VIEWS OF THE WEEK

All The News That's Fit To Print

By CHARLES CURRAN

THE Moors murder case is something out of the ordinary. It is getting out-of-the-ordinary treatment from some newspapers. Here is the record, in column-inches, of the ways in which the national dailies presented the first day's hearing before the magistrates at Hyde, in Cheshire:

Times

66 • Telegraph

70 Mail

72

Express

' 258 Mirror

274 Sketch

173 Sun

119 Guardian

35 Financial Times

2 Each editor has worked out, in terms of his own readers, the New York Times formula of 'all the news that's fit to print.' But now his freedom to do that comes under fire. For these column-inches have reopened a controversy. It resolves around two questions. One is: should we restrict such reports, lest they prejudice the minds of jurors at the subsequent trial? The other is: should we restrict them, lest they contaminate the minds of readers?

In 1957, the Home Secretary (then Mr. R. A. Butler) set up a committee to examine the first question; it was headed by Lord Tucker (then a Lord of Appeal). In 1958, it recommended (Cmd. 479; HMSO, 2s. 6d.) that contemporaneous re- ports of committal proceedings should be restricted to the names, the charges, and the de- cision. On January 21 last, the Home Secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, said that the Government had decided to enact the recommendation. Up to the time of writing, Sir Frank has said no more, and done nothing. But the Moors case looks like sparking demands for him to act. If he does, he will face.strong opposition from the newspaper industry.

Why? To find out, you need only turn to The Press and the People, the annual report just issued by the Press Council (Ludgate House, 110/111 Fleet Street, EC 4; 3s.), over the signature of its chairman, Lord Devlin. The Council gave evidence to the Tucker committee, urging no change in the law. Its report fills four pages with a reasoned attack on the recom- mendation. It cites a statement by the Law Society that 'no evidence has been found which established that injustice had been done to accused persons by the Press publishing reports of preliminary hearings.' It stresses the perils of justice in private. To prevent any suspicion of favouritism or other misconduct by magistrates, says the Council, there should be present through- out every hearing 'trained reporters with the ex- perience to criticise where criticism is proper, and with organs of publicity at their disposal in which such criticism can be effectively expressed.'

Neither Lord Devlin nor the Law Society be- lievei, therefore, that we must restrict court reports in order to protect accused persons from the risk of prejudiced juries. This is a weighty alliance of experts. You must balance it against the Tucker committee. But even if the allies are right, this is not the end of the matter. For then comes the second question; should we restrict in order to protect newspaper readers? Lord Tucker was not asked to answer that, and did not. The Press Council ignores it, in criticising his report.

All the same, it is highly relevant to any decision by Parliament.

For we do now restrict reports of divorce cases, in exactly the way that Lord Tucker recom- mends for committal proceedings. We have been doing this ever since the Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Act of 1926. The Act was passed on the initiative of the late Lord Rockley, then the Hon.. Evelyn Cecil, Tory MP for the Aston division of Birmingham.

Why was the Cecil Act passed? In order to ensure that justice was done as between hus- bands, wives and co-respondents? Not at all. It was passed in order to keep out of print details of sexual behaviour that had been given in evi- dence. In post-1918 Britain, there was a succes- sion of matrimonial lawsuits involving prominent people, which were fiercely contested, and which provided the press with a great deal of copy. They reached crescendo in the Russell divorce case, which turned on the circumstances in which a baby had been conceived. It was lavishly reported. Public opinion was shocked by this flood of printed revelations about a genesis; and Parliament voted for censorship.

The Cecil Act was, in fact, a piece of legis- lative paternalism. (It was also, perhaps, the last time that the Salisbury strain rose to diapason volume in the British national orchestra.) We can say now, if we like, that the reasons which prompted Parliament to pass it in 1926 justify us in extending it to police courts as well as divorce courts. We might go further. We might say that, for those reasons, we shall restrict news- paper reports of all judicial proceedings-- whether before judges, magistrates, or coroners.

Any such proposal, of course, would evoke a roar of rage from the press, (in which I should join). But, in discussing this matter, the press must be careful to avoid humbug. Why does it defend the freedom it now enjoys to print court reports? Not, primarily, because it wants to keep British justice unsullied by secrecy; or because a copy of the A reopagitica stands on every editor's desk, alongside his Bible. It does so, primarily, because many people want to read court reports, and will buy newspapers that print them.

Now that is a perfectly respectable reason. It needs no apology. Nor does it need to be propped up by pleas about protecting Our Lady the Com- mon Law. Such pleas ring hollow. They remind the ribald of bookmakers who condemn a betting tax because it will injure our bloodstock industry. For the press must take its stand on funda- mentals. It must say that, so long as the publica- tion of police court reports does not prejudice the trial of an accused man—and Lord Devlin and the Law Society agree that it does not—then the question whether it damages the innocence of newspaper readers must be left to those readers. Parliament is not entitled to answer the question for them. Are we to run society on the basis that the common man shall be forbidden to read material that his newspapers have always been free to supply hitherto, because his betters now think that it is bad for him? If we do this, we shall ride roughshod over one of the facts of our society. It is a curious fact.

The British masses have a large appetite for accounts of crime, folly, misfortune, and per- sonal disaster. They are eager to read about people who get into trouble. This appetite is nothing new. The popular press has catered for it aver several generations. It seems to derive partly from puritanism, partly from economic insecurity. It explains the sales-value of many kinds of news—arrests, trials, inquests, domestic disputes, extra-marital escapades, the humdrum paragraphs about unimportant people accused of minor offences. The amount of space that our mass newspapers give to such matters is far greater than it is in the newspapers of Europe or the United States. But it supplies a big psycho- logical demand in this country. There is a need here to read about men and women who do what the reader himself never dares to do: and a desire. to know what happens when someone comes to grief in the struggle to make ends meet.

Now the reports of court proceedings are an important part of this mass diet. Some news- papers print them more fully than others—as the press treatment of the Moors murder case shows. This freedom of editorial choice is no trifle. So long as it is maintained, the British people will continue to get the sort of press that they deserve.