Its unanimous report on press standards accuses Rupert Murdoch’s senior executives of concealing the truth about the extent of illegal phone hacking by journalists on the News of the World.   The cross-party committee of MPs found that “a culture undoubtedly did exist in the newsroom of News of the World and other newspapers at the time which at best turned a blind eye to illegal activities such as phone-hacking and blagging and at worst actively condoned it”. 

But the Press Complaints Commission had already looked into the same allegations that the committee examined and cleared the tabloid.

The PCC had rushed out a report purporting to exonerate the News of the World that took the paper’s claims of innocence at face value. “We find the conclusions in the PCC’s November report simplistic and surprising. It has certainly not fully, or forensically, considered all the evidence” the MPs concluded.

It goes on to describe the PCC as ‘toothless’, but fails to recommend much to really sharpen its teeth.

There are many villains in this tale.  The need for change seems irrefutable.  There’s lots of political noise and indignation, but no will to take on the press.

All three bidders for the £6 Million pilot to provide Welsh news for the third channel promised to democratise news provision by opening up news gathering to the masses.  Who needs professionals when you can have amateurs? 

Of course it could all go pear shaped as the Tories have promised to unpick any contract signed if they win the General Election.

But regardless of the outcome an important principle has been recognised.  Wales needs more than the BBC to provide a ‘plurality’ of news coverage, and if the market can’t provide it then the State has a role.

But clearly it is not just broadcasting that presents a problem.  Less than 1% of the population now read the Western Mail.  The business model of the regional press is imploding across the world.   As the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger noted in his very interesting Cudlipp lecture “the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place”.

On Monday Sir Martin Sorrell, one of the biggest buyers of advertising in the world, suggested that governments might have to consider subsidising newspapers such as the Guardian to maintain a diversity of editorial viewpoints if their losses reached a point that would force them to close.

After all if banks are too important to fail why not newspapers?

I have little doubt that ‘hyper-local’ news will flourish in the digital age – as Rob Williams discussed in an excellent posting over on Wales Home.  My worry is the all-Wales level.  How can we sustain a democratic tier in the face of a profound information deficit?

As I’ve argued here before there’s a case for looking at a Welsh equivalent of the Scott Trust – the not for profit foundation that owns the Guardian Media Group. A public interest company underwritten by the taxpayer that could safeguard Welsh news.

• ITN with Newsquest, Northcliffe Media, Tindle, Boomerang and ITV Wales news staff;
• Tinopolis;
• UTV with NWN Media Ltd.

The winning team will get an annual allowance of about £7m of public money to create a replacement for ITV’s news service, aimed at providing an alternative news service to the BBC..

So what debate or media coverage has there been about this? None that I can find (though I am happy to be corrected) – which perhaps if nothing else highlights the need for an alternative to the BBC / Media Wales.

As Siobhan points out, there are too many cosy relationships, and too few who are willing, or feel able, to put their heads above the parapet to challenge the status quo.  Add to this, cutbacks by all the major media outlets and a tighter rein on access to information, and Wales is in dangerous territory.

Answers to simple questions about how public money is spent and decisions made are becoming harder to come by. Requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act are now standard if you want anything remotely controversial.  The Act was meant to make information more freely available from government and other public bodies, but responses are often downright obstructive, a double annoyance when you know they’re cunningly drafted by officials paid with taxpayers’ money.  

Putting an FOI request together has become a laborious exercise in sentence crafting – FOI officers are adept at seizing on different interpretations so they can triumphantly deny your claim three weeks later on the grounds of data protection/commercial confidentiality or national security. When it’s more a matter of avoiding an embarrassing revelation, they’ll point you in the direction of a website full of impenetrable data or try charging an exorbitant fee because the document in the filing cabinet is too expensive to locate.

Getting answers often only comes through asking uncomfortable questions and being persistent. Improvements come about only if there is challenge and debate. If Wales is to grow as a nation then its politicians and public servants need to open themselves up to more scrutiny, and the people who elect them need to have the courage to carry it out.

I have been a bit surprised by the reactions I have had to these comments and a similar discussion on the Radio Wales Phone In programme earlier in the week. Not so much the hostility and those who said I was “brave” (a euphemism for foolhardy) but rather those who wanted to say how good it was that somebody was “telling it like it is” and “pulling no punches”.

Now, I’m not so egotistical to think this has anything particularly to do with me as an individual but rather how few people are even prepared to peep above the parapet.  There are of course some notable exceptions who are prepared to don a hard hat and break cover … and some of them write on this blog.

Wales is a small country certainly but its civic society is tiny, closely integrated and mutually dependent (apologies to the 2,902,585 people who aren’t inside the Cardiff Bay Bubble). This doesn’t only lead to ‘group think’ but perhaps also to a fear of speaking out because it means we won’t get those research funds; gain access to decision makers for our organisation, client or indeed ourselves; get to sit on this committee or that quango or even a medal in the New Years Honours List. To mix a couple of metaphors here there is a fear that if you’re not singing from the same hymn sheet or running out for Team Wales then you won’t be part of anything.

I understand why people feel the need to remain neutral – as long as we realise that we all bring our own subjectivities to bear on anything we say and that neutrality can be a guise for actually being manipulatively partisan. This neutrality can also lead to debate and commentary that is not only anodyne but can also be asinine.

A healthy mature democracy needs critique, criticism, challenge to orthodoxies and radically different ideas – and it also needs humour and sometimes biting satire. I once heard an AM say “if you haven’t got anything nice to say then say nothing at all!” … sometimes though there isn’t anything nice to say and it needs to be said.

The Port Talbot Guardian

The Wrexham Chronicle

The thought arises after BBC Wales decided to lead with this story across their outlets today, three weeks late.  The recommendation of a WAG advisory panel to review the future of press bus passes for pensioners was first published on 15th July. 

In a deft piece of news management Ieuan Wyn Jones eventually released the report at the same time as the National Transport Plan.  It was much anticipated and was only published after a lengthy tussle with the Assembly’s Finance Committee to make the advice public.  But WAG snuck it out at the same time as the announcement that the proposed new M4 around Newport was being ditched. 

It was a good day to bury bad news.  And predictably enough the contentious report was duly buried.  Journalists went for the bigger story and did not pick up on the series of other stories in the report – for example the recommendations that the rail franchise with Arriva be re-negotiated, and the advice that WAG should take power for transport away from Local Government.

Six days later the Western Mail ran a story on some aspects of the report but not the recommendation on the future of bus passes.  The story was covered on this blog.

And then yesterday, on a very slow news day, the BBC decided to make it this morning’s lead story after reading the post.

Now I’m not criticising the journalists – been there, done that.  But it strikes me as an interesting case study of the way the media now works. And why blogs matter. 

As has been much discussed on this blog and elsewhere, the media is gradually being emasculated.  Journalists are being laid off or not replaced when they leave (often to become press officers).  As a result the remaining reporters become more dependent on press officers and PR agencies to come up with the stories – well written press releases are now routinely being cut and pasted straight into newspapers*.

And blogs are also helping to fill that void.  As far back as 2004 a study of the American Presidential election concluded that blogs were of growing importance, despite their relatively tiny readership, because of their ability to shape the agenda and influence opinion formers.

Cheaper than hiring proper journalists after all.  And the more dangerous for it.

 Update:  bizzarley the Echo picked the story one day after the BBC

* This is one of the factors behind the Taxpayers Alliance being able to get its agenda covered so widely – despite the mistakes

As well as inevitably leading to redundancies in the BBC’s Political Unit in Cardiff Bay, the move compounds the trend of reducing the amount of coverage of the changing policy agenda in Wales at a time when politicians are contemplating holding a referendum.

It may not be mourned in the pubs of Wales, but it is part of a piece – and it is not a pretty piece.

As it happens the rather unsurpising revelation that tabloid newspapers pay private investigators to blag personal data and hack into voicemail accounts relates chiefly to celebrity gossip.

But what if these same methods were used to reveal major corruption or a serious crime, would they be justified then?

The test of freedom is not when it is used in pursuit of ends you approve of, but when it used to do something you deeply object to.

I find the amorality of tabloid journalsim repugnant.  The hypocricy of journalists turning a blind eye to the theft of personal information and then moralising about the private behaviour of their targets in print turns my stomach.

But would I feel differently if these same methods were used in the pursuit of a higher purpose?

The highly respected specialist title is the only remaining Welsh edition of a quality UK paper, and I understand its private equity owners want to effectively shut the Welsh edition down.

The owners are consulting with their three Welsh staff on closing the Cardiff office and making the editor and a journalist redundant.  I understand they want to keep one reporter to feed in Welsh copy to the London newsroom and maintain the Welsh masthead to give the impression the paper is still committed to Wales.

Understandably the eduction sector is not happy.  I hear that senior WAG officials and Union reps have united to ‘make representations’ to the TES.

The Welsh edition has been a good paper, and an important voice in communicating the increasingly divergent education agenda between Wales and England.

Its demise is another indicator that things are going the wrong way.  Just as the pressure for greater constitutional autonomy steps up a gear, another of the vehicles for informing the electorate that things are done differently in Wales falls by the wayside.