The NUJ urges a newsroom culture change after Leveson

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jan/10/nuj-newsroom-culture-change-leveson-report

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Newspaper editors are due to hand in their homework to the prime minister this Thursday morning 10 January. They were asked to come up with proposals for a press regulator, taking into account the recommendations made by Lord Justice Leveson in his report. The NUJ, which represents working journalists in the media, was not invited to the table for bacon butties or anything else.

But the union will make its voice heard loud and clear if the editors fail to come up with a regulatory framework that is genuinely independent of the government and industry. If all we get is a Press Complaints Commission mark III, with a few concessions to the Leveson report recommendations, they will have rendered the whole exercise a £6m farce.

As the inquiry discovered, there needs to be a real culture change in newsrooms, so reporters are not bullied into the excesses that prompted the inquiry in the first place. The union continues to represent journalists on national titles who are being subjected to bullying – in this regard the lessons of the past have not been learned.

We were delighted to hear Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, as part of his evidence to the culture, media and sports committee, saying the editors had signed up to Lord Leveson's recommendations of a whistleblowing hotline and a conscience clause to be put in journalists' contracts. He is right to say that editors will have to observe the spirit of the clause by not penalising reporters who refuse to do something if it contravenes the code of conduct.

Publishers and editors must also accept that the rights of journalists to be collectively represented by their union will have to form part of the new order, not least because the right to dignity at work can best be protected through union recognition.

My fear is that the editors will end up drinking in the "yet another chance" saloon. That would be a tragic waste of an opportunity. The inquiry took place while, and was in some respects hampered by, a large number of pending prosecutions. So, it will not be the last that we will be hearing of unacceptable and illegal activities within the press.

Lord Leveson has proposed a model of regulation that can work. One in which the press can regain trust. We need to see representation from the public and journalists as well as editors. We need to have a cheap, quick and effective arbitration system for complaints, which includes third-party complainants. We need to see that publications which behave badly are punished appropriately and victims have a means of redress. Above all we need to work together to restore faith in quality journalism.

Lest we forget, one of the most compelling modules of the inquiry was the one which investigated the relationship between the press and politicians: the country suppers, the pyjama parties, the drinks in discreet Mayfair gentlemen's clubs. After hearing what was a powerful argument for the need for greater transparency between the political elite and the leaders and acolytes of powerful media conglomerates, will we be going back to business as usual?

For if Cameron lets the editors set up another boys' club for the proprietors he will have shown that it isn't the Rubicon that he doesn't want to cross, but his cronies among the media moguls.