Top crime journalists have welcomed recent changes in the relationship between the press and the police but said practical improvements around transparency “need to go faster”.
And they said that greater openness and trust in journalists from the police could help stem the spread of misinformation around events like the Southport knife attacks.
Daily Mail crime editor Rebecca Camber, who is also chair of the Crime Reporters Association, told the Society of Editors Media Freedom conference in London last week that not enough had changed since she had been up on stage at the same event a year earlier.
Camber said she was pleased “the police are listening” to the media and that “key things have changed already”, as exemplified by a change to counter-corruption guidance so that journalists are no longer automatically regarded as corruption risks.
[Read more: Journalists no longer bracketed with criminals in police guidance]
But she added: “We are making progress, but in my opinion, we’re not making enough. We need to go harder and faster… I still need to see that material difference.”
The most basic thing she still wanted, she said, was phone numbers for police offices available on all their websites. “The other basic thing we’ve asked for is: email out your press releases.”
Forces often say all the information can be found online, Camber said, but “that is no understanding of how you build a conversation or even a relationship”.
Last year the Crime Reporters Association issued a list of 26 fixes that would help fix the relationship between police and media, among them “be prepared to answer the phone” and stage more unreportable briefings.
Natalie Fahy, the audience and content director for East Midlands sites at Reach, said: “It’s not like the old days [when] you could ring someone up and have an off-record steer. That doesn’t exist anymore.”
Recently, she said, Nottingham city centre had mysteriously been cordoned off and “it was eight hours before we got anything from the police comms team about what was going on”.
Ultimately it was revealed the emergency related to an e-scooter battery fire. But, Fahy said, “in those eight hours rumours were swirling that it was terrorism… the police just kind of allowed that to happen, which completely baffled me”.
She said she thought police comms teams “get so wrapped up in – ‘What can I do? What can’t I do?’ – and trip over themselves…
“We’ve got excellent people like the NPCC and the College of Policing who put out lots of guidance, but I don’t think it’s actually filtering down to police forces.”
Daily Telegraph crime editor asks for more background steers to prevent Southport-style misinformation
Martin Evans, crime editor at The Daily Telegraph, said he felt “on a day-to-day basis there may be improvements in terms of proactive police communications,” for example with background briefings ahead of a trial.
But he said “it’s when these major, unexpected events happen” – for example the Southport knife attacks at a children’s dance class in July 2014 – “where the media really needs to have a better relationship, better dialogue”.
The attack and ensuing riots, Evans said, had been “the worst example of the [police] nervousness that we talked about – where misinformation fills that vacuum…
“Somebody in the police communications department simply saying ‘I’m not giving you a quote, but we think it’s X, we don’t think it’s Y’ – it’s incredibly helpful.
“I think there’s a fear that that would immediately be a big front page story. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that, it can simply help us to tailor our coverage.”
Evans said in the Southport case, “there was hugely damaging misinformation swirling and there was information [that could have been released] that in no way could ever be thought to prejudice a future trial – details about Rudakubana’s religion, the fact he’s a Christian, not a Muslim.
“We’re in a position where information which is far more prejudicial to future proceedings is swirling on social media, and sadly, future juries are now far more likely to be exposed to that information than they are true information which is published in reputable news platforms.”
[Read more: Crime journalists concerned over official secrecy around Southport dance class killings]
The chief executive of the College of Policing, Andy Marsh, said that in Southport the local chief constable, who would otherwise “never shy away from answering difficult questions”, had been “hamstrung by some quite serious restrictions on what she was and what she wasn’t allowed to say without breaking the law”.
He said he and some colleagues had written to the attorney general asking “for some changes in what we’re allowed to disclose”, but the AG had not responded.
John Battle, the head of legal and compliance at ITN and a former chair of the Media Lawyers Association, agreed, saying: “Fundamentally the public is not served by information not being distributed early on.”
He added: “The Law Commission are actually having a second consultation into contempt of court laws to see whether there should be some sort of public interest test or defence where the information should be put in the public domain.”
Battle said he thought there needed to be a document defining the relationship between the media and police, similar to the Reporters’ Charter which sets out the relationship between court reporters and the courts. He suggested such a document could contain expectations around contact details, what information reporters should be able to receive from police about an arrest or charge and pre-trial briefings.
“If you’ve got a protocol that clarifies what can be expected, you can then hold the press office and the chief constable in that area to account.”
College of Policing boss: there is a ‘pitiful risk aversion’ to media for some police chiefs
Hayley Equi, the head of corporate and stakeholder communications at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told those gathered that police bodies were working on standardising forces’ media practices, but any change would take time.
“From a communications team perspective the reason why things take time is they need to be done properly. I think it’s all well and good to have reports on the shelf to provide guidance, but we do need to make real change.”
Equi said they had set up a “communications advisory group” made up of police comms leaders from across the country as well as “network leads” whose job was to distribute up to date guidance on best practice. She added that two-thirds of police press offices have a phone number listed and her colleagues have discussed including contact guidance as part of future standardisation.
College of Policing chief executive Marsh said that his organisation had made training on dealing with the media a prerequisite for anyone hoping to become a chief officer.
But he added that there was sometimes “a pitiful risk aversion about putting themselves in front of cameras, and I do expect them to do better. It’s going to take quite a long time for this cultural change to feed through”.
Marsh said he “regularly” rings police chiefs to ask why more information hasn’t been given or CCTV footage hasn’t been released.
“I think we could have a stronger risk appetite for being more open… You can’t lead if you can’t communicate. You can’t have trust if you can’t communicate.”
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