptions in articles, as the remaining 14 polls (18 articles).
Opinion polls relevant to press regulation, May 2012 – July 2013
Eleven national newspapers failed to cover any of these 14 polls. Those that did were The Guardian, The Observer and The Independent (together accounting for two-thirds of all articles), The Sunday Times (which covered only the polls it had commissioned itself, and often omitted those answers that contradicted the editorial line), and – with one mention each – The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Daily Mail, whose headline “Doubts over ‘manipulated’ poll” (November 29, 2012) indicates its approach to pro-Leveson polling.
The results of the polls have been consistent, and they have been unambiguous. Again and again, the public has come out in favour of legally-underpinned regulation (Hacked Off/YouGov, October 6; MST/YouGov, November 23), in favour of the cross-party Charter (YouGov, March 19; Sunday Times/YouGov, March 24; MST/YouGov, July 18), and extremely apprehensive about continued dominance by the newspaper industry of the new system of press regulation (The Sun/YouGov, November 5; MST/YouGov, November 23, February 1, May 2, July 18).
Indeed, at each of the snapshots of the Royal Charter debate analysed here, aggregate public opinion has been consistently opposed to the line taken by the majority of newspapers: for instance, support for the cross-party Royal Charter during and after the critical coverage of March 15 to 25, or the lack of public support for a system of regulation that maintains a strong degree of industry control. But the disconnect goes further: where polling breaks down respondents by newspaper readership, it becomes clear that the publications voicing the strongest opposition to Leveson and the cross-party Charter go against the views of the majority of their readers. For instance, prior to the Leveson report publication, 81per cent of Daily Mail readers and 77per cent of Times readers were in favour of some form of statutory underpinning (MST/YouGov, November 2012), while following the launch of the Pressbof Charter, polling indicated that readers of the newspapers behind the proposal showed little or no confidence in it, and a preference for the cross-party Charter (MST/YouGov, May 2013; July 2013).
The opinion-polling data – never a truly exact science, but strengthened by the consistency of responses over the past 15 months – provides the clearest evidence of the filter in action. Generally, the polls have been outright ignored where the results have contradicted the editorial line of the majority of the industry and covered in depth on the two or three occasions where they have agreed. Readers of any newspapers except for The Guardian/Observer and The Independent would struggle to find any evidence that polling had been conducted at all, beyond the two Survation polls. The readership data also undermines the defence that the press is simply representing the views of their readers, or is acting with their best interests at heart in their attempts to set up a new regulator and recognition body.
Conclusion
In each of these areas – coverage of the Leveson inquiry, of the Royal Charters, and of related public opinion polling – most national newspapers have adopted a remarkably uniform editorial line. To simplify: the Leveson inquiry was a threat to a free press, and the Hunt/Black plan was the only significant successor to the PCC; Cameron's decision to break off talks on March 14 was a brave and principled stand, and the March 18 Commons debate was another crisis-point in the history of press freedom; the cross-party Charter was a dangerous betrayal that newspapers and magazines would be right to boycott; and the Pressbof Charter is the best solution to the problem and one that everyone should get behind.
The consistency of this interpretation has been significant. The Guardian, The Independent, and (occasionally) the FT have been the only consistent dissenters from this view (though Trinity Mirror and Northern and Shell publications have tended to take a back seat in the debate). Yet this raises absolutely fundamental questions about the role of an authoritative, plural press in covering public policy issues, cutting across any individual position on the merits of the Leveson recommendations. As Professor Tim Luckhurst – no supporter of the Leveson inquiry or the Royal Charters – put it succinctly in a 2013 academic article:
“Liberal theory asserts that a diverse range of newspapers, each pursuing independent editorial policies, will place in the public sphere sufficient news and opinion to enable citizens in a representative democracy to reach informed conclusions.”
Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that this has not happened here. Of greater concern than the uniformity of viewpoint, however, is the tendency – demonstrated most clearly in the (lack of) coverage of opinion polls – to ignore the facts that contradict this viewpoint and focus only on those that support it. At the level of individual newspapers, this may be prudent; at the aggregate level, it disadvantages the public and limits the chance of informed and reasoned debate on the future of press regulation.