Entangled Alliances

photo credit: bfraz

The Parliamentary Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport – a body in dire need of a good acronym- has just released its eagerly awaited (by me, anyway) report on the press. The report is making headlines for its conclusion that senior executives at the News of the World concealed  the truth over the paper’s illegal-phone-hacking scandal, something which  could spell serious trouble for Rupert Murdoch’s paper if a judicial inquiry is launched. But just as important,though not as sexy, is its condemnation of the Press Complaints Commission as “toothless”.

The PCC is the watchdog of the press, and it’s really not very good. It’s not very good because it’s a rare example of self-regulation. In other words, it’s funded by the press, staffed by the press and the code of behaviour with which it judges complaints is one the press voluntarily agrees to abide by. It has no legal powers to punish anyone, which doesn’t really matter anyway since with the amount of powerful paper editors it has on its various boards, it rarely makes a damning judgement on the press.

So it was no surprise when the PCC concluded back in November that, despite new evidence to the contrary produced by The Guardian over the summer, there had been no further phone hacking at the News of the World other than the “rotten apple” Clive Goodman, who was jailed back in 2007. The Select Committee  hammers the PCC for this report, calling its conclusions “simplistic and surprising” which is committee-speak for bloody useless. It would be nice to think that this will spur some action to give the watchdog a new set of teeth. The only way to do this is to scrap it and make it a  statutory body, like Ofcom or the BBC trust. Still independent, but with a functioning pair of cojones.

But the truth is that no-one wants to reform the Press Complaints Commission, so it won’t get reformed. The press don’t want to reform it because they don’t want a system that interferes with their ability to make as much money as possible. Parliament don’t want to reform it because they are terrified by the press. Both main party leaders have too much invested in their relationship with Rupert Murdoch to try and do anything about it.

See how it all works? Today’s report might make Murdoch take a hit, but it won’t do a thing to Britain’s worst watchdog.

(The full report can be found here.)

photo credit: fabbriciuse

David Davis, ex Conservative MP, was on the Andrew Marr Show this morning and had this to say about the Tories’ chances at the upcoming general election:

“If we’re coming up to the election and we don’t show a clear lead, the financial markets are going to respond. The pound will fall, people will talk about our credit rating… The biggest financial wake up call to the electorate you’re ever  likely to see.

The markets hate indecision. And it is said… I’m not in a position to judge… but it is said that they’ve already allowed for a tory victory in our credit rating. We wouldn’t have our credit rating if the markets didn’t think there was going to be a tory victory.”

Now, just like David Davis, I’m not in a position to judge the calculations of the bond markets, though I will say that this  idea that the people investing in our debt are a group of all-knowing political sages  ready to punish us if we commit to anything other than Tory-style severe  cuts is getting a little wearisome.

But it seems to me pretty obvious that this kind of thing is pretty offensive and not the kind of theory that you’d want to parade around too much. I mean, think about it. What Davis is essentially saying is that the public should base their vote not on the unemployment rate or the state of the economy or the respective parties’ manifestos but on the beliefs of a group of people  effectively holding a gun to the UK’s head. And let’s not forget that these are the same people (hedge funds etc) who until recently were busy helping to flush the global economy down the toilet.

When you’re being held hostage, it’s probably best not to gloat about it.