If the British press is out of control, what can be done?

Some months ago I found myself – tuxedoed to hell and back – standing in the Cambridge Union debating chamber and taking on Max Mosley and one of the country’s most expensive libel lawyers. The motion was essentially that the British press was out of control and should be brought to heel.

Max and I had a drink or two, then our paths crossed during subsequent filming for a C4 Dispatches film on phone hackery. I say now what I said to Max that night in Cambridge and on many occasions since – that although I spoke against him on that motion, I sense what he’s trying to do now opens up a vital area of debate.

Two large ironies loom around Leveson – the fact that there would be no Leveson at all without – funny this – first class journalism. Take a bow here Nick Davies and The Guardian for, among many other scoops, bringing out the appalling case of Milly Dowler’s parents, the one instance of many which thrust this whole rotten business into the minds of a horrified public and out of the London media circles it was in danger of being imprisoned by.

And then the second irony – the spectre just yesterday of the paps pursuing a car containing one Sienna Miller in just the same fashion that she’d complained about to Leveson minutes before inside the inquiry.  The media scrum around her departure of course, did also contain TV news cameras.

So two things it seems do not change – the excellent abundant journalism alive and well in this country in newspapers and TV and radio as well as online – and the pathological inability of the paps and the tabloid-celeb symbiosis to demonstrate any kind of restraint.

So what to do? Well the great and good wring their hands, the Leveson inquiry itself – whilst entertaining and appalling by turns – is also hamstrung by the continuing police investigations, and the tabs point out (rightly) that the public which screams about tabs’  intrusion also buys papers of celeb nonsense and other people’s sex lives, by the tonne.  Across media, there’s a widespread (but not universal) view that it is not appealing for parliament to do very much – though the longer it goes on the more  likelihood there is of MPs deciding to do something – anything – which may end up being even more damaging than the current mess we are undoubtedly in.

Notwithstanding the fact that TV journalism with its legal obligations to  “due impartiality”, inhabits a different universe to newspaper journalism, there may still be some interesting ideas to explore to counteract tabloid excess and its undoubtedly corrosive effect on journalism as a whole in the UK right now. I neither advocate nor dismiss the following ideas but I do think they should be seriously considered in the coming post-Leveson debate which should, indeed must, happen.

1. Should we perhaps ensure that newspapers come under the same rules as TV investigations in being forced to seek  pre-publication right of reply to people they are investigating. We are all journalists. It is all journalism. This alone would likely mean that what happened to Max Mosley for instance, could not happen again in quite the same way.

2. It is worth considering, and it follows from the above, that papers intending to publish details of a person’s private life should perhaps have to justify their actions before a standing body available at any hour of the day or night.  Much as injunctions are currently sought before a judge in chambers at the moment. At that body they would have to establish a sufficient case for publication.

In the Mosley case, for example, this would have meant demonstrating that Max Mosley had spoken about sexual issues in the public domain or had some public interest in such issues. If not – and Google would probably do the trick in most cases or not – the case for publication would be questionable. Occasionally the body might get it wrong, these judgements are fine and the distinctions nice – but it would address the perception of random ruining of people’s lives simply to sell papers. You could not publish in the Mosley case. However a sporting figure who had put themselves forward as a wholesome public figure for commercial gain on the one hand – but indulging in orgies on the other, would clearly be a case for public interest publication.

3. Surely the time has come to re-open the debate about easier, quicker, cheaper access to libel and defamation action in courts around the country away from simply the rich-man’s club of London’s High Court.  It is expensive and exclusive    Conditional fees have made some difference here of course, but hardly transformed the libel landscape.

4. Apologies are now firmly on the agenda for discussion – a running theme in Leveson is the anger victims feel over being harmed in the tabloids and then having that harm rubbed in by virtue of a tiny and often laconic – even jokey – apology buried deep in the paper where nobody will see it. Sienna Miller is only the latest to complain about this.

The possible remedy to consider is obvious, simple and easy.  Could not papers be forced to publish retraction and apology pieces with a prominence that reflected the gravity or “cavalier-ness” of the original offence? So, for heinous cases could that even mean the same pages, lineage, photographs, reporter byline – the works. In other words – an exact replica to right the wrong?

That would be a truly radical shift, and would be way beyond the current practice in broadcasting too.  Some might argue the time for this is long overdue – not least the famous names before Leveson this week, but is it another area where the time has come to give it wider consideration?

Read more: Press kept me and children under siege, says Rowling

5. Depending upon where the debate goes with these key issues, there’s the question of course of who will hold the ring in all this, and whether the time has come to consider major change to or replacement of the much-derided Press Complaints Commission to create a body with the credibility and grip to oversee the system of press regulation in the UK. Of course any such body is ultimately accountable to and probably set up by, the government, but the fact is few consider that the PCC as currently constituted, is fulfilling an effective role.

None of this will be perfect and there will be failures and loopholes to tighten as we go along – but in most cases it is little more in fact than coming to a decision about whether the world newspapers appear to inhabit should be aligned with the tougher standards and restrictions TV investigations are forced to deal with day in, day out.  It’s a debate, a series of suggestions, and I take no side on it save for a strong belief that real debate and change on these issues is urgently needed, not to stymie investigative reporting, but to nurture and refocus it.

Of course TV inhabits a world of impartiality-by-regulation but I don’t see either Dispatches or Panorama going out of business or ducking the difficult challenges.

You can follow Alex Thomson on Twitter @alextomo