The quality of journalism in British newspapers is declining and more mistakes are being made as editors sacrifice standards to keep up sales during the recession, an independent media charity said on Monday. A review by the Media Standards Trust (MST), compiled in consultation with industry experts, said there was growing public cynicism about papers' reliability and about intrusive behavior which would only get worse in the economic downturn. It concluded that Britain's system of press self-regulation was no longer able to cope with the situation. Only 7 percent of people trusted newspapers to behave responsibly while 75 percent thought papers “frequently publish stories they know are inaccurate,” according to MST research. A 2003 survey found 65 percent of people trusted journalists on “upmarket” papers, such as the Times or the Guardian but a 2008 poll found this had dropped to just 43 percent, according to the review, whose panel members included Martin Dickson, the Financial Times Deputy Editor and Simon Kelner, Editor in Chief of the Independent and Independent on Sunday. With newspapers battling declining circulations and revenues, growing demand for sensationalist scoops had led to greater intrusion into people's privacy, the report said. Meanwhile cuts in staff and organizations' greater reliance on user-generated content such as comments and blogs had raised the risk of inaccuracies and mistakes. “Some newspapers are also sacrificing standards in order to maintain sales, as seen in the inaccurate and in some cases defamatory reporting of the Madeleine McCann case.” Eleven news outlets were ordered to pay out 600,000 pounds in libel damages to a man they had wrongly accused of involvement in the disappearance of 3-year-old Madeleine who went missing while on holiday with her parents in May 2007. The MST called for an overhaul of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), the self-regulating industry body, saying it was incapable of dealing with the radical changes in the media, as it had been set up to deal with complaints. “Our research has shown that the current system of press self-regulation is failing the public,” said David Bell, chairman of the Financial Times who chairs the MST. “It is fundamentally flawed and in urgent need of reform. The system needs to be brought into the 21st century or it runs the risk of greater government intervention and a further accumulation of legal privacy protection.” Christopher Meyer, chairman of the PCC, described the MST report as “careless and shoddy.”
