THE CRUELTY OF WORDS
The media:
Paul Johnson defends strict
libel laws in a free society
LIBEL is a difficult area of the law and surrounded by popular misconceptions. Even experts in the field sometimes find it hard to give confident advice before pub- lication; or, after a complaint has been made, to recommend whether to fight the case and if so how. No barrister can be sure how the parties will perform in court; juries are unpredictable; the role the judge will choose to play is often quite unex- pected. The only thing of which a working editor can be sure is that, if a case proceeds, it will occupy a great deal of his time, which can be better spent editing his paper. This, to my mind, has always been a strong reason for avoiding libel actions and (unless a real issue of principle is involved) for settling at a very early stage. I was surprised that the recent action against the Spectator was allowed to go to court. The allegations should never had been pub- lished in the first place. Certainly, when the lady against whom they were directed demanded redress, a prompt and adequate apology should have been offered.
Newspapers and magazines are wrong to regard an apology as a defeat. Responding quickly, as they do, to current events, covering a wide field at high speed, they are bound to fall into error and, from time to time, to be unfair and make misjudg- ments. Unwise and even reckless remarks are allowed to slip into print occasionally. A paper's primary concern should be to publish the truth. A willingness to correct error, promptly, gracefully and in full ought to be part of this concern. The public is much more likely to trust a paper which voluntarily makes amends for its mistakes than one which tries to present a brazen front of infallibility.
Again, journalists should not regard the law of libel as a restraint on the freedom of the press. It is often said that the law of libel in England is too severe. But no one who has ever been harassed by a British newspaper is likely to take that view. A journalist who takes trouble to verify his facts, and who is accurate and circumspect in his choice of words, has no general reason to fear the law. Truth is a sufficient defence in nearly every case, and the law allows for fair comment on a matter of public interest. It is, indeed, severe when there is a combination of inaccuracy and malice. But who would wish to defend it?
We ought to look at libel in the overall context of law, one of whose functions is to redress the inequalities of nature and chance in the interests of civilised society. Nature has made some people stronger, fiercer and more agile than others. In primitive societies such people make the most of these physical advantages to im- pose their will on others less fortunate, to inspire fear and to satisfy their greed. The law is introduced to protect the weak from these assaults and menaces of the strong. There is a very large number of laws, which on the whole are enforced, to stop people using their physical strength to get their way.
Again, some people possess more eco- nomic and financial strength than others. They are tempted to use it in all kinds of ways to gratify their desires. Over a very long period society has distinguished be- tween those ways which are legitimate and those which are not. The law embodies these distinctions. There is, in a modern state like Britain, an enormous corpus of civil and criminal law which protects the financially weak from the financial strong. It is not always effective and it is constantly being modified in the light of changing experience. But no reasonable person would deny that it is an important function of law to provide such protection.
As with physical and financial power, so with literary power. Some people are better endowed with it than others. In a sophisticated society words are critically important, particularly when they are made public and disseminated to vast numbers of people by mechanical means. Words are very potent things. They can cause as much if not more pain than physical blows. Their effects can be more lasting than physical injury. Their destruc- tive power, whether measured in financial, psychological or social terms, can be devas- tating. Abuse of the published word can be almost the precise equivalent of a physical assault or a financial fraud. Clearly, people who have great skills with words and, because of this skill, have ready access to the means of publication, must be under similar restraints of law as the physically strong or the financially powerful. The rest of society must be protected from any abuse of their power; the inequalities of nature and art must be redressed against them. That is what the law of libel exists to do.
It is probably right that the libel law should err on the side of strictness. If outraged, inarticulate men feel they cannot get redress in the courts, they will be tempted to resort to force. It is better that editors and writers should be sued than assaulted, horsewhipped, challenged to duels or simply murdered. There is a common supposition — common simply because it is put about by those skilled with words — that freedom of print and speech, of satire and criticism, should be virtually unlimited; that such is the hallmark of a healthy society. I do not agree. Its abuse in the Weimar Republic, for instance, was one of the factors which provoked many ordinary, inarticulate Germans into voting for the Nazis. The cruel use of words and images is no more justifiable than the cruel use of physical force, and just as likely to provoke a breakdown in society. The savagery of, say, the Spitting Image prog- ramme is not, to my mind, defensible; such visual assaults on people may do as much, in the long run, to undermine the necessary principle of authority as riots and terror- ism. Freedom of speech and the press is best defended by the self-restraint of those who most use and need these freedoms. If they cannot discipline themselves, the law must step in.
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