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8/2/2019 Submission by Paul Staines
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For D istribution to C Ps
At the outset I wo uld like to m ake two points; the first being that my willingness to co operatewith the Inquiry and m ake sub missions is voluntary and does no t signify an acceptance o fjurisdiction of the Inquiry or the authority of the Inquiry to order me so to do. Secondly to drawattention to the fact that this is the second s ubm ission requested of me by the Inquiry yet, unlikein the cases of other witnesses, my legal costs have not been covered by the Inquiry.(1) W ho you are and a brief summary of your career history;Paul De L aire Staines86-90 W orked in politics, think tanks, campaigns.89-91 O rganised mass attendance dance music raves.92-94 Professional gambler95 -01 Derivatives broker, bond dealer, hedge fund trader in London, Hong Ko ng and Tokyo02 -03 Litigant in a protracted commercial dispute04 - Beg an publishing the G uido Fawkes po litical blog06 - Investment adviser to online ventures(2) W hat material your website "Guido Faw kes" publishes, and W hy;W e publish political tittle-tattle, gossip and rum our. W e pride ourselves on breaking new s storiesand our success stems from d oing that, time and time again we beat big news organisations tothe story. Hu mour plays some part in our success. W e also do a fair bit of comm entary on policyand ideology, though that tends to bore the readers who, on the whole, would much rather westuck to breaking news. W e camp aign on issues we feel strongly about, mainly politicalhypocrisy, lying and dishonesty.Increasingly com mentary on a nd analysis of the media industry is part of our offering to readers.W e often publish articles about me dia personalities and say what others are afraid to say forcareer reasons. E ditors, pundits and journalists are surprisingly thin skinned and there is muchsport to be had in teasing and taunting prominent media figures.I started the blog on a whim with an "anti-politics" agenda, vaguely intending it to be acommercial proposition.(3) The Inquiry wishes to understand the extent to which your website is based in the UK.W here are your servers located? D o you consider the UK courts to have jurisdiction over theway in which your w ebsite is operated in the UK , and how far does this jurisdiction extend?No physical assets are in the UK , the servers are in the USA. The publisher is a foreigncorporation which owns all the intellectual property.It seems to to be a simp le matter of fact thatthe UK courts have no effective jurisdiction over a publisher based overseas with no bricks andmortar in the UK .None of the many threatened legal actions against the website in the UK has ever succeed ed inthe UK courts. We have regular communications from most of the leading London legal firmsspecialising in media law. W e have repeatedly ignored injunctions and orders issued in the UKcourts with no adverse consequences.
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8/2/2019 Submission by Paul Staines
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For D istribution to C Ps
(4) How you source stories (there is no need to name individuals) and where you consider theresponsibility for checking sources of information to lie, with you, or with the person who hasprovided you w ith the information;W e source stories from individuals who are known to us. We occasionally receive anonymoustips which we se ek to verify with varying degrees of success. The responsibility for checkingsources and the veracity of the information they provide is of course ours alone.(5) T o what extent to which you are aware of the sources of the information which make up thecentral stories featured on your blog;
I would estimate that some 5 0% of our sources are personally known to us. The provenance of40 % of our sources we can verify to varying degrees. Perhaps less than 10 % are unknown tous, of that much can be checked and is consequently verified or rejected. W e are spun/lied to byall categories of sources. P oliticians blatantly lie to us, most merely seek to m islead us or aredisingenuous and dissembling. Experience has made us better at spotting lies and liars.(6) T he extent to which you consider that ethics can and should play a role in the blogosphere,and wha t you consider ethics to mean in this context;O ur ethical goal is to report the truth as we see it. That should be the e thical goal of alljournalists whatever their medium .(7) Do you have any policy which relates to complaints about articles orweb pages which arelibellous, defamatory or co nsidered to be an invasion of privacy? If not, do you have anyrelevant practices? Do you ever remove availability to such pages on that basis? The Inquirywould be grateful for some examples of this (anonymised if necessary). Copies of any policiesshould also be provided.W e have no forma l policy. O ur practice is to consider the comp laint, if on reflection we think it ispossibly untrue or defam atory we take it down . If we be lieve the story is broadly correct w einvestigate it further and reconsider, sometimes am ending the d etail of the story.O ne exam ple was a minor memb er of the royal family having a business associate who becam eemb roiled in a homose xual relationship with a married MP. W e featured a picture of a businessproduct in the story. Lawyers for the royal claimed this was defamatory because it implied hewas hom osex ual. The lawyers claimed that a joum alist from the Daily Mirror had contacted theroyal and asked if he was hom osexual, citing our story. W e took the story down.W e judge threatened libel writs on a case by case basis. W e comp letely ignore about halfwithout even replying. If we suspect we m ay have g ot it wrong w e either amend the story or takeit down, this satisfies most c omplainants. Occa sionally w e tell complainants we believe to belying to do their worst. W e will often redouble our coverag e of them.
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8/2/2019 Submission by Paul Staines
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For D istribution to C Ps
W e take the view that a p olitician is a public figure and privacy is not in the public interest whenit concerns pub lic servan ts, those in public office or those paid for by the public. Matters whichspeak to their character are of legitimate public interest.(8) How do you consider yourself to be regulated?W e are self-regulating and we think it works well. Our readers let us know instantly if we crossthe line in terms of taste and propriety. W e receive of the order of 500 ,00 0 com men ts on theblog and 30 ,000 emails a year. That is by any measure a lot of feedback.The wider blogosphe re performs a crit ical function, every day rival blogs and m ainstream outletscritique our stories, dispute facts and try to knock our cop y. O ur reputation is our most valuableasset, if we go t it wrong too often our reputation would be unde rmined. W e are the mo stsuccessful web site of our kind, year after year we have been vo ted Britains favourite politicalwebsite. That position has been h ard earned b y gaining the trust of our readers.(9) The Inquiry would also welcome your views on the extent to which the content of Websites,and the manne r in which you operate, can be regulated by a domestic system of regulation.The G uido Fawk es webs ite is based offshore and beyond the jurisdiction of the U K cou rtsbecaus e of the oppressive libel law regime in the UK . Fortunately the frictionless and borderlessnature of the worldwide we b mea ns that unless the U K au thorities go down the authoritarianroute taken by the C hinese, Saudi and Iranian regimes, there is no prospec t of regulatingforeign websites dom estically. In fact the U K is a signatory to various international treaties w hichoblige it to guarantee freedo m of spe ech an d freedom of the press regard less of frontiers. Inparticular Article 19 of the United N ations Universal De claration of Hu man Rights, which states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and ex pression; the rightincludes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receiveand impart information and ideas through any m edia regardless offrontiers.Article 10 of the European C onvention on Human Rights which has been incorporated into UKlaw states
Eve ryone has the right to freedom of exp ression. This right shall includefreedom to hold opinions and to receive an d impart information and ideaswithout interference by pub lic authority and reg ardless of frontiers.
The inability of governm ents in the twen ty-first century to restrict their citizens access toinformation is a pos itive development for freedom. Solemn w ritten comm itments to pressfreedom that were once almost imp ossible to enforce are now, because of technology,unassailable.Any legal or technological method of censorsh ip will have econom ic costs not just in terms ofthe costs of the technology, but for the wider econom y. The s ocial media businesses of thefuture are networks that distribute disintermed iated content uploaded by m ill ions of individualswithout reference to trained editors, sub-editors, fact-checkers or lawyers. B logs, YouT ube,
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8/2/2019 Submission by Paul Staines
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For D istribution to C Ps
Faceb ook, Tw itter and future networked p latforms as yet unkno wn, allow everyone to publish tothe whole w orld at minimal cost. National governments w hich try to foist regulatory costs andrisks on the social media e nterprises wh ich deliver that content will be shunned. E nterprises willinevitably base them selves in nations where the legal and regulatory climate is favourable, theU SA h as a com petitive edge in the legal protections and legal attitudes that flow from theirconstitutional First Amen dment rights.(10 ) Anything else which you con sider will assist the Chairman to arrive at consideredconclusions on any aspect of the Terms of Reference, set out above.Relationships Between Na tional New spapers and P olit iciansThe Term s of Reference tasks this inquiry with considering the relationship betweennewspap ers and politicians. In m y view the relationship is sym biotic, most journalists have byand large a healthy contemp t for polit icians and m ost politicians feel that the media ha s got toomuch of the upper hand o f late. On the other ha nd senior polit icians, editors and proprietors mixfreely all too easily.Polit ical reporting on a d ay to day basis is conducted in the ma in via the W estminster Lobbysystem. This is an un healthy and closed system lacking in transparency conducted beh indclosed doors. T he implicit rules of this club - "Lobby terms" - discourage Lob by journalists fromrocking the boat too much, the system also encourages a trade in favours. A client media hasdeveloped w hereby journalists who recycle the party l ine are encourag ed and rewa rded withtitbits and exclusives, with interviews granted to journa lists who please pa rty spin doctors. Th eLobby system is e ffectively an obedience s chool where the political class brings journalists toheel.The failings of the Lobby system w ere well i llustrated during the exp enses sca ndal, a storywhich exp loded becau se of the catalytic efforts of a Freedom of Information cam paigner,Heather Brooke, in the courts. Lobby journalists who were embedded in the Westminstersystem wo uld later claim to well know about the ongoing abuse o f expenses ov er decades, yetthey did nothing to expose the scan dal. That was a m onum ental failure by those journalistsspecifically charged with the respons ibility of holding those in powe r to accoun t. They failed toreport on an issue that fundamen tally exp osed the lack o f integrity of our political class. Th enatural venality of the political class was u nchecke d by their client me dia until an outsiderrocked the boat and sunk the duck houses.In my expe rience new spapers will do favours for their polit ical all ies far bey ond just slantingfavourable coverag e, they will suppress the truth, rubbish polit ical oppone nts and bu y upstories, never to be printed, which might embarrass their political allies.
Data Protection
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8/2/2019 Submission by Paul Staines
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For D istribution to C Ps
In my experience investigative joumalists have no respect for the Data P rotection Act even ifthey are aware o f it.
Future Regulatory RegimeThe public interest is best served by a n unregulated free press. The laws of defamation shouldbe rationalised and the existing criminal laws better enforced. The hacking and blaggingscandals of the recen t past were illegal under already existing laws, there is no real need forfurther legislation.The public interest will not be well served by p rivacy laws wh ich will effectively create judicialcensorship. The privacy laws currently being made from the bench in English courts are atravesty of the intentions of the original drafters of the Europea n Co nvention on H uman R ights.They had in m ind protecting the human rights of individuals from oppressive states andagencies of those states. Th ey did not have in mind sparing the blushes of footballers caughthaving extra-marital affairs or celebrities who have exotic tastes in the bedroom or dun geon.The p opular press is in dange r of being shackled by privacy laws and "me dia standards" whichare really a euphemism for censorship. This will undermine the pop ularity and com mercialviability of newspape rs, inevitably doing dam age to media plurality in the long term. T he pub licinterest is best served by having the m ost competitive and o pen m edia markets we can devise.The BB C b y its size and method o f funding is the biggest threat to med ia plurality with adangerous d ominance of new s. It undermines the comme rcial sector by undercutting it, localcomm ercial media can not flourish whe n BB C local radio and television is free at the point ofconsump tion to the e xtent that it crowds out compe tition.W orrying about cross-ownership of the media when new spapers are in an existential crisisseems to me to be a distracting luxury interest at this time.Any future regulatory regime has to consider technological convergence. My daughters watchChildrens BBC on my m obile telephone, they watch the US Pub lic Broadcasting Serviceschildrens television shows on my laptop at our French holiday home.The reality of convergenc e and cross-b order broadca sting via the internet of all forms of contentwill mean that any regu latory regime w ill be porous. In the future there will be a regulated sectorand a n unreg ulated sector, with the latter prospering all the more if privacy restrictions inhibit theregulated media from covering more and m ore stories. The reade rs will go where the new s is,the advertisers and the m oney w ill follow the readers, the regulators how ever will not be able tocross borders.It would be in my com mercial interest and to my competitive advantage to see the British me diaheavily regulated, draconian privacy laws enacted and politically correct "media standards"
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8/2/2019 Submission by Paul Staines
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For D istribution to C Ps
enforced. All of which would be cheerfully ignored by the G uido Fawkes biog. It would howeverbe a sad day for press freedom.I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.
Paul Staines10 J anuary, 2010
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