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British journalism facing ‘dangerous period’, BBC chief warns, but privacy worries must not hinder exposure of wrong-doing The BBC director-general has warned that British journalism is facing a “dangerous period” because of attempts by police to force news organisations to hand over confidential sources. Mark Thompson was speaking the week after Scotland Yard dropped its attempt to obtain a production order, which would have compelled the Guardian to disclose the source of a story revealing that a mobile phone belonging to Milly Dowler was hacked by the News of the World. In a speech in Taiwan on Sunday morning, Thompson said the affair was part of a “disturbing trend” for “police forces in many parts of the UK routinely to demand that journalists disclose sources and hand over journalistic materials”. He added: “At the BBC, we receive an ever-growing number of demands for untransmitted news rushes which the police seem to regard as having no more privilege or protection attached to them than CCTV pictures.” The police asked broadcasters to pass them footage of rioters in the summer, a request which most of them said they were happy to comply with providing the police obtained court orders requiring them to do so. Thompson said it was vital that good journalism carried out in the public interest is not damaged in the wake of the News of the World scandal, as lawmakers decide how to answer the questions it raises about newspaper ethics. He said: “It would be easy to respond to the completely unacceptable actions of some journalists at the News of the World by adopting such a draconian approach that even the best journalism is constrained. “It would be easy for concern over the appalling invasions of privacy revealed by the phone-hacking scandal to spill over into legislation or regulation which enables wrongdoers to escape journalistic exposure.” Police investigating phone hacking had been due to attend a court hearing last Friday to pursue an application for a production order on the Guardian and reporter Amelia Hill requiring them to reveal the sources of the Dowler story. When it was published in July, it provoked a wave of public revulsion and lead to the resignations of several senior executives at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire. The Met dropped the action after an outcry from newspapers and leading politicians. Thompson said: “I can think of no better example of a journalistic disclosure being in the public interest than the Milly Dowler story in the Guardian. “That anyone in the Metropolitan police should ever have thought otherwise is not only incomprehensible but disturbing.” He also argued it would be wrong to respond to the hacking scandal by creating a single regulator to oversee all news organisations. He said he was “sceptical of the view that newspapers should be regulated in the same way as broadcasters like the BBC who reach into every household in the land. “Plurality of regulation is a good thing. One of the safeguards that broadcasters in the UK have is the presence of a far less regulated press which can draw attention to any attempt by the authorities or anyone else to misuse their powers when it comes to broadcasting. “To put all journalism under a singled converged regulator would potentially mean that, if ever the state wished to limit media freedom, it would have a single lever with which to do so.” Broadcasters must comply with a strict code enforced by Ofcom which requires their news coverage to be fair and balanced. Similar editorial guidelines are in place at BBC and overseen by the BBC Trust. Thompson argued the press should continue to regulate itself, and defended the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which was lambasted by political leaders, including the prime minister and Ed Miliband for its failure to censure the News of the World. “The current British model of self-regulation of the press is not to be dismissed out of hand,” he said. “The PCC has a good record in arbitrating complaints and disputes. The PCC was not established as a regulator as such and it is not reasonable to criticise it for not doing things it is not designed or empowered to do.” The Leveson inquiry, which will begin taking evidence from witnesses next month, has been charged with recommending how the newspaper industry should be regulated in the future. The director-general added that the system of self-regulation should be radically reformed, however. “In particular”, he said, “the self-regulatory body would have to be given the power to conduct unfettered investigations into complaints and, in cases where serious complaints are upheld, to impose fines or other sanctions on guilty parties”. He said one possibility would be for Ofcom, which has the power to levy fines, to conduct inquiries into alleged wrongdoing at newspapers at the request of the press industry’s own regulator. Thompson also said it was vital for the public interest to be properly defined if it is to be used to defend intrusion by the press and the use of techniques including subterfuge. “The important thing is that the industry accepts a common definition so that, when we mount a public interest justification, everyone – courts, regulators, public – know that we are all talking about the same thing”. Thompson also used the speech to attack newspapers who were initially reluctant to cover the phone-hacking story. “Many national newspapers – and not just News International titles – showed a remarkable lack of interest in the phone-hacking story until it was simply too big to ignore”, he said. “Often there were more column inches attacking the BBC for its coverage of the story than there were on phone-hacking itself.” Mark Thompson Metropolitan police Police Milly Dowler Phone hacking Privacy & the media Media law The Guardian News International National newspapers Newspapers Newspapers & magazines BBC Ofcom Press Complaints Commission James Robinson guardian.co.uk