BBC's Year of Shame. See pages 2,3,4..94.

Herald 27/12/13

Whatever happened to Auntie? One of the prime casualties of 2012 was the BBC's reputation as a solid and dependable institution devoted to nature documentaries and unbiassed news. It was revealed as an demented bureaucracy, run by a management of grasping kleptocrats, harbouring sex criminals and using public money to defame innocent pensioners by calling them paedophiles.

OK. I exaggerate. The BBC is still a great institution...public service ethos...cultural guardian...David Attenborough etc. But if nothing else, the corporation has shown itself to be hopeless at broadcasting its strengths as well as its weaknesses. At one stage it seemed as if every BBC news programme was investigating other BBC news programmes. Shoals of BBC reporters were standing outside BBC premises waiting to doorstep BBC employees about the BBC. We lost track of the number of investigations that were launched over Newsnight, Lord McAlpine, Jimmy Savile. A new word entered the dictionary of infamy, when we learned that lots of senior BBC executives were being “recused” from their jobs. Which seems to mean suspended without prejudice so that they can be given large sums of money.

We now learn from the National Audit Office that 200 managers have received pay offs of more than £100,000 in the past three years. The public spending watchdog has described the BBCs severance packages of up to £900,000, as “excessively generous”. This news made me particularly annoyed because when I left the BBC some years ago I didn't get a brass farthing, or even a bronze bawbee. This was presumably because I hadn't been guilty of gross incompetence, defamation, sexual malpractice or sloppy journalism. I'll know better next time.

The remuneration practices of BBC senior management – most of whom seem to earn more than the Prime Minister - has been a bitter insult to the thousands of BBC employees who do not get large salaries for sitting on committees droning on about imagineering the blue sky challenges going forward. The BBC is not a highly paid organisation, compared with other professions. Most BBC producers – especially in Scotland - accept relatively modest pay as the price of doing a job they love. The BBC also produces an astonishing number of programmes – look at iPlayer – most of which are of very high quality, and makes them very cheaply. But somehow the BBC appears to be completely incapable of getting this message across.

Leveson Press Law. Don't worry, it'll never happen.

    The debate over Lord Justice Leveson's call for statutory regulation of the press has unfortunately turned into a political bun-fight. Labour are so eager to court popularity by hammering the gutter press that they've embraced the Leveson Laws with hardly a moment's pause. Meanwhile, from the opposing camp comes the din of grinding axes as special interests led by the Murdoch press line up behind David Cameron against Leveson's “statutory underpinning”. Many believe the PM is only opposing regulation because he wants to keep the press barons on side for the next election.

But while politicians are always guilty of courting the press – even our own First Minister , Alex Salmond, couldn't resist offering to bat for Rupert as Leveson pointed out acidly – we should give the Prime Minister some credit for having genuine reservations about the rush to reintroduce regulation after three hundred years. And yes, I know regulation doesn't mean “political control” - but you have to look at how this new “independent” regulator would work.

Let's imagine that the Leveson proposals are adopted into law. What happens then? Well, the new Press Standards Commission is appointed by a panel overseen by the regulator, Ofcom. Since Ofcom is appointed by government, a line of influence is already open. The PSC drafts a code of conduct requiring journalists to behave properly, not hack phones, not harass famous novelists, not tell lies about people who've lost children, not blag medical records of politicians' children from the NHS -  In other words: obey the law. But since it is the courts that enforce the law, what else would the commission do? How would the Commission enforce good behaviour? Well, it would license the press – decide who is a legitimate accredited journalistic operation.

Lord Leveson doesn't use the word, “license” but he does propose a “kite-mark” for reputable organs. In exchange for being licensed, the newspaper would have certain legal protections in defamation and other cases. Lord Leveson says that those who don't play along would have to pay full court costs in defamation actions even if they WIN the case. So, if Lord X sues for defamation, and the Sunday Herald win on the grounds that what they have said about him is true, it might still have to pay the costs of the litigation, which could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

  Licensing raises the whole issue of compliance. Editors would have to show, even before they embark on a story, that they have fully discussed the implications, not just all the possible legal consequences, but whether they are within the Commission's code. If they are not, and the story leads to court action, they could effectively lose the protection even if story is true. So we can already begin to see some of the difficulties this might cause in a fast-moving news environment. 

Who will be first to be locked up by the Leveson Laws?

 Form an orderly queue there, please. Editors are jostling to be the first in the clink if the government moves to introduce press regulation. Already, the editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson, has said he will not comply with any such statutory body, and is prepared to suffer the consequences – which could mean spending a few months at Her Majesty's Pleasure. Other hacks are promising to desert print for the internet where it is thought the Leveson Laws will not apply.

They're all assuming that Lord Justice Leveson will today end Britain's tradition of press freedom, which dates from 1695 when state licensing of newspapers was abolished. And they are almost certainly right. Lord Leveson is not bonkers. His report, published today, will be cogent and reasonable and will almost certainly call for a new independent system of press regulation, backed up by new laws, which the Prime Minister will find very difficult to reject.

During his lengthy inquiry, the Law Lord made it clear that the present system of self-regulation through the industry body, the Press Complaints Commission, is broken and that public confidence can only be restored by independent regulation of the press. All of the press. Opinion polls show overwhelming public support for regulation. This time it really is closing time in the last chance saloon – and PC plod is about come and chuck out the barflies.

Now as working hack, I find talk of statutory controls deeply troubling. Not least because it seems to be Labour and Liberal spokespeople who are mustard-keen on press regulation, while it is the Tory ministers like Michael Gove and press barons like Rupert Murdoch who are standing for the principle of a free press. With friends like these... It is disturbing to see the Guardian newspaper, which broke the Milly Dowling story, and the National Union of Journalists arguing for a form of state regulation of newspapers.

Regulation can only mean, surely, that a new body - admittedly at arms length - will be empowered, effectively, to license publications, and possibly even license journalists. Certainly the new regulatory body would be in a position to levy fines and enforce the right of reply, and it will be a court of final appeal for people who feel they have been hard done by in the press. Perhaps, indeed, the regulator will have to be consulted when a newspaper proposes to break the law, or bend the law, in the public interest. I'm thinking about use of covert recordings or phone hacking to expose fraud, wrong doing and illegality. To catch a thief you set a thief.