November 19, 2009
Regarding the PCC and Blogs
On Tuesday I asked people to (e-)sign a letter directed to the Press Complaints Commission regarding the proposal to include blogs in its remit of (so-called) “regulation”.
Rob Jubb of Consider Phlebas left the following interesting comment, which raises points that need to be addressed:
I’m really not sure that, as a political tactic, writing to an organisation that’s thinking about regulating you telling it that it’s shit at regulating what it already regulates and so you think you’re better off without it is very sensible. It seems likely to antagonise the organisation and hardly, given that presumably it knows that what it does already, likely to change its mind. Presumably, since the PCC is a voluntary organisation, the sensible thing to do would be publicly advise bloggers not to sign up to it. If it’s thought that there’s a risk of government requiring PCC membership, then the government, not the PCC, are the people to write to. Actually, this seems to me typical of Unity’s somewhat twitchily passive-aggressive style, but eh, let many flowers bloom and all that.
Here’s where I stand.
It’s true that Unity’s letter to the PCC is likely to antagonise it. Is that a sensible political tactic? I think maybe it is.
The PCC is a voluntary body which supposedly self-regulates the media industry. There are two main ways to interpret the grumblings about regulating blogs. The first is to see this as vacuous politicised nonesense; regulating blogs in practice would be virtually impossible, bloggers would have to have “representatives” on the PCC for this to make sense and that seems fairly unworkable, and ultimately the PCC is a joke which doesn’t enforce order in its own house, so has little prospect of achieving anything outside of that.
If this turns out to be the case, I think it’s still worthwhile sending an antagonistic letter. For the simple reason that an antagonistic letter signed by hundreds of bloggers is likely to get picked up by some parts of the press, and in turn can be used to highlight the gross failings of the PCC, and the comparative virtues of much of the (genuinely self-regulating) “blogosphere”. And that’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.
There’s another interpretation though, and it’s the one I allude to in my suggested ammendment at comment [7] under Unity’s original lette: that this be viewed as a potential PCC land-grab, whereby vested interests in the so-called Main Stream Media stake an early claim to be able to “regulate” independent blogs. Which effectively cashes-out in terms of having the power to shut blogs down. Think this is paranoid? Well, Rupert Murdoch is going to war with Google and the BBC, because he sees them as undercutting News International. In time, I think some blogs will come to challenge the predominance of important sections of the MSM (Huffington Post in the United States is arguably halfway there already). When that happens, the MSM outlets will react to the competition violently. If the precedent has been established that the PCC can regulate blogs…well it doesn’t take a genius to imagine how the MSM interests in the PCC will operate. Even if the PCC has some nominal representatives from “bloggers”, I doubt this would be an off-set to the vested interests in a PCC which might suddenly discover it has teeth.
If this is the case, then I think an antagonistic response from bloggers is fairly appropriate. Being nicey-nicey towards the PCC seems to me rather pointless. Better to be vocally and unambiguously opposed from day one.
As for Rob’s point that this should be a matter directed towards the government, I think pointing out that Unity’s letter will be CC’d to Ben Bradshaw MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and John Whittingdale MP, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, pretty much covers it.
And there’s also the matter of principle, frankly. After all, who do the PCC think they are, threatening to regulate blogs when their own house is such a horrible mess?
So whilst I think Rob makes good points that need to be addressed, my inclination is that belligerence is the best default position to take on this issue. Frankly I don’t see what’s to gain by being nicey-nicey with a PCC which is either proposing something vacuous or unworkable, or laying the grounds for a land-grab.
Matt Wardman said,
November 19, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I’m tempted to suggest that, given the incomprehension of the PCC for most things Internet, as revealed by the Baroness’ speech, we may as well be regulated by the Potato Council.
Rob said,
November 20, 2009 at 3:46 pm
I didn’t mean that one shouldn’t slag off the PCC, or be belligerent towards it. It’s clearly designed so as to do the minimum necessary to stave off public interest arguments for tighter regulation of newspapers whilst allowing the tabloid press an as expansive as possible freedom to carry on lying, and I think the more people say that, the better. Whether or not listing its faults in a letter to it which uses those faults, which it is presumably aware of and does not see as faults, to urge it not to do something it has no power to do is a good idea is another question. It’s a like an atheist writing to the Mormons carefully explaining why they’re not going to be joining the Church of Latter Day Saints; the question isn’t, are the Mormons batshit crazy, but, why on earth are you telling them that? What do you expect them to do? Change? And, as I said, if the worry is that the Government will require PCC membership, then the thing to do is to write to the Government, which isn’t the same as CC’ing them on a letter to someone else. If I want the Government to know that I’d rather it didn’t require me to join the Mormons, it’d be odd of me to do that by sending them copies of the letter I wrote to the Mormons carefully explaining why I don’t want to join their church rather than to write to them directly.
Also, I’m not quite sure what the relationship between the faults and the reluctance to be regulated is. If the point is that the PCC is a light touch regulatorily, then why care whether it regulates you or not; you can ignore it till the cows come home.
Paul Sagar said,
November 20, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Rob,
I don’t see what’s wrong with this: the Mormons say they are going to ask – with a possible hint that if we say now, then they will force, via the power of the state – us to join their cult.
We say no. At this stage, we know that it’s just between us and the Mormons – but that it could end up being referred to the Government, who are on the Mormon’s side. So at this stage, we fire our primary shot across the Mormon bows, with a CC’d shot across the Government’s (knowing that they aren’t primarily engaged yet, but are lurking in the background as a threat if we refuse to voluntarily join-up).
Re your last paragraph: my suspicion is that it’s not going to cash-out in terms of “light touch” for the blogosphere. See my comment at LibCon (sorry, to busy to repeat) re the PCC becoming a vehicle by which vested interests in the MSM can undercut competition/rivals in the “blogosphere”.
Rob said,
November 22, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I know your suspicion is that if it regulated blogs, it wouldn’t be a light touch. I think you’re probably right about that; it’s a body which serves the interests of (primarily) the tabloid press, and blogs being free to say what they like isn’t generally in the interests of the tabloid press. That, though, makes giving an example of it being a light touch in the letter particularly weird; not only explaining to them that what they regard as the proper functions of the organisation you regard as failings when that’s clear to all involved anyway, but using that as an explanation of why you don’t want to join when in fact the reason you don’t want to (be forced, by some other actor, to) join is precisely the opposite.
As far as the Mormons go, note the specific character of what I’m saying would be odd; not writing and saying ‘As an atheist, I don’t believe in God. Joining a religious group would therefore be odd. Thank you, etc’. The sort of thing I have in mind, which seems to me analogous to explaining carefully to the PCC that it doesn’t succeed in preventing the press from lying, would be writing and detailing the Mormons’ practice of buying up parish records and converting the dead only to temperately and at some length criticize it in terms of it being non-voluntary. They know it’s non-voluntary. This can’t have escaped them. Why are you telling them this? Likewise, the PCC knows it doesn’t stop the press from lying. Why are you telling them this?