European Clubs Association (ECA) president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge’s recent comments on the transfer system were branded as unbelievable and naive
on Tuesday by the world players’ union FIFPro. You’re probably reading this on junk. And I’m not talking about newsprint – industry woes aside, that’s high-quality stuff. But if you’re on a computer or an iPad,
and you’re not plugged into an Internet jack in the wall? Junk, then. Today’s extract from the book After Leveson* is by Bernard Clark, a former BBC correspondent for the programme Nationwide and later the independent producer of hundreds of documentaries who now chairs TVT.He thinks Lord Justice Leveson was
looking backward at a disappearing problem in print rather than looking forward to the digital world. In a post-Leveson world, he believes, questions of press regulation – whether run by the
industry or ordered by statute – are largely irrelevant.
The problem is the internet. We are heading into a future of no
regulation with the internet where its monoliths will have plenty of clout, pretty well unfettered by democratic national governments (but not totalitarian ones, like China).Content doesn’t matter to net companies as long as
editorial issues don’t interfere with the bottom line.
Citing “freedom of expression”,
which like motherhood and apple pie is impossible to attack,
they will host their
anonymous contributors’ bullying, lies, smears, breathtaking invasions of privacy and reputation-destroying carnage while refusing all responsibility for what they host.To
illustrate an example of information misuse, it’s worth recounting the alarming experience of a work colleague at the hands of Facebook. Someone he did not know took his name and set up a Facebook page purporting to be his, along with a photo and several intimate details, some true, some false. The entry included enough facts and events to appear credible, and it played havoc with his personal life and relationships. He had a sense of being stalked, as if someone had stolen his very being.He contacted Facebook but they, more or less, didn’t want to know.
Pointing out that they had very few staff to look into such matters, their unconcerned operator put the whole onus on him to prove he was not responsible for the page and to demonstrate personal
harm. Ultimately he gave up, and eventually we bluffed his anonymous character kidnapper
– we still don’t know
who it was – into believing they would be exposed, so they finally stopped. But not before he had suffered several weeks of shame
and embarrassment.Even the Press Complaints Commission would not dare to be so cavalier about what was clearly an outrageous denial of responsibility. Yet this was probably only one single crazy weirdo making someone else’s life a misery.How does information terrorism work?What’s coming in
the future could be
far more deadly, involving widespread smears, character
assassinations and the destruction of companies and maybe even institutions. And by then we may not have a vigorous press to hold it to account.What Leveson needed to examine was the way in which reputations are traduced on the internet by accusation, images
and innuendo before any evidence is produced.In
my view, though controversial and possibly abhorrent to some people, much of the reputational damage that has followed the Jimmy Savile allegations falls into that same category
of information terrorism, or certainly
information assault. Post-Savile, family men, often with
lives of unblemished public success, have been suddenly traduced by anonymous, out-of-the-blue allegations from 20, 30 or 40
years ago. Why? Because of completely unrelated media stories, about completely
unrelated people, mainly completely unrelated circumstances, and unrelated crimes – inspired by the pass-the-parcel “it happened to me too” accusation culture, fed by the never-sleeping information machine.
Based on untested historical information, presumably without a scrap
of forensics or contemporaneous medical examinations, the distinctly excitable police – to the delight of the conveniently present photographers and gawping neighbours – arrest first and ask questions later.For
some men this has reached the stage where a fear about something long forgotten nags away
in the small hours: “Did I once brush against a secretary’s bottom, her breast? Did I once go to
kiss a cheek, and touch lips
instead?”As a BBC presenter during the 1970s, this comes close to me. I worked with Jimmy Savile in 1978 when we co-presented the Nationwide skateboard contest.
From memory, he
was highly professional, a pleasant but wily man, the life and soul of
the crowd that sought him out for autographs.
I also presented the Nationwide disco doubles with another arrestee, the disc jockey Dave Lee Travis, who was less professional but more approachable.Would
Exposure have been screened if Savile had been alive?So a
couple of the people frogmarched away are, if not friends, past acquaintances. Though their reputations are seemingly
in terminal tatters they remain uncharged and therefore innocent.
To them, it doesn’t seem that way because the first
few pages of Google under their name now churn with words like ‘paedophile’, ‘indecent assault’ and ‘Savile’.While on the subject of Savile, I have to say I felt mildly concerned
when watching
ITV’s Exposure documentary that
the broadcaster’s lawyers may have been uncomfortable at passing the
investigation if Savile had still been alive, especially if Jimmy had had the services of a Maxwellesque lawyer. Given that they would have had to
put the evidence to him in advance, and the police had previously been reluctant to proceed, it would have required a robust effort to get “errors and omission” insurance, as
generally required by ITV.
But, of course, none of that matters now that the pack of historical accusers has passed the 500 mark. It surely must be true, mustn’t it? Then comes
the case of Julian
Assange, the man now languishing in the Ecuadorian
embassy. If information terrorism is
a manipulation of half truths to pick on defenceless individuals, Assange and Wikileaks produced
the exact opposite because, not only was the target the most powerful military machine in history, the information was true.
What followed, whether farce or deliberate plot, became such a convoluted story of condoms, ‘consensual rape’ or sex-while-asleep, that the leaked pictures of a helicopter gunship massacring a couple of dozen innocent Iraqis, including a Reuters journalist, palled in comparison. That was exactly what the US military wanted. Who cares about the message if you can character assassinate the messenger? Perhaps there is
no conspiracy against Assange.
Perhaps
he was just unfortunate in his choice of bed mates.
But the suspicion remains that an unscrupulous super power has punished and eliminated an embarrassing critic for revealing uncomfortable truths. Wait a second: governments wouldn’t
get involved in information terrorism, would they?Why didn’t Leveson tackle the.jpg)
real story?These days, when I look across the panorama of the way information disseminates, I see
the destruction of people, companies and even governments accelerating, partly because the hunting pack can rip targets apart with random ease, and partly because transgressions which are often trivial can be blown out of all proportion by clever ‘spinners’.
Over the next decade or two we will look back with astonishment at the whole edifice of Leveson and wonder how so many people took so much time
and used so much money to produce a report of relevance to so few.
Didn’t the noble judge know about cyberspace? Surely he must have seen it as the real story? He must
have realised that it is no
longer reasonable for the big players – the Googles, Facebooks, YouTubes and Twitters – to say: “Nothing to do with us, guv, we only provide the pipes. What goes through them, that’s up to the folk who put it there.”However,
the intenet also
has within
its power a bright new dawn of freeing journalism and storytellers from the editorial and political tyrannies of the past. But it does need regulation, not
least so that reliability and credibility can
be added to its
power.Leveson
missed a big opportunity. But maybe it’s
not too late to take the
principles in his report and craft a new set of disciplines for a converged and electronic future.That’s
probably old ink thinking. An entirely new information world is rising in which each of us can be readers and editors, contributors and subscribers,
and maybe even proprietors, at the same time. Hark, was that a nightingale I heard? Or a bomb?After Leveson? The future for
British journalism, edited by John Mair, is published by
Abramis. Available at a special Media Guardian price of £15 from richard@arimapublishing.co.ukTomorrow: Deirdre O’Neill argues that Lord Justice Leveson failed to probe deeply enough into the portrayal of women in the national pressLeveson reportInternetJimmy SavileLord Justice LevesonFacebookGoogleYouTubeTwitterDigital mediaITV channelBBCJulian AssangeWikiLeaksPress Complaints CommissionRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds The episode, caught on cellphone video, has prompted anger because of its brazen and
outsize cruelty. A federal
judge yesterday blocked flight attendants at Northwest Airlines from striking
over cuts in pay and benefits, ruling that such action could threaten the struggling carrier’s comeback from bankruptcy protection.
Love
may make the world go ’round,
but is it powerful
enough to lower one’s blood
pressure, reduce depression and speed the healing of an injury?
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we set out to find the answer and discovered that science says