Paul Dacre to head Ofcom? If it's a joke, it may be on him
You will, I hope, forgive me for not joining in the outrage that met the announcement that Paul Dacre is in line for appointment as chairman of Ofcom, the broadcast regulator. As editor-inchief of the Daily Mail media stable, he became synonymous with the publication of hardline political views, among which were regular excoriating attacks on the BBC.
Yet for me, as a former chair of the press regulator, the prospect has a certain piquancy: it is, after all, some comfort to know that our prime minister retains his sense of humour. The joke may, however, be on Dacre and not on the BBC.
As the founding chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) I learned that regulation is a rigorous business. An early lesson was that speed and clarity of action all too soon became bogged down in the trudge through pages of guidance and directions. Dacre should not be surprised. He was proud of the fact that he and other editors had devised a system of voluntary self-regulation in the teeth of disapproval from those who sought a more stringent form of control after the 2011 phone-hacking scandal.
Much of the dislike of that system derived from the identity of those who had drafted those regulations. The smell of sulphur wafted over Ipso’s birth at the very mention of the fact that Dacre had taken part in the conception; and it was not dispelled while Dacre was chair of the Editors’ Code Committee. His presence gave extra ammunition for Ipso’s detractors, who refused to believe he had no power to influence its decisions.
How delightful it is, then, that Dacre himself should now be threatened with Ofcom. Just before you join the protest, contemplate what he will have to face. It is part of a far more intricate legislative maze than applies to Ipso. Unlike Ipso, Ofcom is a creature of statute; its functions can be overseen not just by parliament (however supine) but by the courts. Any chair will find it difficult, if not impossible, to shake off such shackles.
And what does the chair of Ofcom do? Research into the thick wad of statutory and regulatory provisions comes up with no clear answer. He may seek to “set the tone” in his annual report, but the actual decisions are by decision makers, final decision makers and independent committees (look at the flowcharts on the Ofcom website); he will have no right to decide on the issues
in a series of statutory functions, all of which require what is called “due impartiality”.
If you really want to tie down the former Mail chief, I suggest you bind him with the eye-watering detail as to how Ofcom is governed and the policies it must pursue. The scope of its jurisdiction is enormous and will, as government attempts some form of regulation for the internet, spread even further.
I grew to learn, with a heavy heart, that so far as potency was concerned the chair of a regulator is liable to suffer from what the agony aunts used to call “problems of performance”. I at least was able to sit as chair of Ipso’s independent complaints committee, but I lacked the power I was used to when sitting as a judge. I could not march in and announce that there was only one issue, and that the answer was obvious.
Ipso’s independent members (always in the majority) and young and fiercely committed staff would look at me with what indulgence they could muster and then launch into their own discussion as to the important questions and how they should be resolved. Any attempt by me to steer them to the result I wanted was doomed.
Dacre would find that even harder to bear than I did. He did have power, and reach; people were frightened of him. I suspect a good editor needs to spread a little terror. The power of the chair of Ofcom could hardly be more different to that of the once mighty editor. How is it suggested that he could now deploy his alleged antipathy to the BBC? He was used to setting up a vigorous defence to any Ipso decision he disliked, though he always, in the end, submitted to our authority. The corporation should welcome the chance to provide lessons in balance to one who prided himself on its absence.
And it is not just the prospect of seeing the vital forces leach away that is so pleasing. I like to think of probably Britain’s most well-known and successful editor as the figurehead of a vessel charged with protecting people from “harmful or offensive material, unfair treatment and invasion of privacy” on the television and radio.
There was never any obligation on a newspaper to be fair, unbiased or inoffensive. Newspapers asserted the right to offend, and at Ipso we were all too aware that we had no right, even though we tried, to protect people from offence, bias or a lack of taste. There were constant disputes with editors over what right we had to impose standards of fairness, the extent of the right to privacy, and the true meaning of the public interest. There was, to use a variation on a word of which Dacre was said to be so fond in the newsroom, an awful lot of cant in the world of regulation.
How much easier our life would have been if we could have relied on the standards Ofcom requires of a broadcaster. Dacre, as chair, will have to embrace the standards he had previously opposed. That will be fun to watch.