That fundamental failure to follow basic journalistic standards is what has led so many people to question whether the BBC can be trusted. Investigative journalism is a serious business. It can take months of work and cost a great deal of money. It requires adherence to the highest standards. Newsnight's spectacular fall from grace raises the question: how can we be sure that standards are not compromised elsewhere within the BBC? Where does the rot stop? Has it been stopped? Can it be?
It is not obvious whether the corporation will be able to produce convincing answers to those questions. The director-general does not seem capable of doing so. Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, who has ultimate responsibility for maintaining the BBC's standards, has not showed convincingly that he even recognises the seriousness of the problem.
How to maintain high standards of journalism is, of course, the question that Lord Justice Leveson will aim to answer in his report. His remit does not include broadcast journalism, however; it is restricted to newspapers and magazines. There is much speculation that he will recommend some form of statutory regulation as the best way of ensuring that the press abides by high standards of journalism and of ethics. It is a striking fact that one of his assessors was Sir David Bell, who is a trustee of the same Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and indeed a former chairman of the Media Standards Trust, the organisation that formed the "Hacked Off" campaign for statutory regulation of the press.
As we have said before, we think that statutory regulation of the press, however "light touch" it might be said to be, would be a cure far worse than the disease. We recognise that mistakes have been made by sections of the industry. More than that, crimes were committed: these should have been dealt with by the police. Statutory regulation is not the way to improve standards, however. It will be impossible to avoid "mission creep", whereby politicians gradually extend the rules to prevent the publication of material that is embarrassing to them.
The BBC is regulated by statute because it is the state broadcaster, its programmes piped into the nation's sitting rooms. Newspapers are different: people freely choose to buy a newspaper. This is a crucial distinction. As it is, statutory regulation seems not to have stopped the BBC producing sloppy reports and failing to observe guidelines.
It is also notable that social media sites, while in theory subject to the law of defamation, are in practice operating independently of it. It is hard to see how any form of statutory regulation of the press would deter individuals from releasing names in an irresponsible way. But it could eventually bring an end to newspapers' exposure of real corruption among the powerful.
Moreover, there is a workable alternative to statutory regulation. A much more robust and transparent system is ready to be put in place, with the power both to call publishers to account and to fine them if they are guilty of malfeasance. Under this system, one would expect that any newspaper producing irresponsible journalism, in the way BBC's Newsnight programme has done, would face heavy fines.
It would be terrible if, in a few years' time, Britain has a regulatory environment that prevents a free press from investigating and publishing the truth about the abuse of power by our rulers, but allows innocent people to be smeared as paedophiles on social networking sites or, in effect, via the BBC. Unless we are very careful, that is where we are likely to end up.
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