VIEWPOINT
Responsibility without power
GEORGE GALE
It has for several years seemed to me that one of the silliest things Rudyard Kipling
ever wrote were the words used by Stanley
Baldwin in his attack On the press lords, Beaverbrook and Rothermere, in the early
'thirties, accusing them of possessing 'power without responsibility: the privilege of the harlot throughout the ages.' I do not know what knowledge or experience Kipling and his cousin Baldwin had of harlots throughout the ages, but I fail to see how the harlot's position, which is presumably supine and inferior, can easily be regarded as privileged or powerful, although it could in certain cir- cumstances be taken as responsible. This is by the by. What Baldwin, helped by Kip- ling's phrasemaking, was doing was attacking the press lords by associating them meta- phorically with prostitution. And it is true that a fairly widespread and popular myth exists, especially among people of some but not enough knowledge, that journalists are often men who prostitute themselves by sell- ing their skills to newspapers. Precisely how press lords prostitute themselves, meta- phorically, I do not know, except that they are selling their ideas through their news- papers, unlike some (but not many) poli- ticians who give their ideas away free. Kip- ling sold his ideas, such as they were, and usually for much more than they were worth as ideas, and since he was most skilled with words and indeed had himself been a journal- ist he became a literary lion, and a good thing too. I don't know whether Baldwin sold any ideas to the press, but I imagine that he did, and got well paid for so doing; and he also could write a bit, and wrote books and made speeches to prove it. How- ever, it is not of politicians writing for money, or poets or novelists or historians or philosophers, but of journalists and of jour- nalism that I thought this week to write. And this partly because of an impending change in my professional life which will make this the last 'Viewpoint' I shall write in the SPECTATOR but by no means the last point of view I shall express in its columns.
Journalists infrequently write about journalism. Even the new and salutary mixed development of regular commentaries on the press in journals of opinion and of extracts from the press on radio and television has seldom gone beyond discussions of the economics of Fleet Street on the one hand and partisan pats on the back and kicks up the backside on the other. Books written by journalists are quick books written fast on a given topic to fill a supposed gap; or are one-off affairs produced because it so hap- pened that a particular journalist was in a particular situation; or are novels derived from glamourised foreign experiences or from events made squalid by tranquil recol- lections; or are books, good, bad or indiffer- ent, written by men who so happen to be journalists at the time of writing. Books about journalism as such, however, are seldom written by journalists. They are usually written by academics. They are as much, neither more nor less, use as books on academic subjects written by journalists. There exists very little writing about modern journalism that is recognisably accurate as to facts and arguably sound as to opinions. The general theme of academics on journal- ism is that journalists, especially in the
'popular' or mass-circulation press, write down and thereby debauch their audience. That the great majority of journalists, editors and proprietors concerned in the popular press prefer, and endeavour, to write up to their audience without entirely losing it, is a fact unwelcome to the general run of senti- mental academics who prefer to propagate the myth of a cultured and literate working class reading, or talking like characters from D. H. Lawrence. There is not an editor or an owner or a manager in Fleet Street who could not increase his paper's circulation by pandering further to the public taste than he has already done under the provocative com- petition of Rupert Murdoch; and that the press is as good as it is, rather than as bad as it is, is due to the responsibility of those concerned.
Of course the press could be better, in the sense of being more literate, more informed, presuming more knowledge and intelligence on the part of its readers than it now does: but such a 'better' press would be an un- popular press, a less democratic press, a more moralising press and a more cliquish press. If such is really what the academic critics of the popular or mass-circulation press want, then they had better say so, instead of confusing the issue by pretending that Fleet Street abuses the literacy of the masses. The public in this country does not get the press it deserves or wants, but a press somewhat better than that, not worse.
I have wanted to say this much in defence of the popular press for some years. I am aware of its faults—or of what I think to be its faults—but to my mind those faults are not those commonly supposed by its critics. It is frequently assumed, for instance, that accuracy as to fact is roughly and readily to be equated with sobriety as to type; and that the more 'sensational' the presentation of a story, the less reliable its contents. In my own experience, particularly abroad, I have not found this to be the case. If anything, 1 would argue the reverse to be true. Certainly some of the so-called 'heavies' employ people abroad that no popular paper would long do; and lapses from the straight and narrow path of accuracy are far more often tolerated and perpetrated by news- papers of sober appearance and reputation than by some of their more popular com- petitors. The real trouble about the press, popular and otherwise, is to be found not here, I think, but elsewhere: in its deference to authority, and in particular, to three authorities: the authority of tradition; the authority of proprietorship; and the authority of rulers.
That authority of tradition to which the press, journalists, excessively defer is repre- sented chiefly by sub-editors. I now put for- ward the reporter's view, which is that although on many occasions I have been saved from folly or inaccuracy by sub- editors, on many more occasions I have been headlined or sub-edited or re-written into conveying foolish and misleading but above all excessively excitable impressions that not only misrepresented my intentions but also misconstrued the situation I reported. I do not believe this is due to on the part of sub-editors, but due instead to their almost ineradicable sense of what is traditionally expected. They always have their reporters 'flying in' to places, as if otherwise they might have gone by camel. They have so- and-so cabling or telexing, as if the alterna- tive and more usual form was still the cleft stick. They have appropriate phrases and headlines for all known events, phrases not only hallowed but worn out by the years, and most reporters after a while cease trying to write what they saw and heard and felt in the way they want to do it and instead start writing to the formulae considered to be appropriate by largely unknown men on back benches in Fleet Street offices. Thereby much talent is destroyed and young new eyes and ears and pens bludgeoned into insensi- tivity. The authority of proprietorship is a differ- ent and a changing matter. The owner- founders and owner-makers have died and been succeeded by their sons or by the entre- preneurs of take-over bids. Very largely, this has meant that the first-generation propa- gandists have become the second and third generation profit-makers and -takers and managers. The authority of a Fleet Street editor in such a situation will increasingly become the authority of a man able to make money for his employer and decreasingly the authority of a man able to promote his em- ployer's cause. It may confidently be expected that the Beaverbrook group will be the last group to succumb to this charge, which some journalists will feel to be retrograde and others to be tolerable. Personally, I incline to the view that, given a mixed economy in which, quite rightly, the press is privately owned, the authority of any proprietor or manager to hire and fire, whether on grounds of the opinions put forward or the profits
not made, cannot be questioned. Equally. however, I hold to the view that no journal- ist should lend his name to opinions he does not hold or to reports he has not written. It is from the excessive willingness of journalists to do this that their traditional weakness in face of the authority of proprietors derives. But in truth there is one relationship with authority in which all journalists and pro- prietors and managers find a common inter- est, and that is the relationship of the press
to the rulers. This relationship cannot be other than wary. It need not be excessively hostile, but on no account must it be exces- sively friendly. The permanent opposition in any free country is the opposition of the press; and this is why the freedom of the press is important and must continually be asserted and protected against the deprada- tions of the politicians. Each political opposi- tion is an alternative government and usually an ex-government also; and in many respects the interests of government and of opposi- tion conspire to seek to thwart the interests of the press, which interests themselves are essentially the interests of the ruled in con- trast to the interests of the rulers. The press, on behalf of the public, on behalf of the ruled, must continually seek to preserve its freedom and enlarge its responsibilities; and it will most easily do this by improving its quality of observation and the honesty of its opinions and the accuracy of its reporting; and in this necessary process journalists themselves can assist continually, by resist- ing their traditional deferences to the author- ities of tradition, proprietorship, and rulers. It is responsibility without power that the press possesses, and not the other way round, as the jealous politician, fed by a lapsed journalist, sought to con the public into believing. The only power the press seeks or needs is the power to publish facts and opinions; and this power will be preserved in any free society just as it will be destroyed in any dictatorship. It needs to be continually shored up, and it is thus shored up each time a man writes what he thinks and reports what he has seen and heard.
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