The Press and the Public – Time for a re-Think PDF Print E-mail
Niall Meehan, 1 November 2005

On Sunday October 23rd 2005, the Sunday Independent, the Sunday Tribune  and The Sunday World, all part of the Independent Group of newspapers in Ireland, reported on the front-page that Irish politician Liam Lawlor, while travelling as a passenger, was killed in a car crash in Moscow. The driver was also killed and a woman passenger appeared to have been seriously injured.

The newspapers reported variously that the female passenger was a teenage prostitute from the Ukraine and that she had been picked up in Moscow’s red-light district, where the crash reportedly occurred.

The Observer’s Irish Editor, Henry MacDonald, published much the same information, adding a further allegation, that Lawlor visited prostitutes in Prague. The Sunday People and The News of the World also published the story. The story in other papers appears to have been “lifted” from the initial Sunday Independent account. Ireland’s leading Sunday Newspaper, the Sunday Independent, reported in its front-page lead: “Lawlor killed in red-light district with teenage girl”

Apart from the report of Lawlor’s death the headline and subsequent story was wrong in every remaining lurid detail. The woman was in fact a 32-year-old Ukrainian interpreter and legal assistant, Julia Kushnir, who had worked regularly for other Irish business people. She was in the back seat, while Lawlor and the driver were up front. They were travelling on the main highway to Moscow after arrival at Moscow airport from Prague.

The episode has given rise to much anguished commentary on press standards and on the descent into prurient sexual titillation at the expense of real news. Lawlor, a former Fianna Fail TD, had a reputation as a corrupt politician, one of a select few who are the subject investigations by tribunals of enquiry into corrupt practices in Irish public life. This would seem on the face of it the main news interest in his sudden violent death.

However, the Independent Group had been accused by Vincent Browne (Editor of Village Magazine) and others of inadequately reporting tribunal investigations. For instance a payment of Ir£30,000 to former disgraced Minister Ray Burke by a company owned by Tony O’Reilly, who also owns Independent Group newspapers was not adequately reported.

In addition, the Irish Independent reported that it was “payback time” on polling day in 1997 for then Labour and Fine Gael Coalition government, soon after that government negatively impacted on the Independent Group’s TV MMDS signal distribution licence (a licence granted by former Fianna Fail Minister for Communications, Ray Burke).

From Indo to Sindo

Also, according to Browne, “The Sunday Independent has a history of publishing sensational stories that are not true”. The Independent Group is the most commercially minded and the most profitable of Ireland’s newspaper groups. It is dominant in the daily and Sunday markets, and has significant local and other media holdings. As with the Mordoch influence in News International, other members of the O’Reilly family are taking a leading place in the business.


The group is also international, owning the Independent in Britain and newspapers in New Zealand and in South Africa. Currently, the Independent Group is engaged in a competitive tussle with News International in the form of the Sunday Times and with the Associated Newspaper group’s Ireland on Sunday and its daily free sheet, Metro. The Sunday Independent is regarded as the most consistent opponent of Irish republicanism, as are other group titles. There is a historical precedent: the Irish Independent supported the execution of the 1916 uprising leaders in 1916.


The Sunday Independent recently warned readers of the “anti-Irish” nature of Associated Newspaper publications, such as the Daily Mail. In one respect the Independent has changed. Where once ‘The Indo” was the Roman Catholic Parish Priest’s favourite newspaper, the Sunday Independent in particular has adapted to the secularisation of Irish attitudes by producing titillation, gossip and innuendo about ‘personalities’ and ‘celebrities’, thereby earning the nickname “The SIndo”.

On Monday October 24th, the Independent Group and the Sunday Independent Editor, Aengus Fanning, issued an apology and claimed to have been misled by “a highly regarded source” in Moscow. The journalist source, Guardian and Observer Moscow correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, questioned this version of events. He said that conversations took place between him and a Sunday Independent editor in Dublin, and that he did not report as fact what the Sunday Independent published.


The Observer followed suit later with its own apology, adding that the report that Lawlor had visited prostitutes in Prague was published without evidence. The Observer’s Readers’ Editor has promised a full enquiry. The Observer has stated, “An account of his findings will be made public”. (See also the Regret the Error website)

In joining the initial expressions of outrage, the Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, revived stalled plans for instituting a Press Council and for libel and defamation law reform, a plan previously opposed by prominent Independent journalists. The Minister initially evinced interest in such a scheme after a member of his own family was the victim of press intrusion. I would like to comment on the proposal to create a Press Council based on statute. It should be supported because, ironically, it has the possibility of restricting the operation of the ‘free market’ in news production, which has produced conditions of oligopoly, and the proliferation of sensationalism and bias. I say ironically, because the Minister for Justice is a crusading ideologue of the free market, as is his small party, the Progressive Democrats. It is the free competitive market in news production that has shaped news content in the interests of media owners and of society’s political and economic elite and not of the consumers of news.

I also make the point that the Minster’s plans should go further if they are to be effective in creating a regulatory climate that discourages the publication of fiction reported as fact.

The Theory and the Practice of a Free Press

Elected politicians and governments are constantly accused of acting against the interests, against the presumed wishes, of the electorate who vote the same politicians into office. It is further argued that the conduct of such actions against the public interest are conducted in secret, out of the glare of open public scrutiny.

It is argued that a free and independent capacity should exist within society, constituted by the press, that can successfully counterbalance and bring to light matters that certain (usually powerful) sections of society wish to keep hidden from public scrutiny.

It is here that a conundrum exists.

If free politicians freely elected can act against the public interest, how is it to be argued that a similarly free press must by definition act within the public interest all (or at very least most) of the time. If politicians can act outside of the public interest, then why not also the press? What makes the press independent of interest, but not politicians?

By means of the publicly conscious act of the citizen in voting, politicians are elected. By the casting of a small amount of money into a till that same citizen acting as a consumer elects to constitute the edifice of a free press.

Against the practice of electing politicians we erect only the basis of a theory of what happens when people buy news. The theory of the existence of a ‘public sphere’ existing within civil society, acting independently of powerful public and private interests in society, is predicated on the basis of the free competition of essentially co-equal contending forces, by press competition. By means of debate, discussion and respect for rational discourse, views may be put to a reasoning and participating public that is free to make choices, politically, privately and socially in society on a whole range of matters.

Again, that is the theory. What is the practice?

The practice is determined by three factors. They are (to paraphrase Tony Blair), economics, economics, economics.

The economics of news production on a significant scale are such that only large trans-national news businesses can survive in the long term. The establishment of such business inevitably leads to local monopoly and forms of oligopoly, a sometimes strangely distinct form of competitive oligopoly. This situation is produced by cutthroat commercial competition. Not competition for the best stories, but for a lock on a section of the market, from which competitors can effectively be excluded.

The prospect of setting up a national news organisation requires resources of such significance that they are out of the realm of possibility for even quite wealthy sections of society (never mind its more impecunious members). Either that or news, if it is to be a successful commodity, requires the capacity to attract distinct subsets of consumers who themselves possess significant resources, hold or are receptive to a distinct set of views, and may potentially attract a relatively lucrative advertising base.

There are therefore three possible paths for the development or maintenance of a news business:A. Be a monopoly already and pursue the extension of that monopoly into other markets by means of significant investment through buying up news products or by extending the reach of existing products;

B. Be a monopoly already and prevent the encroachment of new entrants into the market by means of significant amounts of extra investment for short periods to ‘spoil’ the possibility of success for a newcomer;

Identify a niche area for the production and consumption of news, a gap in the market.

A - In Ireland over the past number of years example a) can be represented by Associated Newspapers buying of Ireland on Sunday and by News International extending the sale of the ‘Irish’ Sun and Sunday Times (and the same process is represented by the publishing of an ‘Irish’ version of the Daily Mirror).

B - Example b) can be represented by the successful attempt by Independent Newspapers to prevent the short-lived and locally resourced Dublin Daily from getting a foothold in the Dublin market to the competitive detriment of the Evening Herald (which has a monopoly share of the evening newspaper market) and possibly also of the Irish Independent.


The under capitalisation, leading to inadequacies in marketing and editorial under-resourcing of the Dublin Daily relative to the resources of its established competitor in the Dublin market, is what lead ultimately to the demise of that newspaper. The outcome of current spoiling operations aimed at Associated Newspaper’s free Metro by Independent newspapers is not so pre-determined, as Associated Newspapers has deep pockets.


The start-up Ireland on Sunday might have gone the way of the Dublin Daily, had it not been bought out by Associated Newspapers and aimed squarely at the sector of the market dominated by the Sunday Independent, but also partly inhabited by British titles, The News of the World and The Sunday People.

C- Example c) can be demonstrated by the success of the Sunday Business Post, which identified a gap in the market, represented by business people as niche news consumers who brought significant amounts of advertising in their wake. A relatively small circulation was buoyed up by a product attractive to advertisers. Inevitably, this business was sold and became part of a larger newspaper group, initially UK based, but subsequently, in another transaction, Irish based.


The original success of the Business Post was also due to its alternative ‘green’ slant on the National Question, attracting a significant coterie of readers seeking an alternative to the fare dished out by most Sunday and daily titles. As the paper has been integrated into a more regulated corporate culture the green hue has faded somewhat.

The one possible exception to this list is the fate of new entrant Daily Ireland, whose publisher, the Andersonstown News Group, has arisen out of northern and republican-stroke-nationalist politics and has a long history of producing local newspapers with an alternative viewpoint. It must become profitable if it is to survive, but it is based on a tested business model, though now in a move from a local to a national readership.


Despite facing extraordinary political and economic obstacles, Daily Ireland readers may be more determined, resilient and focussed in keeping it afloat, because more politically homogenous, than was the case with previous indigenous entrants on the field of daily or Sunday newspaper production.

There are other variations on this theme, represented by the strategy of Independent newspapers in keeping the loss making Sunday Tribune afloat as a means of attempting to stall the circulation climb of The Sunday Times.


Dim Prospect of Competition

In other words there is only a dim prospect of independent competing daily news businesses dedicated to serving a local market. The economics of the business preclude this in the long run. A possible exception to this phenomenon is The Irish Times, which is run by a trust constructed in 1974 to give the then Chairman, Major Thomas B McDowell, effective control over the newspaper. The curious circumstances have been examined in various editions of the Irish Political Review over the past 12 months, and in passing in a recent Spinwatch piece by me.


The Trust has been ‘reformed’ in recent years in a manner that strips the MacDowell family of effective control over the paper in perpetuity, but in a manner that currently exposes the Trust as a mechanism for enriching directors and top executives, while staff are cutback and made redundant. This has lead to tension between journalists and editorial and commercial management.

The Irish Times is undergoing a re-structuring and ‘downsizing’ as a result of a downturn in its fortunes, and management decisions that are precisely a result of its isolation in the market: too dependent on short-term fluctuations in the economy as a means of sustaining long-term profitability, and not enough buoyancy provided by ancillary stable mates in a position to cross-subsidise ailing parts of the business.


The Irish Times has all its egg in one basket and also made some questionable strategic decisions. It currently prints the Metro free sheet on behalf of Associated Newspapers as part of a commercial, as distinct from an editorial, agreement.

The attractiveness of a perception of the Irish Times as a news provider with an ethic of serving the public sphere may help it to stay afloat. (Unfortunately it may also retain elements of patrician condescension aimed at those whose views it loftily dismisses, but that is another story.) Any damage to the public perception of the ethic of an independent news provider will inevitably undermine the position of the Irish Times in the marketplace.


Recent events indicate a battle between commercial and journalistic imperatives, the latter making the point that the victory of the commercial side of the house is inevitably short-lived, since it kills off the paper’s journalistic soul and hence its unique attractiveness to Irish readers.


Monopoly Oligopoly

As newspapers become part of a monopoly or oligopoly structure of news production in which print, broadcasting, publishing and other forms of media are intertwined, they become refracted and more distant from their readers’ interests and views. However, where the distance between editorial and public opinion becomes more marked, studies have demonstrated that this distance between public and media opinion has little effect on newspaper sales (with notable exceptions, which I mention below).


In other words the choices consumers make in selecting particular news media has little relevance to or direct connection with the long-term formation of their opinions as citizens. It may have a connection, but de-limiting and identifying it is a complex and also (thankfully at this stage) another topic.

The distortions in free market provision of print media bifurcates the public and private act of news consumption. Readers do not make a choice to buy as political animals, they generally make it as psychological animals swayed by news media aimed at them on the basis of the study of lifestyle and its attendant choices, desires, insecurities, curiosities, and random habits. The techniques of advertising, with its sexualisation of almost everything, have invaded the news pages, particularly the front page.

The phenomenon termed the ‘pornographication of politics’ is largely driven by the media, wherein a particular rationale of the public interest (aka what the public is potentially interested in) justifies invasions of privacy. Largely irrelevant information about the private lives of public individuals suddenly becomes ‘relevant’ and part of the debate within the public domain.


That this process is also largely driven by sections of the publicity and politics industry is merely part of the one sided Faustian bargain between prominent individuals or groups and media organisations that begins in hope and ends invariably in tears. Newspapers, like countries, do not have friends, merely interests.


Lives of the important and the unimportant are habitually strewn along the newspaper gutter in the onward march aimed at ‘entertaining’ readers and the hope of stable or improved circulation figures. Sometimes the media is seen to go “too far” and this can have limiting, though seldom catastrophic, consequences. The current furore over the Lawlor story may be a case in point. Time and events will tell.


Child Abuse Report

In the south of Ireland currently society is transfixed by a report on the scale of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests in the diocese of Ferns in the southeast. Independent newspapers have published extensively on the story. Both the Irish Independent on October 29 and The Sunday Independent on October 30 have focussed on the previous bishop, Bishop Comiskey, who resigned against Vatican orders some years ago and who admitted being treated for alcoholism. On October 29 the Irish Independent led with

“Bishop Comiskey threatened to rape me”

The story continued

“DISGRACED Bishop Dr Brendan Comiskey threatened to rape an Irish Independent journalist... He was "extremely drunk" at the time of the pre-arranged interview which took place 11 years ago. At the time of his chilling warning he recalled how another journalist had questioned him and had written about his house and his clothes. He then turned to Ms McCarthy and warned: "If you write that I will come up to Dublin and I will rape you." In the days after the interview Bishop Comiskey repeatedly phoned her in an intoxicated state. The Bishop has been practically invisible in recent years. He issued a statement when the explosive Ferns report was published.”



The newspaper had this information for 11 years and chose to reveal it now. An RTE interviewer asked a local Wexford reporter present if it was “ethical” to interview someone who was clearly intoxicated. It might be added that the story might have been news when the Bishop was in office, as might a revelation then that he was habitually drunk. The sense of ‘news values’ that dictated publication on Saturday, and a subsequent Sunday Independent lead also on Former Bishop Comiskey, may have more to do with defecting attention away from the Independent’s woes than to a genuine concern for exposure of the moral vacuum at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The Sunday Independent lead with:

“DPP to probe Comiskey's role in abuse”

The story opened:

THE Director of Public Prosecutions is to examine the Ferns Inquiry report with a view to instituting criminal proceedings against those who have abused children and also against those who may have withheld evidence, including the former bishop of the diocese, Brendan Comiskey.”

Of significance also was the blazing underneath the masthead of the first name, and her picture, of murdered Sunday Independent Journalist Veronica Guerin. It read “Ten years ago Veronica was humiliated on RTE for asking awkward questions of Bishop Comiskey, This section page 25.” The report concerned alleged treatment Guerin received on RTE’s Questions and Answers, after she had tracked down Comiskey and reported his treatment for alcoholism in a clinic in the USA.

Perhaps the juxtaposition of the reiteration of the Lawlor apology from Editor Aengus Fanning on the top right hand corner of the January 30 Sunday Independent with the visually far larger focus on Bishop Comiskey on the same front page may lead to an observation that the faults of Bishops receive more attention than those of editors.


Indeed the latter could write his own defence and effectively declare the matter at an end. No commitment to enquire into the circumstances of the Lawlor story was contained in the apology and no information given as to whether the results of any enquiry might be published.

It is a feature of Sunday Independent reporting to proclaim the paper an organ of fearless outspokenness surrounded by unworthy enemies. Imagined critics are regularly criticised for casting a slight or a slur on brave and fearless champions of the people who write for the paper, or on the wise proprietor who employs them. Because they are often so strangely fixated with themselves, they imagine others are too.


Quite often, in the Sunday Independent, the Sunday Independent is the story, a fairly one sided story in which the Sunday Independent is always right. When reporting or supporting or denigrating real or imagined opinions, this works. It does not work with facts, and journalism is primarily about reporting the facts, objectively and accurately. In the Lawlor story political facts were surrendered in the face of sexual fantasy ‘facts’.

Politicisation… Sexualisation

At a corporate level newsmedia see themselves primarily as businesses protecting or extending market share. News can become a commodity that is used as part of the marketing and strategic arm of newspapers. All news is seen in terms of its ability to attract and to excite the interest of readers. The sexualisation of reader’s interests is possibly more profitable, and probably more agreeable, than their politicisation, as far as news media owners are concerned.

Newspapers have always been in a position to ‘dictate’ the news. By its very nature news is what newspapers say it is and it is ‘new’ – the public is largely ignorant of it until it is presented for their attention. Readers are almost never in a position to buy news either that they ‘like’ or that they ‘agree’ with. News media determine the news based on judgement of what is in the newspaper’s interest (that of attracting readers), rather than on what is perceived to be in the ‘public interest’. Or rather news media tend to relate and intertwine one with the other.

To preserve readers, news media must be in a position to be seen to act in the public interest. But what is the public interest? It is what news media say it is. Individual members of the public are not in a position to determine their own interest, much less have it expressed in the editorial columns of newspapers. The public interest is, by and large, dictated to the public.

There is an increasing distinction between press freedom, what the press is free to do and to say, and freedom of speech. News media are free to refuse to publish speech they dislike, to ridicule, to denigrate, misrepresent or to attack it. The freedom to communicate speech effectively is dictated increasingly by powerful interest and organisations rather than by ordinary individuals.

The exception to this rule lies in examples of organised and institutional public opposition to certain newspapers’ actions in publishing certain stories. When a Sunday Independent columnist, Mary Ellon Synon, wrote that disabled Olympic athletes, “cripples” as she termed the Para Olympians, were in some way “grotesque”, “perverse” and not worthy of approval, there was a public outcry.

It is safe to say that the newspaper group backed down and apologised as a result of threat of withdrawal of medical and other Health Board advertising revenue, and the threat that teachers, as an organised group, would ban Independent Group newspapers from staff rooms. Ms Synon, a free market ideologue, was also deprived of her column.

When The Sun in Britain libelled Liverpool football supporters by accusing them of urinating purposely on asphyxiated corpses that littered the field after the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, it was the threat of a boycott of the paper in the entire city of Liverpool that forced the Editor to eventually utter a grudging apology.

It was dedicated, organised and powerful opposition, motivated by the collective outrage of an entire community, which forced a change of tack by a powerful newspaper institution. Individuals who are aggrieved by newspaper stories cannot play this role vis avis newspapers who have treated them unjustly.They have no public voice or forum (and little or no means of publicising their views, merely the choice of paying or not paying the price of a newspaper, a not very effective weapon).

Crime

The function of newspapers is not to tell the public what to think, so much as what to think about. Studies have indicated that public perception of what constitutes a hierarchy of important social, political or economic issues closely resembles the hierarchy presented by newspapers, rather than the actuality of the seriousness of those problems in society.

Crime is a good example. It sells newspapers. It pays. Hyping crime hypes readers, attracts them to more stories about more dramatic and gruesome examples and it affects politics. Newspapers then become part of the great public debate on crime, protecting the interests of the innocent victim, lacerating the criminal and lecturing the dilatory politicians sleeping safely in their beds, while all hell breaks lose on the streets outside.


This is attractive fodder also for opposition politicians, who are presented with a daily picture of anarchy (rather than its actuality), with which they can taunt the government for its inaction, indecisiveness and presumed incompetence. Sections, both public and private, of the loosely termed security industry also develop a relationship with sections of the media and promote their particular sectional interest through promoting certain types of crime stories in newspapers.


Studies have shown that media reporting of crime gives a totally unbalanced picture of the crime problem, with bleeding leading the headlines. Subsets of readerships have demonstrated fear of crime based not on personal experience of crime, but on reporting of crime in the newspaper they habitually read.


Crime or security reporters become dependent on a constant drip feed of information from the police, a privilege they are not expected to abuse by being overly critical of policing methods or structures. Baring one or two exceptions (from the Sunday Independent and the Evening Herald recently), this policy is largely successful. Large-scale institutions in society become news providers, news that is constructed to suit the interests of those institutions.

It is important to point out, by and large and with few exceptions, that newspapers are seldom wrong, since newspapers determine, by and large, what is black and what is white in society. If newspapers say there is a crime wave, then there is a crime wave in public and also in political perception. Newspaper reality can become the reality; it is a modern form of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mention of the Faustian pact between certain sections of the public and news media brings me to the phenomenon of the promise of delivery of, or alternatively the threat of alienation of, public opinion.


Media owners have been known to promise political parties sections of the their reading public by means of favourable editorial treatment, in return for protection of, promotion of, or neutrality towards the commercial interests of growing and diversifying news media corporations. This pact is usually short-term since the political climate changes in the medium to long term independently of the efforts of newspapers. Reality can be conditioned, not controlled.


However, politicians are in thrall not only to a favourable headline, but to a series of favourable headlines, particularly at election time. When the fairy tale of the election trail turns into the grim and rocky path of governing reality, newspapers must, if they are to retain authority with readers, reflect dissatisfaction and dissention, but never to the extent to which their own interests are put in question or even become part of the question.

Public controversy is cited increasingly in celebrity culture and in the sport pages – with blurring of the edges frequently occurring.

This is an example of the public ‘watchdog’ role of the press being undermined by its inevitably commercial agenda in a situation of competitive oligopoly.

Investigating Politicians, Priests, Police ……and the Press

It has been observed that news media enter into every highway and byway of society and declare them open for public consideration and scrutiny– that is apart from an investigation into the way the news itself is packaged and in whose interests it is produced. Recent years in Irish society have seen close scrutiny of previously closed off sections of public life.

The mechanisms by which priests, politicians and policemen go about their business in a sometimes-murky fashion has been opened up for public scrutiny. This has lead to demands for greater regulation of these professions beginning with the letter ‘P’, and the statutory enforcement of codes of ethics and standards of behaviour that were previously self-regulated and assumed.

But what of that other ‘P’, the press itself. By what means does the press make itself accountable? By means only of the collective individual economic decisions of news consumers, who play no role in the manufacture or production of news, only in its passive consumption. News consumers are a perfect public. They never complain, or rather they are never in a position to complain effectively, since they have no recognised public function as mere consumers of news media. They have no citizenship role vis a vis the media, in the way that they do have vis a vis politics.

Press Council

It is in this context that the proposal to set up a Press Council in Ireland is interesting. It is doubly interesting in the context of the proposal to relax libel and defamation provisions. It is argued strongly that these provisions restrict newspaper coverage of wrongdoing. Because of fear of defamation proceedings taken by the guilty, who in court are in a position to act the innocent, news is sometimes withheld.


Be that as it may, the actual relaxation of these provisions will tell its tale of whether news media become more relaxed about pursuing powerful political and financial wrongdoers or merely become more relaxed about invasions of privacy and the publication of information that has little basis in fact - or that may have much basis in fact but little basis in relevance.


The story about the death of Liam Lawlor in the Sunday Independent, Tribune, Star, World and the Observer, Sunday People and News of the World, is a case in point. The story of the alleged teenage Prostitute in the car had all the trappings of the stereotypical morality tale. Newspapers love stereotypes, so much so that the news is frequently shaped in the familiar pattern of a fairy tale.


The Lawlor story was a fairly tale, without a shred of accuracy. But even had it been, what was its relevance, other than to a news agenda that favours a tale of sex and debauchery over the nexus of corruption in Irish politics that Liam Lawlor had departed from?

Because Lawler was dead, the newspapers concerned threw caution to the wind and, instead of revealing truths that had had been withheld due to legal constraints, produced a gigantic and irrelevant whopper of a lie. Was this in the public interest? Is it an advertisement for a freer environment for newspapers?

The woman alone in the back seat – a position which might have given rise to a question or two about the lurid tale that was unfolding - and who survived, may soon be seeking her pound of flesh. And if it happens, who could blame her?

Press and Public

In one sense the relaxation of the libel laws are a re-regulation of the relationship between the press and the powerful in society, since it is the powerful, by and large, who make use of such laws to control and limit press freedom.

A Press Council on the other hand may offer the opportunity for a regulation of the relationship between the press and the public - and also to level the infamous ‘playing field’ occupied by the press, the public and the powerful.

The problem I mentioned earlier, of the individual’s relationship to the press, is potentially eroded by means of tackling press standards and press practice through a publicly accountable press commission or council.

The individual is then permitted to act within a citizenship role vis a vis the press that his or her role as a mere consumer of the press denies. Such a Press Council must have teeth, must be in a position to force newspapers to publicly account for mistakes on front pages with the same space as was originally devoted to the offending piece.

Press Council rules should apply to news media above a certain size in terms of circulation or which dominate a particular local or market segment. Applying rules to small publications with little real significance would be both a waste of time and of resources.

What have I left out, merely the very important issue of the composition and membership of such a council, its independence from government and capacity to earn the trust of the public and the (in time) confidence of media organisations.

That is the tallest order of all.

The legitimacy of such a body will be determined to the extent that it is free from government interference in terms of its method of appointment and day-to-day operations.

More so than with other public bodies in society, a Press Council simply could not operate if it was the creature of politicians, full of place seekers and friends of ministers or of their parties. Its deliberations would be ignored and derided and it would exist without authority - in practical effect it would cease to function as the public’s watchdog on the press.

The method of appointment must be out of the hand of government and must ensure proper representation for journalists, editors, proprietors, and sections of civil society, both lay and expert.

The relationship between statutory provision for a council and voluntary construction of a mode of behaviour, of guidelines and of a means of fairly challenging and bringing to public account methods of news production will initially be fraught with suspicion.

Many in the industry will be suspicious of a body that enquires into the methodology of professional news gatherers who are required to keep secrets as a means of exposing the secrets of others, a methodology that plays a public function for which at the moment journalists can claim little if any legal privilege.

A Press Council may have the effect of giving journalists more professional autonomy in the production of news stories with their by-line and fewer constraints in the position of mere employee of a large impersonal company.

Voluntary versus Compulsory

There is little point at this stage in calling for a purely voluntary Press Council.

If media organisations believed in such a body, they would have set it up by now. Alternatively, if it is set up voluntarily as a quid pro quo for a relaxation of the libel and defamation laws then what is to stop it going into abeyance sometime after these laws have passed into statute.

A cynical view perhaps? But then if the media is itself supposed to be cynical in its outlook then so too also should a characterisation of the methodology and outlook of media institutions return the compliment in its outlook on the press itself.

What else have I left out, the problems created by economics and by competition. In Norway, where a newspaper dominates a local market, a public subsidy is available to a smaller circulation competitor with an opposed ideology to the dominant player.

It is recognition that the free market produces a constrained and monopolised press. When such proposals are put forward here the dominant players craftily return to their roots in the then revolutionary ideology of the late 18th Century. They proclaim the association of economic and individual freedom, of competition and the invisible hand of the market as the guarantor of all that is good for news production and consumption. Governments are always bad and should not be allowed to provide money for media.

However, an echo, a less plausible one, is sometimes heard from newspapers and from Ireland’s privately owned (by Granada) TV3 in relation to the publicly funded broadcaster, RTE. I have to ask, in a public contest of credibility between newspapers and RTE, who would come out on top? If funding of broadcasting, for whatever reason, has not produced a Stalinist or a McCarthyite nightmare, what is the problem of extending public subsidy and more robust regulation of print media.

In order to preserve or even to promote and resuscitate the independence of the press it is necessary to re-forge the relationship of the press to its public. For that to happen the press must become subservient to the public interest, its servant and not, as at present. its master. That requires regulation to ensure real competition in the production and consumption of differing viewpoints.
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