David Cameron may just have made the biggest mistake of his career

The details almost don't matter. His plaintive cries of "Won't somebody please think of the independence of the press" will fall on deaf ears. David Cameron has made the wrong call on one of the main issues that he will be remembered for.

When the phone hacking scandal kicked off last year Cameron was a bit slow off the mark and allowed Ed Miliband to carve himself out a niche as doughty defender of those who had been wronged by a rapacious media. But as our PM has consistently demonstrated, right from when he first made that electrifying speech at Conservative conference in 2005 which probably won him the leadership when his back's against the wall he can come out fighting.

I was in the Strangers Gallery on that day last July when Cameron made his speech in response to the hacking crisis in the Commons. It was another top notch political performance. In exactly the same way as he has managed to find the right tone for responses to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and the Hillsborough Inquiry, he managed it on that day too. I was heartened to see how much the Prime Minister "got it". He understood that the press was out of control and he set up the Leveson Inquiry to tackle this precise problem.

In a few minutes yesterday with his denial of implementing Leveson in full including the required statutory underpinning he pissed all of this away.

A couple of key vignettes from yesterday's coverage of this stick in my mind.

The first was Jane Winter one of the phone hacking victims during the "Hacked Off" press conference who was almost in tears as she explained how she felt "betrayed" by Cameron. In correspondence with Ms Winter, the PM had promised to implement the proposals "as long as they are not bonkers". A small amount of statute to ensure the press abide by the rules that they are allowed to set themselves is not bonkers. Everyone can see that it is not bonkers, even those who disagree with statute. Everyone can see that the PM has not adhered to either the spirit or even the letter of his promises on this issue.

The second was on BBC's This Week last night where Michael Portillo highlighted in 30 seconds just how pointless the whole exercise of Leveson has been now that Cameron has made it clear he will not be backing his key recommendation. His view is that we might as well not have bothered. The press now have nothing to fear and can basically go back to business as usual was his analysis. I'm not sure this is 100% right. There is still political pressure for the press to reform. But without a way of ensuring they stick to their promises I am sure it is only a matter of time before they revert to type. They always have done in the past after the many inquiries there have been in the last 70 years. Without statute there is absolutely no reason to suppose they will not do so again. Charlotte Church articulated this point particularly well on Question Time last night.

I suspect Cameron thinks that he will take some heat for this in the short term but that with the press on side it is worth it for the dividends he will reap in positive coverage come the next election. I think he is wrong. The public will not easily forget the avalanche of evidence that was presented to Leveson and reported on at the time in intricate detail. The families of Milly Dowler, Madeleine McCann and all the others who were wronged by the press will linger long in the memory.

We know there is a majority in parliament for statute. Labour, the Lib Dems and at least 50 Tory MPs want to see it. The only block to it happening is the man in No 10 because he has the power of initiation for legislation. The buck stops with him.

No politician would relish the idea of being aligned in any way with those who have damaged the lives of victims of crime. Unfortunately for Mr Cameron, whatever his motivations and arguments that is the impression people who pay little attention to politics (i.e. most people) will be left with.

He had the chance to do something to rein in the press and help prevent future abuses. He chose not to. That's all that will matter to many people.

He may just have made the biggest mistake of his political career.

The media need to stop these witchhunts

I have no idea if Christopher Jefferies had anything to do with the death of Joanna Yeates. He has been released on police bail today after 3 days of questioning. The problem is that some of the media coverage of the last few days would make you think that he has already been tried, convicted and is on his way to the gallows.

Mark Wallace wrote an excellent blogpost a couple of days back which highlighted how the "fact" that Mr Jefferies was a posh loner seems to have been enough in the minds of most of the press to consider him guilty already at least in the tone of their coverage.

Just look at some of the ridiculous nudge-nudge, wink-wink comments in the coverage:

The Mirror: "He showed almost no interest in cars or sport". As if this is relevant in the slightest to whether he is guilty of murder. It seems a calculated ploy to make it seem like he is outside of the mainstream, or at least the "mainstream" as narrowly defined by the tabloid press (i.e. blokes like cars and sport and if they don't they are dodgy).

The Telegraph: (From an unnamed former tenant): "On several occasions he even entered our flat unannounced.". There are a few of my previous landlords that the police might want to bring in for questioning too in that case.

And The Mirror again from the same article linked to above. An unnamed woman running a shop said: "He came in recently and wanted to buy a black apron with the words ‘little black apron’ written on it. He was most insistent we get it. When the apron didn’t come in for a time you could tell he was bothered.”. I think that might go down as the most irrelevant piece of information related to a suspect of murder I have ever read. How on earth has that got anything to do with the case?

It seems Jefferies is getting the same treatment as Tom Stephens did initially in the Ipswich Ripper case (when it turned out that he had nothing to do with the murders but not before his reputation had been left in tatters by the press) or Robert Murat who was arrested in connection with the disappearence of Madeleine McCann in Portugal back in 2007 only to later be cleared of suspicion but again his life was shattered by the coverage of him being a "weirdo" and "loner". Spotting a pattern yet?

I am greatly heartened by some comments made by Joanna Yeates' boyfriend Greg Reardon and read out at a press conference where he directly commented on the media coverage:

"The finger-pointing and character assassination by social and news media of an as yet innocent men has been shameful. It has made me lose a lot of faith in the morality of the British Press and those that spend their time fixed to the internet in this modern age."

He is absolutely spot on. Also, as I have seen commented more than once, it is actually dangerous for the media to follow witchhunts like this. If Mr Jefferies is ever brought to trial it is going to be difficult to find 12 people who are not already prejudiced in some way by the media coverage. Indeed the Attorney General Dominic Grieve has already commented to this effect and is clearly concerned about it.

This has to stop. Freedom of the press is a vital part of our democracy but they have to be more responsible in their reporting. I suspect that in the end if they do not do this themselves, they will be forced to do so by law. We cannot go on with the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" being so comprehensively trashed over and over again.

NOTE: I have slightly changed the wording at the start of this post following a suggestion by a commenter who then deleted their own comment that it might have previously been a bit too loosely worded.

Prison reform - we need to ride out inevitable press hysteria

I was listening to John Pienaar's weekly podcast last week. The guest was my old sparring partner Shane Greer and one of the things they discussed was Ken Clarke's plan to ensure that prison is not used as a punishment so often and to make more use of community sentences.

I already blogged last week about how I think Clarke's plan is potentially very good. On the podcast they were debating the merits of this but the point was made that irrespective of how well community sentences and other alternatives to prison may work out, all it will take is one or two high profile cases of criminals who would have previously been in prison and who commit an horrendous crime for the press to go ballistic about how the policy had failed.

Sadly I think they were both right. The media in this country has never been very good at calmly assessing the evidence. It is possible that a more non-custodial approach may reduce recidivism. It may be that a change in policy could be a huge step forward in reforming our criminal justice system for the better. The problem is we may never find out. It will only take a few high profile cases that the press/media are able to focus all attention on (probably with the help of the opposition judging by Jack Straw's initial reaction last week) for it to be politically very difficult for the government to continue with the policy.

We need to try and encourage more use of evidence. Whatever system we have in place there will always be problems but we need to assess the overall impact. Critically we need to judge if reoffending rates are reduced. In order to do that we need to give the policy time and for there to be enough evidence on which to base an assessment.

If it turns out that changing the policy is demonstrably a bad move (from the actual evidence, not the press coverage) then I will be the first to concede that we need a different approach. But please, let's make sure we take the decision for the right reasons, not because of screaming tabloid headlines.

What will replace newspapers?

I have read some articles and blog posts in the last few days that have got me thinking about newspapers and their future.

When I was growing up, they were really the only written source of daily information available (apart from the very short entries on teletext). If you wanted to find out what was happening and weren't near a TV, you bought a paper.

The world today is very different. There are a plethora of online sources that I can go to in order to get my information about what is happening in the world. I have an RSS aggregator split into a number of different topics of interest to me (news, political blogs, TV & culture stuff etc.). Inevitably some of these are from newspapers but in actual fact, the majority of these feeds are from non-news sources. I have also recently got into twitter and so now I can see what people I follow are up to any time they feel like telling me along with links to things they have found interesting or amusing as well.

This article by Johann Hari in The Independent this week strikes me as whistling in the wind from someone who is clearly hoping that the former dominance of newspapers will return. He points out that without an active journalism, countries are at risk of slipping into authoritarianism and corruption. I agree with this. However where his argument falls down in my view is that as far as he is concerned, the old media companies and structures should be propped up by government. He has an idea for an 18 birthday present given to each person by the government of a year long subscription to a newspaper.

There is no attempt here to engage with the fundamental reality of the situation. The structures of the press are a solution to a problem that no longer exists. 30 years ago it was very difficult to disseminate information to the mass public. Now it is very easy. Lots of people do it every day from their homes, effectively for free. I am doing it now. OK, perhaps the small number of readers I currently have would not count as a mass readership but the potential is there and there are many bloggers (e.g. Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes, Mike Smithson and Ben Goldacre to name but a few) who have many thousands of readers every day, many of whom would never have been employed by the mainstream media.

So if the old structures are no longer relevant, what will happen? To be honest I do not know. There is an interesting article by Clay Shirky here which goes into much more detail about this problem and he also does not know what the solution is. He thinks that by increment, ideas will be tested and slowly through trial and error a brave new informational world will be reached. I suspect he is correct and we cannot currently know where we will end up. To assume however like Hari does that without the media being structured exactly as it is now will lead to authoritarian and corrupt governments is to assume that the media should be preserved in aspic and nothing different and/or better could ever emerge to take its place. This is nonsense. Hari is younger than me (I am 34) and surely people of his generation should be embracing the opportunities that the digital age brings.

Finally, the latest post on Bad Science today just illustrates the inherent problems with the press as it is currently constituted that Hari is so desperate to protect. It seems that yet again, journalists from many newspapers have twisted the findings of some research into the efficacy of prostate cancer screening. There has been no attempt to deal with the nuances that this area requires (screening can have a negative impact and is not a panacea) and a study that showed screening caused no improvement has been ignored. It appears that the journalists used the same source for their information and have all claimed it cuts deaths by 20%. You can read the full analysis of why this is wrong in via the link above but my point is that the press often gets these things terribly wrong (look at the MMR scandal for example). Why should this crumbling structure be protected from its probable fate?

Perhaps the future will be millions of ordinary people reporting news from their locales and their views on wider issues, with it all being aggregated and the biggest stories floating to the top through some sort of intelligent filtering system. Maybe newspapers can find a way to remain economic online through subscriptions or advertising. As I said, I don't what the future will look like but in all probability it will be so different from anything I or anyone else can think of right now that it is not really worth me speculating. I for one am embracing the changes and hope to be a part of whatever structure eventually takes the place that the press has held unchallenged for so long.