Save The Journalist

I blog. You noticed did you? What a clever little so-and-so you are. Luckily, this blog isn’t massively read, makes me diddlysquat and is written solely by moi. Along with the fact that the servers that run this blog are owned by Google and located in the USA, I should be completely exempt from the new press regulation rules that are being pushed through by the Government. However, as someone who is over half the way through their Journalism degree at University, and looking for a career in local newsprint – they are a major worry.

I'm a media watcher, and I do not doubt for one minute that changes need to happen – how can anyone argue in the post-Hackgate times we live in - but this is certainly not the way. This has been the opportunity politicians wanted to gag the media – the same media that four years ago ran stories about all of their MP’s Expenses. Under these regulations, we would have never known about the duck pond.

So instead of attempting to rectify the real causes, the Government are instead trying to cover their backs against any future attacks and make running a newspaper even more expensive; thus ruining the idea of a ‘free press’.  By laying traps all around Fleet Street in the form of pointless laws, they are, as the over used cliché going around at the moment says, being ‘shackled’. It is already an offence to hack and bribe, so all this new law will state, is that it is against the law to break a law. Wow, doesn’t that seem worthwhile?

To make sure that publishers stick to these new laws then, there needs to be a regulator. The current one, the PCC, is not seen to have been overly successful, so that is already beginning to disappear and be replaced. Even though the Press Complaints Commission was at best feeble, it was still free for publishers to use. The replacement will be expected to cost a news organisation or publisher £4,000 per complaint. When you consider that many newspapers are struggling to make any money, and already making loses, this is not what they want to hear.

The other option then is to bypass this new regulator and for newspapers to self-regulate using an independent organisation they set up. Of course, with that, large financial input is required as if they are found out to be guilty of inaccuracy or improper conduct, they'd be subject to much higher fines.

Another issue which comes out of this regulation diabolical is that it is ‘one size fits all’, in which the local newspapers would be regulated and fined in the same way that large nationals do. Not only is money an issue, but also a newspaper which has a few thousand readers a week and a small team of reporters, have understandably different limitations to newspapers that sell hundreds of thousands of copies (if not millions) a day and a team of a few hundred reporters.

A lot of people are beginning to use the words like 'post Leveson era' when they complain about something they dislike in the news. For example, a local paper this week ran an article regarding leaked emails from local politicians. I was in the office when the woman rang to state that they 'should not have done so, considering these post Leveson times we live in'. It wasn't them that leaked them, they were just reporting a story she didn't like. In this post Leveson era, newspapers will become forced to report cat videos; so long as they're not revealing a woman putting a cat in a bin.

Another example of people using the excuse of 'post Leveson' is the recent Richard Littlejohn diabolical. At the moment he is somewhat unpopular as last week his ‘opinionated’ article on a transvestite teacher, that APPARENTLY, caused her to commit suicide.

People are quick to assume a link. Of course, one might stay it still isn’t fair to thrust a person into the national headlines because of their private lives. Also, this speculation is not helped by the fact that Richard Littlejohn (or as my University cohort now affectionately call him, thanks to an article by Paul Morley in 1994, Dickweed Littletinpot. Or Flickhard Felcherfop, Chipchum Cheapchap, Quicklad Bottletop, Dick Dripdrip and Little Dickjohn) is renowned for his ‘on the edge’ writing. Unfortunately, no-one has yet pushed him off.

Anyway. Unsurprisingly, no papers are particularly happy with these regulations. Already two papers, Spectator and Private Eye, have declined to use it. Others are protesting that they should be allowed to try self-regulation, in particular The Guardian.

It's a tricky business. I don't know what the answer is. I like the idea of needing a license to be a journalist, of which you receive points on when you have been naughty and lose it for a period of time, or indefinitely, after a series of offenses - depending on their seriousness. However, that would just end up pushing more people away from professional journalism and onto amateur blogs as the profession became full of elitists.

All I know is that for some reason I want to be one of them. How do I know that? Because I went and worked in a news room for a week, and have three articles being published in next week's local paper (Faversham Gazette - 95p - Out Thursday, April 4th, 2013).

In doing the job, I realised the pressures on journalists. The journalist is a beautiful creature, who struggles to stay alive, but manages by foraging for stories that will land them the front page scoop. However, he still manages to be sarcastic, light-hearted and try their best to give you what they think you want, even if it isn't what they want. Please, do all you can to stop them from becoming an endangered species. This poaching needs to end - NOW.