The BPPA and The Leveson Inquiry in 34 minutes.

Three submissions, a lot of reading and an awful lot of discussion came down to a 34 minute appearance at The Leveson Inquiry today (Tuesday 7th February) afternoon. Was it worth it? Right here, right now the answer has to be a truly resounding ‘YES’. Our case has been outlined before; we wanted to impress on the world that there can be a huge difference between a professional press photographer and a bloke with a posh camera.

We wanted to make Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry aware that we are willing and able to be to be part of the process of finding solutions to the issues highlighted in the early evidence at the hearings. Most of all we wanted to highlight the four-pronged plan that we have developed to help ensure that photographs published in the UK news media have been checked thoroughly so that they comply with every law and ethical code that applies to that media in that situation.
Sitting there in the same chair that Paul Dacre, Editor in chief of the Daily Mail had occupied for the best part of four hours yesterday and that the familiar cast list of celebrities had sat in right back at the start of the formal hearings in November was more than a little nerve-wracking. Not so much on a personal level – but representing hundreds of honest, hard working and highly professional colleagues. If that wasn’t bad enough, the editors of The Times and The Sun were up after us!
We really cannot talk about today in terms of winning and losing but it seems that we have made our point and we know that Lord Justice Leveson himself said that

“Mr Turner, thank you very much indeed. Responsible photographers, like responsible journalists, are not part of the problem and they do need to be part of the solution. Thank you very much.”

If, after today, the industry takes us more seriously and if, after today, we are allowed a voice on issues that directly affect the lives, careers and reputations of professional press photographers then maybe, just maybe we can think in terms of a (small) victory.
Of course the 34 minute white knuckle ride was made a lot easier by the quality of our argument and the sentiments in our submissions.
The BPPA’s Board worked hard on this and there are a lot of people to say ‘thank you’ to. So to everyone who contributed, everyone who tweeted and re-tweeted about our submissions and liked our Facebook page. Thank you. It turns out that it was a pleasure to be your representative!
Links to the content of our appearance: TRANSCRIPT VIDEO

The BPPA gets its say at The Leveson Inquiry

Here’s a date for your diary: Tuesday the 7th of February. “Why?” I hear you ask, well it is the day when The BPPA will finally get to appear before the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice & ethics of the press.
In our main submission to Lord Justice Leveson’s Inquiry we proposed a four-pronged solution to the issues raised in connection to photography at the hearings to date:

  • Make the publishers of websites, blogs, magazines and newspapers and their editors financially and professionally responsible for any lack of due diligence in checking how, where and why pictures that they are publishing were taken. Photographs acquired from citizen journalists, CCTV systems and inexperienced photographers should have a clear and strict series of tests applied before publication to verify their provenance
  • Images purchased from holders of UK Press Cards or from reputable agencies that are members of a United Kingdom Press Card Authority member body would require a lower standard of checking and proof because the photographer holding the press card would, according to the new ethical code, already have performed tests as they were shot. Should the images turn out to have been acquired irresponsibly, that would constitute a breach of the code of ethics that they sign up to when receiving their new UK Press Card
  • Strengthening of the UK Press Card scheme with an enforceable code of conduct including the suspensions and cancellations of cards. This obviously will not stop the cowboys who don’t have genuine press cards but it will provide a framework within which to work
  • Agree a simple outline about exactly which laws apply to photographers when they are going about their legitimate business: trespass, assault, intimidation, harassment and so on. It would also be advisable to clarify where and when the various elements of the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child become applicable without allowing rich and powerful vested interests to slip a de-facto privacy law in by the back door

We started the ball rolling back in November when the association’s AGM took place and we started to discuss what we could do about the beating that press photographers were taking during the first couple of weeks worth of evidence at The Inquiry. Like most people, we had thought that the early stages of Lord Justice Leveson’s hearings would be about phone hacking but time-after-time the actions of photographers seemed to get more coverage than those of private detectives and over-zealous reporters.
Within days we had made our first submission in the form of an open letter to The Inquiry where we outlined our objections and sought to be awarded “core participant” status for the proceedings. The legal team behind the Leveson hearings took a couple of weeks to get back to us to let us know that we would not be offered that status they invited us to make a second and much more detailed submission by the beginning of January. We put the 18 page document in on time and following a few emails back and forth asking for clarification of one of our points we finally learned this week that it is all systems go for Tuesday, the 7th of February.
The BPPA wants to be there at the table when solutions are discussed and when decisions are made. The BPPA wants the voices of press photographers to be heard. Most importantly, The BPPA wants to make sure that the profession comes out of this process with its reputation enhanced, with its future as secure as it can be and with improved media and public perceptions of who we are and what we do.
These are simultaneously worrying and exciting times for press photographers. As a profession we have worked hard to create some momentum towards those goals and it is our aim to keep that momentum going on February 7th.
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The BPPA’s second submission to the Leveson Inquiry

When the Leveson Inquiry first opened we had little or no idea that press photographers would come in for so much criticism and abuse from the witnesses. At the association’s AGM in November we formed a plan to do what we could to counter this and put our side of the story. Shortly afterwards we sent an initial submission in the form of an open letter to Lord Justice Leveson and his team to see if we could be added as a “core participant’ at The Inquiry.
We were refused that status on the grounds that we were, apparently, both adequately represented and because press photography wasn’t a specific topic for the inquiry. We had expected to be refused and so the job of drafting the second, longer, submission began. The BPPA’s Board approved it at the end of last week and it was submitted ahead of the resumption of The Inquiry on Monday 9th January. The full document is 18 pages long and almost impossible to summarise in a blog posting so here are some key parts of the INTRODUCTION, our four-part STRATEGY and the CONCLUSION in full:
OUTLINE
The association is in a position to make a unique and positive contribution to the debate by providing a more accurate, up-to-date and informed assessment than any other organisation on the specific topics where we have expertise. In this written submission The BPPA will offer The Inquiry our views on:

  • The culture and practices of professional press photographers
  • The market place for news pictures and how it affects those cultures and practices
  • The problems that the market for celebrity images are causing
  • Privacy laws vs public interest

As well as our proposals for

  • Cooperation between all parts of the media to establish clear and enforceable ethical guidelines and codes of behaviour and etiquette
  • The reduction and elimination of the problems of unethical photographers, the so-called ‘stalkerazzi’
STRATEGY
The current international and multi-platform market is, however, no place for voluntary codes to function in isolation. The BPPA’s Board is of the opinion that we need a four-pronged strategy:
  • Make the publishers of websites, blogs, magazines and newspapers and their editors financially and professionally responsible for any lack of due diligence in checking how, where and why pictures that they are publishing were taken. Photographs acquired from citizen journalists, CCTV systems and inexperienced photographers should have a clear and strict series of tests applied before publication to verify their provenance
  • Images purchased from holders of UK Press Cards or from reputable agencies that are members of a United Kingdom Press Card Authority member body would require a lower standard of checking and proof because the photographer holding the press card would, according to the new ethical code, already have performed tests as they were shot. Should the images turn out to have been acquired irresponsibly, that would constitute a breach of the code of ethics that they sign up to when receiving their new UK Press Card
  • Strengthening of the UK Press Card scheme with an enforceable code of conduct including the suspensions and cancellations of cards. This obviously will not stop the cowboys who don’t have genuine press cards but it will provide a framework within which to work
  • Agree a simple outline about exactly which laws apply to photographers when they are going about their legitimate business: trespass, assault, intimidation, harassment and so on. It would also be advisable to clarify where and when the various elements of the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on the Rights of The Child become applicable without allowing rich and powerful vested interests to slip a de-facto privacy law in by the back door

CONCLUSION
The British Press Photographers’ Association is very keen to be a partner to The Inquiry when solutions are discussed and when recommendations are made. We believe that it is in the long-term interests of our profession to contribute to the discussion and to help to shape the future of the industry. The association has an excellent track record in negotiating, agreeing and publicising codes of conduct. The BPPA and other photographer groups got together with the Metropolitan Police and then with the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) to agree the guidelines by which we work alongside each other. These guidelines have been in place for several years and have been very successful.
We would recommend the four-pronged strategy outline previously because we believe that adopting it would provide the following outcomes:

  • To provide assurances to the general public that professional journalists exist and that our work is ethical, legal and trustworthy
  • To create clear and unambiguous rules for the conduct of media workers
  • To establish systems within all publications, whether they are print, on-line or broadcast to check where and how material was sourced
  • To use the market place and existing legislation to control the so-called ‘stalkerazzi’

Anyone with the money can buy a camera and call themselves photographers and, as things stand, all of us have to contend with the actions of the relatively small number of unethical operators out there on a daily basis. Several times in this submission we have referred to press photographers as the very visible face of the media and all of our colleagues can relate stories of being shouted at, abused and even assaulted because of a general perception that all news photographers stalk celebrities for a living. This is just not true and The BPPA wishes to make that clear.
There are a large number of genuine and well-behaved entertainment and celebrity specialists who never cross the line, break the law or act outside any new rules that we might develop whose careers could be greatly assisted if we get this process right.
The introduction of a French style privacy law would be the archetypal ‘sledgehammer to crack a walnut’ combined with a textbook case of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. We support the clarification of existing laws and the establishment of a meaningful, clear, enforceable and unambiguous ethical framework as the correct path along which to proceed.
WHAT TO DO NEXT…
We achieved significant impact with our social media campaign when we published our initial submission and we need to at least match that effort with this document IF we are going to achieve our next objective, which is to get a seat at the table if and when The Inquiry starts to make reccomendations about the future and press photography.

Initial submission to The Leveson Inquiry by The BPPA.

The BPPA today wrote to the Leveson Inquiry and asked to be added to the list of those giving evidence. We did this because of the one-way traffic from witnesses criticising photographers and because of the dreadfully lazy television journalism that has painted each and every one of us as the worst kind of citizen paparazzi. This is what we said:
Initial submission to The Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice & ethics of the press by The British Press Photographers’ Association
Introduction
The British Press Photographers’ Association (The BPPA) has amongst its membership a large percentage of the country’s front line news photographers. Founded in 1984 to ‘promote and inspire the highest ethical, technical and creative standards from within the profession’, The BPPA has a unique perspective on the current practices and market place for press photographs in the United Kingdom. Press photographers led the way when it came to establishing the guidelines by which all UK Police forces (via ACPO) work alongside the media in the field and we would endeavour to bring a similar problem solving approach to the Inquiry.
Request to be added to the list of Core Participants
In the light of the nature of the evidence being given to The Inquiry by various celebrity witnesses, the association’s board took the decision that we needed to make a submission and to seek to give evidence in person. In reading the list of persons and organisations that may be considered as Core Participants, the association believes that the weight of commentary during the opening weeks of the Inquiry makes press photographers “subject to explicit or significant criticism during the inquiry proceedings or in its report.” In the light of this, we would contend that The BPPA is able to give evidence on the issues of culture, practices and ethics, which the Inquiry might not otherwise be able to obtain.
The BPPA can speak for press photographers who, because of the highly fragmented nature of our employment may well speak to the BPPA when they would not speak to the Inquiry. The Inquiry should know that our membership breaks down as follows:
• Directly employed – 24%
• Employed on fixed or rolling contracts 12%
• Working through agencies as freelance photographers 18%
• Entirely freelance 46%
As a profession attracting a great deal of criticism we would further contend that such a diverse group will not be represented in an equitable and fair way at an inquiry where such representation is both vital for a large and key group of professionals, and for the Inquiry’s ability to hear and consider the widest range of informed opinions.
Press photographers are, for various reasons, the very visible face of the UK print media. Because of this we are regularly subjected to false attribution and accusations as well as verbal abuse from members of the public and from a significant number of people who work in the celebrity, entertainment and even law and order industries. The continuous use of pejorative terms such as ‘paparazzi’ about the widest spectrum of news photographers harms our collective reputations.
Our Evidence
The BPPA would seek to provide evidence on the following:
• The culture and practices of professional press photographers
• The market place for news pictures and how it affects those cultures and practices
• The problems that the market for celebrity images is causing
• The dangers of introducing French style privacy laws
• The need for cooperation between all parts of the media to establish clear and enforceable ethical guidelines and codes of behaviour and etiquette
• Our proposals to help control the problems of unethical photographers and citizen journalists with cameras
The association believes that it would be able to make a very positive contribution to The Inquiry by providing a more accurate, up-to-date and informed assessment than any other organisation on the specific topics where we have expertise.