Geoffrey Goodman

No short cuts, Lady O'Neill

British Journalism Review
Vol. 13, No. 2, 2002, pages 3-6


For those of us who have spent our working lives in this trade of journalism it is frankly impossible to draw up a meaningful balance sheet between the good and the bad, the rights and the wrongs, the qualities and the banalities that are spread across our extraordinary business. Much of the technique which equips a scribe goes back to the earliest chisellers on cave walls as well as the original tribal cavaliers and, of course, to those marvellously enterprising spin doctors, the scribes of the desert. Their readership, to be sure, was limited to a handful of local troublemakers or, more likely, troubleseekers: it was the beginning of politics. Now we have the global village in which everybody and anybody can scratch out a phrase. We now have a vast army of communicators in which professional journalists are, increasingly, a mere minority. We have the internet and the frightening immediacy of instant and often inaccurate sensation.

In this context it is easy for us to fall prey to critics, many of them no doubt justified in their questioning about the role of the modern journalist. The sheer complexity of reporting on and analysing the contemporary world has transformed the character of journalism and will continue to do so. The speed of technological development has changed the entire practical operation of journalism beyond recognition compared with what it was 20 years ago – or even when this journal was born nearly 14 years ago. It isn’t easy for remaining residents of the old school in our trade to grasp the full nature and significance of these changes. All we know for sure is that things ain’t what they used to be. But that doesn’t mean that “things” are worse – or, for that matter, much better. They are just very different.

In the editorial of our first issue in the autumn of 1989 we declared our primary aim : “To help journalists themselves reflect on the changing character and problems of their job”. That remains our principal role: to hold.up a reflective mirror to what is happening ; to challenge, to praise and to question. But also to recognise that by their nature the changing technological systems we now live with and are commonplace have actually shifted the professional goalposts that once were regarded as firmly embedded and sacrosanct. For that reason alone it has become more, not less, difficult to evaluate the good and the bad in our trade. Whatever ethics, morality, enterprise, et al shaped the trade in the past – they are all being recast, or at least questioned, because of the extraordinary developments in communications technology. And we are probably still only on the foothills of that revolution.

That is why it is right to question some of the arguments about the media and their role put by Baroness O’Neill when she referred to modern journalism in her Reith lectures in April. Dr. Onora O’Neill is a moral philosopher and principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, a redoubt of great eminence which endows her with a platform of real substance. Her views on our trade must be taken seriously. She was damning about much modern journalism.


Accountability

“Reporting and editorial comment”, says Dr. O’Neill, “have become so mixed that the reader has no way of knowing what is true”. She believes that self-regulation of the press has failed and should be replaced by statutory controls. She wants journalists to be required to publish details of their – and their proprietors’ – interests in the same way that politicians are. “The press”, she claims, “has acquired unaccountable power that others cannot match. Some reporting ‘covers’ dementing amounts of trivia, some misrepresents and denigrates, some teeters on the brink of defamation.” What Dr. O’Neill is arguing is that the media should he held culpable for the vast sweep of cynicism that engulfs much of its audience. She adds: “A free press is not an unconditional good... freedom of the press does not also require a licence to deceive...”.

It would be absurd to counter claim that Dr. O’Neill is talking a load of codswallop. She is not. Of course there is truth in what she avers: it is not a new truth but because of the global influence of the media it is a truth which has taken on a new dimension. Yet we believe Lady O’Neill has exaggerated and dramatised the argument in order to command attention. All right, she has our attention. So, is she suggesting that the media has moved outside and beyond the democratic process and is now a power unchecked? Is she claiming that elected government, anywhere, is now at the mercy of irresponsible and unelected journalists and proprietors? Would she really prefer a statutory authority to condition the ethics and morality of the media – having first of all defined what those terms mean? And since such a statutory authority would inescapably be a national [rather than international] court how would it also be able to exercise influence over the global wire? The answers are contained within the questions. Dr. O’Neill is barking up the wrong tree.


Cop Out

Yet none of these responses to Lady O’Neill are a sufficient answer in themselves. She has touched a nerve in the whole process and nature of our trade – and we know it. Everyone in our business recognises what she is saying – reporters, editors, proprietors and most of all readers, viewers and listeners. They will have their own prejudices and anxieties heightened by what the principal of Newnham College is arguing. Nor is it any reasoned excuse for journalists to fall back on the claim – however merited – that we are simply a reflection of a changing moral code in all societies; that the values and professional ideals which drew most of us into this trade are no longer operative. That is a cop out. Journalism is still all about telling the story as it is – truthfully, with courage and often in defiance of political pressures and commercial orthodoxy. It is tough going. A recent survey of public attitudes toward the media conducted by the European Commission claimed that British newspapers are trusted by their readers far less than any others in the European Union. Trust in the written media was highest, it was claimed, in Belgium, Finland and Luxembourg. Trust was highest of all in radio and television. What does that tell us? Frankly, not much. Whatever interpretation Lady O’Neill or others may wish to place on these opinion surveys the truth surely is that such surveys tell us very little – certainly not enough on which to make any serious judgments.

This journal has always argued the case for greater individual responsibility among journalists; for greater courage in the face of the enormous commercial pressures that influence all media activity; in brief for better journalism. That is where we started from. We called, then, for higher standards of journalism – and in many ways we believe these objectives are, slowly, being achieved. There are countless examples of individual journalists, editors, newspapers and some television programmes reaching out with great courage to counter a decline in quality. A good deal of recent coverage of the various war zones surely supports that claim. The story, Lady O’Neill, is not all bad. Yes we do need greater credibility – and, in her phrase, more trust; everywhere. We also have to recognise that these objectives cannot be provided alone by better quality journalism. Certainly not by an external authority trying to impose a moral code designed in heaven. It is a long hard relentless slog in which we are all involved. There are no short cuts.