So, whose book must we play by?

Some of you may be thinking I’m about to launch into the same old clichés about how most journalists, particularly regional ones, are decent people who wouldn’t touch the sort of methods we’ve heard about recently, and how we must make sure any stricter press regulation doesn’t harm press freedom.

Well, if you thought that, you’d be right. I’ll admit I have encountered a few regional journalists who weren’t particularly strong on scruples, but fortunately they were very much a minority, and anyway our budgets don’t run to much technology-wise, let alone paying police for information.

So what about greater regulation of the press, which my fellow columnist, Sue Nelson, yesterday suggested was inevitable? The revelations about the “out-of-control” News Of The World may indeed have done that, and I have my own reservations about the apparently equally doomed Press Complaints Commission. But if journalists must start playing by the book, whose book will they have to play to? Not, I hope, that of official Britain, or the rich and powerful with plenty to hide.

I believe the traditional obsessive secrecy of many British institutions has helped to create the situation we’re now in, as well as making the prospect of greater regulation a potentially worrying one. This secrecy stretches from “the top” – Whitehall, Westminster and Buckingham Palace – to grass-roots officialdom, with the police a prime example.

The result is that for decades many journalists, from the respectable to the less so, have been forced down unorthodox routes to gather even fairly basic facts, simply because official sources of “information” have been spectacularly inadequate or downright obstructive.

Many British reporters can tell of the amazing contrast between the sometimes ridiculously secretive police in the UK and the openness displayed by their US counterparts, from the NYPD to the sheriff of Hicksville. It’s not an excuse for corruption or the hackers’ vile excesses against victims and the vulnerable, but it does strike me that if we’d had more of that American-style official openness we might not have had journalists at the tabloid end of the market pushing the boundaries quite so hard.

Clamping down on hacking and bribery is an obvious start for a new press regulator; knowing where to stop is another matter. What if we were to ban the use of any material for stories which may come from a “tainted” source? That might have stopped us finding out about some important stories, including MPs’ expenses.

To take another example, if we banned journalists from running stories based partly on the illicit revelation of confidential information by a senior police officer, who may have been motivated by resentment, the Washington Post’s Watergate revelations, celebrated far and wide as the epitome of investigate journalism and based partly on secret briefings by a disgruntled FBI official, would never have been published.

Is it, then, about ends and means? The latest hacking revelations were made even more distressing because there seemed so little justification of any kind for what was done. But if hacking a murder victim’s phone helped to catch the killer, would that make it all right? My feeling is no, but I suspect many might not agree with me.

To conclude, if we are to have a new press regulator, I suggest it should be given greater resources for investigating allegations itself – which may be controversial in these cash-strapped times.

Oh, and instead of recruiting a chairman from the great and the good, perhaps they should seek someone untainted by national tabloid excesses yet who understands the complex issues facing the press.

A respectable regional journalist would do admirably. My email address is at the top of the page, get in touch any time.