MAKE US CHASTE, BUT NOT YET
The press: Paul Johnson
on the efforts of newspapers to postpone a privacy law
MONEY talks, not least in the newspaper world. It was the increasing tendency of juries to award huge sums in damages, and indeed to give hostile verdicts in the first place, which has provoked the present flurry of sanitation activity in the industry. This week 19 national newspaper editors agreed to a new code of practice. The Press Council, anxious not to be elbowed out of its role, is stepping up its pressure for higher standards. The Government, alarmed by the threat of backbench legisla- tion on privacy but unwilling to provoke the media still further by introducing its own, sought to buy time by appointing the Calcutt Committee, which is hearing evi- dence on the subject. What does all this amount to? Precious little, I'd say.
There are two points worth noting about the meeting of editors and its outcome. First, in the old days, it would have been a meeting of proprietors. They were the people who decided such matters until the system of behind-the-scenes control, exer- cised by the press barons, began to break down in the 1960s and effectively collapsed in the 1970s. In one sense it is still the proprietors who matter. Much more salut- ary than anything agreed among editors, who are here today and gone tomorrow, is the willingness to take action among the men who own the equity. A start was made by Rupert Murdoch, who sacked Wendy Henry as editor of the News of the World; he felt, he told me, that there was 'too much sex' in it. Miss Henry was then hired by Robert Maxwell to edit the ailing People. Now he, in turn, has sacked her for publishing an intrusive photograph of a royal prince having a pee. Poor Wendy! I admire her, as I admire anyone, especially a woman, who has fought her way up from very humble origins, and, as a pawn in the fierce circulation wars, she is probably more sinned against than sinning. How- ever, there is no doubt that her nemesis will have more effect on the behaviour of editors than any amount of pious codes. To adapt what Voltaire said of the shooting of Admiral Byng, it will serve to decourager les autres.
The second point is the decision by editors to establish what is called 'a system
of readers' representatives to take up complaints and breaches of the code'. It is not explained how these people — I suppose they will be called ombudspersons — will be chosen. But the notable thing about this proposal is that, though it originally comes from the United States, it was first adopted in Britain by the much- despised Sun and ridiculed by the posher papers. But, as the Times pointed out in a leading article, it has proved quite success- ful. So now all the rest are to move, as a flock, along the path trodden by the archetypal black sheep, Kelvin Mackenzie. This is food for thought, or for a laugh. Needless to say, if this system is much used it will undermine the raison d'être of the Press Council, which will merely serve as a court of appeal. Louis Blom-Cooper, who took over as its chairman with all kind of grand ideas about increasing its authority, will not like that.
His council is busy preparing its own code — whether in conjunction or in rivalry with the national editors is not clear — which all newspapers and maga- zine bosses will be asked to adopt It will have to be more specific than the one presented to us this week, which is full of question-begging terms like 'fair' and 'reasonably'. It says that 'subject only to the existence of an overriding public in- terest' information will be obtained by 'straightforward' means. What is 'straight- forward'? Reporters seeking facts in a tricky area are rarely straightforward, that is as you and I understand the term. In any case, any idea of straightforwardness is abandoned immediately the public interest demands it. Who is to define the public interest? Why, the editor of course. Again: `references to race, colour or religion will be avoided' when they are 'irrelevant'. But therein lies the whole problem: it is the editor who, quite arbitrarily, decides on relevance too. Equally, on the most impor- tant provision of all, privacy, the national editors rule: 'Intrusion into private lives should always have a public interest justi- fication.' I have yet to come across a tabloid editor, spending a fortune on an elaborate entrapment of an MP or junior minister with a talkative prostitute, who has ever failed to come up with a 'public interest justification'.
The Times, in its leader welcoming the code and condemning once more the no- tion of privacy legislation as an unpre- cedented 'threat to press freedom', con- jured up a terrifying image of a 'crooked alderman' sleeping 'easier in his bed' be- cause the press's hands are tied by Parlia- ment. Dr Johnson once observed: 'Sir, when a butcher tells you his heart bleeds for his country, you may be sure he is not unduly disturbed.' When an editor weeps for a vanishing press freedom, you may likewise be easy: those tears will soon be dried. The present mess, with the scourge of libel damages flailing the backs of the guilty and innocent alike, is a much greater threat to press freedom than a well-drafted statute: there are plenty of snoring alder- men as it is. Nor does the Times, or any other newspaper opposing a privacy law, produce a defence of the extraordinary proposition that the only judge of the public interest is an editor, elected by nobody and responsible to no one, other than Mr or Lord Moneybags. The obvious truth is that the only reliable judge of the public interest is the public — operating both through Parliament, in enacting a statutory definition, and through juries, in interpreting it in specific cases. A law to protect the elementary natural right to privacy must come and is coming: all the efforts of the 19 editors, Blom-Cooper, David Calcutt QC and the other perfor- mers in this entertaining media circus will have no more long-term effect than Sydney Smith's 'excellent Mrs Partington' who tried to sweep out the tide during the Great Storm at Sidmouth.
'What I want to know is: How did the chicken cross the road?'
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