Politics: Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre before the Media Select Committee

Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, today sat before the Media Select Committee, flanked by his managing director, Robin Esser, whose only contributions were to stop Dacre digging himself into a hole. It certainly was a revealing meeting, with Dacre perched on the edge of his seat throughout, and he appeared to be slightly nervous in the proceedings. He constantly, and seemingly genuinely, defended the Press Complaints Commission, and repeatedly declared he would "die in a ditch" to defend the right of the News of the World and others to publish salacious details of people's private lives, so long as it was in the public interest, which he defined as what interests the public.

Below are some quotes and exchanges between Dacre, and the panel, although it must be stressed, that as with my last post, most of these will not be verbatim, but I make a genuine attempt to paraphrase the parties in context, and to maintain the spirit of what they said.

On a side note, I was stopped by no fewer than five officials (Westminster employees and police) on my way to the meeting, enquiring, with an air of suspicion, what my business was there. The fact that I was going to a committee meeting, as opposed to a tour, or observing the Commons seemed to be even more bizarre to them. There is a constant defence of a heavy police presence at a vicinity should make one 'feel safe,' but I didn't. I was getting increasingly paranoid that one of them was going to arrest me. I will add that as many officials offered help, and carried out their duties admirably. Still, I was carrying out my citizenry duty by observing the gears of democracy, and I was made to feel uneasy about the process.

Paul Dacre: I've been a journalist for over forty years, and I have never known chillier times for freedom of the press.

PD: There have been two well-intentioned pieces of legislation which, when combined, have proved to be lethal for the press. The legislation on Conditional Fee Agreements, and the Human Rights Act (HRA). Conditional Fee Arrangements (CFAs) allow lawyers to use unscrupulous methods, such as doubling their legal fees, and drawing out proceedings to keep raising these fees. In one case, the Mail on Sunday (MoS) was sued by Martin Jones MP, and lost the case. The damages payable to Mr Jones was approximately £5000, but the legal fees, plus the cost of the increase of insurance amounted to £520,000.

Every day we are not going as far into a story as we used to, and we settle earlier to avoid legal costs - legal costs that would be so high that they would bankrupt provincial newspapers.

The hourly rate for a lawyer in defamation cases is £650, when up-priced under the CFAs, it becomes £1300. Why does it cost four times as much to defend somebody's damaged reputation than it does to defend somebody from life imprisonment.

Paul Farrelly MP: Is the cherry-picking  of cases by the lawyers turning CFAs from 'No Win, No Fee', to 'Always win, double fee'? 

PD: Yes.

PD: The amount of letters we receive from libel lawyers would amount to deforestation, and from overseas clients that would have been unlikely to have read the stories. I would be astonished if it were not the case that Carter-Ruck and Schillings are actively touting for custom, and ambulance-chasing rich overseas clients.

Rosemary McKenna MP: Is it truly 'privacy law through the back door,' as you believe, or are the courts simply applying the HRA effectively?

PD: The Human Rights Act was well-intentioned, after all, who could deny human rights to anyone. But when it is combined with the CFAs, it is exploited by the rich. Before 1998 [when the HRA came into force], the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was never used against the press -even during the eighties, when the press behaviour was at its worse. The problem with the HRA is that it enables the judges to interpret the law from the European Court of Human Rights, which gives more weight to privacy than press freedom.

PD: The opinion within the press is why is it that one judge, Justice Eady presides over most privacy cases. He has a history of trying to impose privacy laws in the 80s, and has been known in speeches to make sneering attacks on tabloids and individual journalists. I personally feel that judges are arrogant and make amoral decisions. In one case, a man whose wife was seduced by a sports star, was not allowed to sell his story, because of the breach of privacy of the sports star's wife. The adulterer had his rights respected above the wronged man.

PD: For Max Mosley to present himself in front of this committee as a white knight is against civilised society, it is akin to the Yorkshire Ripper taking a stand against violence against women. If he had asked his wife, or neighbour, to dress him up in army uniform and smack him, it would not be an issue that would interest the papers, but he paid a mistress to provide him with women to smack. There is a direct line between that and the trafficked women in the 'massage parlours,' who are exploited and degraded - one legitimises the other. Mosley's status as head of Formula 1, a sport watched by millions of people around the world, presented a greater justification for the running of the story.

He is quick to point out that it was not his paper that broke the Mosley story when an MP suggests that it was. Later on in the session he is asked if the Mosley story was 'put in his lap' would he have run with it.

PD: We are a family newspaper, so no we wouldn't have broke the story.

PD: [privileged] judges don't understand what is in the public interest, what is the public interest should be decided by the public.

Dacre didn't actually use the word privileged, but his description of them, which I failed to note, certainly intimated that impression

PD: I am not aware of journalists at The Daily Mail paying for access to medical records. There was an incident some years back, where we used an agency to provide us with access to addresses and other details of individuals via the Electoral Register, a legal process. The agency was used by other news organisations, and there was no indication that they were accessing people's medical records. Following concerns raised by the Information Commissioner, we banned the use of the agency, and trained our staff accordingly, and the PCC changed the code. I can't think of more rigourous measures we could have taken in the circumstances.

PD: I would like to think that headlines  in the Mail are not deliberately misleading compared to the body of the aticle. The PCC guidelines insist that the body of the article must be accurate.

Whittingdale MP quoted an example from Nick Davies' book, Flat Earth News, about a detail from Anne Frank's diary that was analysed with the headline, "Did Anne Frank's father betray her?". The body of the article made very little reference to this statement, and the only redress was a letter published a week later, on page 68.

PD: I regret that happened, mistakes happen within the pressures of running a daily newspaper.

He is asked why the paper campaigns against government intrusion into privacy, yet wants the power for the press to do so.

PD: The PCC code has strict boundaries of privacy regarding family life, health etc. I hope that these are only broached if it in the public interest to do so. If I get this wrong, you can take me to court.

At this point, Robin Esser quickly prompts him to say, "or don't buy the paper," which Dacre quickly repeats.

He is then asked about the unflattering appraisal of the Mail, again from Nick Davies' book, which calls it 'spiteful' and 'aggressive' among other things.

PD: Mr Davies is a very good journalist, and I have paid him well to write for me, but I think the criteria on which he measures our paper is flawed. He writes for the Gaurdian, and like most of their writers feels like they are the only people who can take the moral high ground. His book didn't take basic journalistic steps such as fact-check or offer a right of reply to the people he criticised. I don't believe we are a 'spiteful' newspaper, but we are aggressive, and are passionate about the interests of our readers.

He is asked if investigative journalism is suffering in journalism today.

PD: In provincial presses, yes, and also in some of the national titles that do not have sufficient resources. I refute that charge against the Mail however, we are famous, and infamous, for looking behind the press releases to uncover the spin. Spending on journalism today is a great as ever, despite the financial troubles of the industry.

He is asked about the supposed dichotomy of public interest versus what interests the public, particularly in regard to boiling stories down to individual accounts.

PD: There is a patronising element to this question. All stories are personal, and telling stories through people is an effective way to explain dry and complicated stories. Politicians and celebrities like to personalise their lives to reach out to the people to whom they are communicating. If you want issues, you can buy the Guardian, if you want titilliation and gossip, buy the Sun or the News of the World, and I'll die in a ditch to defend their right to print that, despite my misgivings, because they have broken some very important stories.

He is asked what went wrong with the McCann case.

PD: I want to point out that the McCann saga was not just confined to newspapers, BBC News and ITN had interviews on the doorsteps of neighbours.

The McCann case was a great news story, and the McCanns went out of their way to seek publicity, understandably so they could increase the chances that they would find their daughter. This created a vortex for some news papers to declare open season. It was compounded by the Portuguese and British police leaking against each other, and this was regrettably picked up by British newspapers. And yes, there was the issue of circulation. I can't remember a story that would positively increase sales the way a McCann headline on the front page would.

He is asked why in other walks of life, such as with social workers, or the police, collective failures are railed against by the press, and calls are made for inquiries, but not in the case of the press' behaviour towards the McCanns.

PD: I can't comment, because I don't believe it was a collective failure. Correct boundaries must be observed, and some newspapers did not observe those boundaries. I sure The Mail has transgressed since the McCann case, but I can't think of an example, and I hope it was not intentional.

He is asked why The Mail published the village where Elizabeth Fritzl was housed.

PD: I was not aware we did that. I'm sure other papers published it also.

You were the first, on March 11.

PD: I'll have to get back to on that. I was unaware of this.

Was this a moral thing to do?

PD: I can't answer that, because I don't what the agencies were doing at the time, or the German newspapers. You [Paul Farrelly MP, a former journalist] know how newspapers operate, I don't see everything that goes into the paper.

But surely you would see the main stories?

PD: I do, but I will get back to on this incident, and sent you a note.

We would appreciate that

He is asked if the presence of newspaper editors on the PCC undermines its authority.

PD: There are 10 lay members, compared to seven editors, so the majority is still independent, and the editors provide valuable insight into the working of newspapers. This is not akin to having a jury that includes members of the defendant's family [a charge levelled by Nick Davies in the previous meeting]. The PCC is a more robust system of self-regulation than exists in Parliament. It is unfair to suggest that newspapers don't take the PCC seriously, because it is a huge shame for an editor to be investigated by the PCC, and its perception has improved steadily since its inception. The journalistic landscape has changed dramatically since the 80s because of the PCC, and it 'blunts the ability of Red Tops to sell papers' [he attributed this quote to someone, but I didn't hear who]. It sickens me to hear the PCC is not independent, the code is organic and changes to reflect society, such as the tightening up of suicide reporting, for example. We want to get it right. 

He is asked about the Mail's campaign against MMR.

All papers were concerned about this issue, and there was an expert who was raising concerns about the MMR jab, as well as distressed parents. The Mail primarily felt it was hypocritical of Tony Blair to not disclose whether his son Leo had had the jab, considering he was insisting other parents do it.

He is asked to what extent the Mail fact-checks.

We do not have a process of fact-checking that they have in American newspapers, most British papers don't. Our reporters are professionals, with expert training, and accuracy is extremely important to the process of journalism. I don't see what more we can do.