Press
Plus ca change
Bill Grundy
I would like you all to stop what ever you are doing. to charge your glasses, to rise, and join me in al toast: "The Press Council, God bless it," An alternative form, for the use of those who feel the way I do, is "The Press Council, God blast it."
The reason for that slightly embarrassing ritual — all right, you can sit down now — is that very recently the Press Council came of age. Yes, believe it or not, the dear, useless, little thing has been with us for one and twenty years, and it don't seem a day too much. As a matter of fact, it seems like twenty-one years too much. It is with the deepest regret that I find myselt agreeing with those who think that the Press Council, far from being a watchdog, is more of a lapdog. To enable you to judge for yourself, let me display its pedigree. The Press Council grew out of a Royal Commission on the Press set up in April 1947 to inquire into the control, management, ownership and other problems of the industry. (Those of you who think you have heard those words before are quite right. You heard them when a second Royal Commission on the Press was set up in 1961, and you heard them again when the present Royal Commission was called into being by the Wizard of H uyton earlier this year.) However, to get back to 1947; the Commission reported with the speed of light — well, not quite; it was June 1949 before its deliberations were published — and one of its recommen dations was that a Press Council should be set up. Set up it was, and such was the sense of urgency with which they set about setting it up that it only took them four years — and that takes us to July 1953. At first it looked to all independent observers like a highly comic' affair, and not just because its first chairman was Lord Astor. More because it was an entirely inside job; all of its twenty-five members were newspapermen. To ask that lotl to adjudicate on complaints by members of the public seemed about as likely to achieve anything as asking members of the Mafia to stamp out the New York numbers racket.
The futility of the exercise slowly began to dawn on quite a lot of' people and in 1963 the Council was reorganised, an independent chair man being brought in, along with a batch of lay members to balance the Brotherhood, who still, however, were well in the majority.
From that time on the press seemed to get better. But before you start jumping to conclusions, let me re mind you that in any course of elementary logic you are soon in
troduced to the fallacy of post hoc,
ergo propter hoc which, for those of you, who like me, do not understand Latin, means "after, theretore be cause of.' I think it almost as likely that any press improvement since 1963 is due to the reorganisation of the Press Council in that year as it is to the fact that the Profurno case also happened in 1963.
If there has been an improvement in the press — and I personally _think there has — what then is it due to? Some of it to the existence of the Council, yes. Few papers like to print the Council's strictures on their own handling of a story. But then there have been few such strictures to print anyway; the Council seems to aim at protecting rather than prosecuting, And I really don't see many newspaper editors shuffling nervously about their offices in dread of the Press Council's whip. But let's concede that the possibility of having to publish the fact that the Press Council thinks you have behaved abominably may be some sort of inducement not to do it again.
But not much. So what else has been responsible for the improvement? I can immediately think of three things, and there are probably many more. In 1960 Pen eLope Gilliat wrote an article in Queen in which she slew the gossip writers of the day, using their own methods on them quite mercilessly. From then on what can only be described as their shit-stirring began to fall out of favour. Then came the Vassal] case, in which almost every story written in the popular press about that odd affair was shown to be pure — well, not so pure — fiction. The public were beginning to realise what sort of press they'd had up till then, and the press was beginning to realise the public had rumbled them. 'Things would have to alter. Then they began to.
A third reason for the improvement was the recruiting of a better class of person, as the old saying has it. Not all of today's newspapermen have first class honours in PPE (Pure-mindedness, Professionalism, and Ethics), but their haloes are a better fit than the pre-1963 issue were. Today's newspapermen, to risk a generalisation, are more aware of their responsibilities to the public and to that elusive commodity, truth, than their predecessors used to be.
Other reasons? What about the presence of . TV news, whose cameramen cannot, like Lunchtime O'Booze, describe it all from the bar of the Ledra Palace Hotel (not, I noticed recently, that that is quite the cushy billet it used to be); programmes like What the Papers Say, greeted with immense press hostility when it first started, but now watched with appreciative wariness by the profession; the various pressure groups, representative to some degree of a public that has found it is possible to get back at newspapers if need be; and so on. All of them have done their bit towards improving our daily press.
And what of the Press Council itself? What hope there? Well, it's got a new chairman, Lord Shawcross, who seems to fit as snugly into the establishment as he does into his natty suiting. He's only been in charge for a month yet, so it's early days, but I'm not at all sure he's the man to fit the Council out with a nice, new set of fangs. And how will he be able to fob off the Royal Commission, charged with looking at the Press Council, if it starts wanting some fairly brutal, if necessary changes? Pretty well, I should think; he really knows the ropes. For who was chairman of the last Royal Commission? Right first time. Our own dear Lordship. It's all a bit incestuous, isn't it?
So if the press is going to go on improving it had better turn its back on the Commission and Council alike. The only advice I can give it is the old crack: "Physician, heal thyself." But that brings me back to what I was saying a fortnight ago — that for twenty-five years the press magnates have been bleating; "Commissions, keep out. We can put our own house in order." And have they Have they hell as like, So what now? So I'm going on holiday, that's what, and I'll think about it when I come back.
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