Waking up in the morning is difficult enough for most of us, but early starts are supposed to be routine at GMTV, and so the time of day cannot explain why ITV’s breakfast broadcaster seems to have behaved so utterly cluelessly when it comes to the handling of its phone-ins. Credit to Panorama on Monday for uncovering a new scandal, in which shortlists were drawn up about an hour before phone lines closed, but the BBC One programme (with its baffling, jerky camerawork), was still somehow not hard enough on GMTV, which seems to have handled the running of its own competitions incompetently. So here, instead, is a competition for the breakfast broadcaster.

Question one: Why did it take Panorama to uncover the viewer deception? The BBC team got detailed information about when phones lines were closed and how many calls were ignored by Opera, the phone provider. It is possible that the Panorama team is sparkling with geniuses, but most probably there was a whistle-blower who may have been ignored by a member of GMTV management. So, in the words of every inquistor in every scandal, who knew what when?

Question two: When Panorama first approached GMTV, a week and a half before the transmission of the programme, why did GMTV not do anything? Or even when GMTV was given more more detailed information about the allegations on Friday morning? It was not until Sunday, when the programme’s producers started briefing the media, that GMTV executives – who must have known about the allegations – appeared to take any action.

Even then, on the Sunday, GMTV’s first response was to say that it was “not aware” of the irregularities uncovered. It was only late on Monday afternoon – a few hours before Panorama was scheduled to air and after the story had appeared in every newspaper – that GMTV dismissed Opera Telecom and said that it would reimburse viewers. Yet those were actions that GMTV could – and should – have taken at least a week earlier.

Question three: What, if anything, did GMTV know about Opera’s track record? A basic inquiry to Icstis, the premium-rate regulator, and a bit of adding up reveal that Opera has been fined £206,000 for 20 breaches of the premium-rate rules. Why on earth was a reputable broadcaster so happy to work with a supplier that had had repeated run-ins with the regulator?

Here is an example: on February 26 last year Opera was fined £15,000 for the way it ran an “adult one-to-one” chat service. The service operated on a national-rate 0871 number and was promoted as costing 10p a minute. But it did not. Callers enjoying themselves on the line were also sent a reverse-charge text message every minute, taking the real cost to £1.50 a minute, meaning that promotion for the service “appeared to be misleading”, according to Icstis. Hmm.

Question four: When ITV suspended its premium-rate phone-in services on March 5, why did GMTV not do the same? The breakfast broadcaster seemed to think that it did not have a problem, but that ITV was acting on a precautionary basis. Given that ITV owns 75 per cent of GMTV, it is odd that the breakfast broadcaster seemed to ignore Michael Grade’s orders. Perhaps GMTV felt that it had too much to lose. ITV’s accounts show that GMTV generated £56 million of advertising, but the company as a whole turned over £82.7 million. Much of the difference will come from phone-ins. Later, GMTV did hire its own auditors, but its blithe optimism looks misguided when compared with the humility of the rest of ITV. A broadcaster dependent on phone-ins had every incentive not to ask itself hard questions.

Curiously, GMTV operates autonomously of ITV, although this is a fine disinction that viewers will not appreciate. This is because the company has its own licence from Ofcom, although its accounts are rolled up into Mr Grade’s big thing. Yet ITV has only three representatives on a board of ten dominated by GMTV executives. On the evidence of the latest call-in scandal, it is time for ITV to take charge – and responsibility.

— Sir Christopher Meyer, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, mused this week about whether Britain ought to have its own version of the American First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .” Never mind, of course, that Britain has no written constitution. What is clear is that judges, step by step, are acting in ways that curb reporting. A newspaper has several defences, such as justification (“It was true, your honour”), fair comment, privilege and the public interest.

But if the aggrieved party can turn alleged defamation into a privacy claim, then truth, fairness and privilege do not apply – there is only the public interest.

Toughening up the law leads to all sorts of inconsistencies. Get an injunction that prevents the naming of a well-known person who has an affair with another man’s wife and all the chattering classes know about it anyway, even if folk in Totnes do not. A Canadian folk singer sues successfully in a British court to have passages from a former friend’s memoir excised, but you can read some of the excluded material in the Toronto Star.

With privacy cases often turning on fine distinctions, it would be nice if there were rights to serve as a countervailing protection.

The trouble with Sir Christopher’s musing is that chat over coffee is no way to come up with a policy. He needs to have a firm proposal, to rally industry support and to lobby. Nobody else is going to leap to the defence of the media.

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