Beyond the condemnation for acts of terrorism that it shares with all civilised people and institutions, the British Journalism Review, as a specialist publication, has no business approving or disapproving the actions of governments, or their servants in the security and police forces, except where they have an impact on the media in particular and the free flow of information and comment in general.

The degree to which that freedom may be at risk has been exemplified by the Home Office’s attempt, in its pompously-named Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, to silence Mr Brian Haw’s puny one-man Parliament Square protest against intervention in Iraq. Inept drafting has meant that Mr Haw now has the backing of three High Court judges and can continue to prick the consciences of MPs and peers. In April 2002, in a speech at the George Bush (Senior) Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, the Prime Minister said: “When I pass protesters every day at Downing Street, and believe me, you name it, they protest against it, I may not like what they call me, but I thank God they can. That’s called freedom.” The legislators seem to have forgotten this in the interim.

If not a priority, the need for communication should be a guiding principle to editors and other journalists as they report the events that have brought tragedy and disruption to London and may be a prelude to other deplorable acts of violence. The task will not be easy, because of the diverse pressures journalists will face. The Government, as the gatekeeper of much of the information gathered by the security services, will obviously try to present it so it shows ministers in the best possible light, and the threat from the bombers in such a way that it is taken seriously by people without actually paralysing them with fear. The police, naturally and as ever, will emphasise their own successes, retaliating with positive information against those who might strike out after penetrating the smokescreen that more often than not obscures error.

Aside from these official voices, various publications and broadcasting organisations will have their own stances, social and political, that their staffs will be expected to reflect in their work. Some newspapers may be tempted to fall back on traditional attitudes of jingoism and xenophobia in an attempt to match what they believe to be the prejudices of their readers: how much more simple and profitable would news journalism be if its practitioners really did know exactly what their readers wanted. But to bow to these pressures, from outside or inside the media, would be to do the public a disservice in a situation that is still confused and is likely to remain so.

Authors of violence

The conflicting reports of interrogation of one person arrested in Italy show that nothing is straightforward and very little can be taken on trust. Editors who take seriously their duty to report events as accurately as possible should now be regretting any gaps in their newspaper’s staffs where there ought to be reporters familiar with ethnic-minority communities, with international politics and with the sciences, and should be recruiting or retraining present staff to fill those gaps. (In a period of crisis, a journalism based on the idolising of celebrities is out of joint with the times.)

Expert knowledge is the best defence against misleading or downright mendacious assertions, whether they come from elected politicians in a democracy or self-appointed advocates of violent solutions to geographical or religious injustices, real or imagined. Those who lack expertise have to use common sense instead, and that means reporting, with as little prejudice as possible, the various conflicting claims. While their lives are at risk, the population needs reliable, fast information, obtained by sifting calmly through the established facts. The whole truth of the situation will, regrettably, have to wait until the judgment of a court of law, or perhaps the judgment of history.

Meanwhile, to help the public make up its mind about the threat and how it should be countered, reporting ought to be seasoned with well-placed pinches of salt. Scepticism, as a word, has been tainted with misuse in one political context, and many whose positions depend on getting the public to trust them would like to have scepticism confused with cynicism. They are not the same thing and readers who are deprived of sceptical reporting have every excuse for turning into cynics.