Former BBC Scotland head of news Atholl Duncan says 'journalism needs to become a profession'

No matter Leveson, no matter what was happening with political change, there would have had to have been changes to the way that we regulate the media in the UK and that is because we have all converged into this one media news bucket. Yet you still have a situation where the digital journalism of the Guardian, the video and audio, is regulated by the PCC, yet the digital journalism of broadcasters is regulated by other people. We are all coming together in the same place with a lot of discussion about press regulation and broadcast regulation – we’re going down the same slippery slope.

As to the current situation on the Press Complaints Commission, without a doubt independent regulation, probably underpinned by statute is going to be brought in. Self-regulation - the boat has sailed on that. The public perception of the PCC is that it is a bunch of editors looking at themselves and hanging out with their mates, and that perception, I’m afraid, is the reality. That is why it has to change.

There are two, quite different, responses that you would have to independent regulation. You can see politicians salivating at the opportunity that they think it is to clamp down on the dealing of their grubby secrets and their expenses scandal and create a regulator with their cronies, and there is a great danger in that. I look at it from the opposite extreme. Having done a lot of work with Ofcom in broadcasting, I fundamentally believe that independent regulation is the only option there is to restore trust, raise standards and ensure fairness.

At the centre of it all is how should the media behave? I have been working with the accountancy profession and, through these people, it is only now that I understand the concept of being a professional. Journalism has to become a profession and I don’t think that it has been a profession in the true sense of the word in the past. So what does being a professional mean? It means that you profess to uphold a standard of ethics, conduct, behaviour, which are set by your profession. Not behaviour set by your proprietor or the eccentricities of a news editor. Being a professional means that your first allegiance is not to your employer, but to your profession. It means that you are subject to discipline if you fall below the expected standard. It also means that you have got a commitment to continued professional development. That’s learning, training every year, to understand your ethics and to understand the laws.

I would challenge anybody in the newsrooms that I’ve been in. How many journalists actually knew that the law had changed on phone hacking? When I look back at my career, generally throughout my career people made it up as they went along. That is my challenge to journalism from outside. Journalism needs to become a profession.

As for Devo Max, I wouldn’t devolve media regulation under this. I would use Devo Max to ensure that Scotland’s voice and its representation and whatever UK regulators are that come out of Leveson have a much stronger voice and representation than we currently do. Independence? I don’t think that is going to happen at the moment, so you can do some blue sky thinking. I assume that an independent Scotland would have its own regulator of Scottish media, but then I assume we would have our own financial regulator. Yet I’m told by SNP that financial regulation will come from London.

I would have a Scottish media regulator, not a Scottish press regulator, which would be independent for those who are currently involved and engaged in producing Scotland’s news and I’m interested in the Danish example. There’s independent regulation in Denmark. It is one of the top 10 countries in the world for freedom of the press, ranked well above the UK. But, I would make this regulator not just a regulator of the media, but a regulator of all those who the media seek to call to account because one thing that I found at the end of my journalistic career, was that it was becoming more and more difficult to get public information from public bodies, from politicians and private companies.

I would bring together media regulation with freedom of information and I would call it the Scottish Truth Commission. Think of it not just media and editor, but public figures in Scottish life to providing answers in the public interest because there are two sides to that. So you complain about how I behave to get my information, I complain about you and your organisation and my attempts to get information. The truth meets in the middle.