The Useless Press

By HENRY FAIRLIE T Dounr whether people have ever been more I confused about the meaning of the words which they use in political discussion. The most absurd example occurred in The Times last Fri- day, which carried, across two columns, over the report of a Parliamentary debate, the headline:

`I.T.A. TO ENJOY PARITY OF SATIRE WITH

The most serious confusion, however, has been revealed in the current debate about the freedom of the press, provoked by the imprison- ment of the two journalists. On Monday, The Times delivered itself of a 'wurra-wurra-wurra, wur-aw-aw-aw' leading article, which broadened the debate into a general discussion of the con- dition of freedom in this country, and which I have now read four times, in an attempt to reduce what it says to clearly intelligible propo- sitions. Am I alone in failing to understand it?

I must, in passing, observe that the gestation period for these resounding declarations seems to be a weekend: they always appear on Mon- day mornings. I have my own picture of Sir William Haley, rising from breakfast on Satur- day and saying to his wife: 'My dear, I have a first on the state of England to do today.' He retires to his study, puts on the Eroica at full volume, reads aloud the first book of Paradise Lost—and he is away. He must be very tired by nightfall.

But Monday's effusion must be- taken seri- ously, if only because The Times, whether one agrees with it or not, is almost alone among newspapers today in discussing what I would call the theology of politics. Sir William Haley has stiffened the paper with doctrine: the doc- trine of the middle-class nineteenth-century liberal. It is good to meet it, like coming across a spinal column in a species of invertebrates.

The assumptions from which Sir William argues always slip out. They did on Monday. After listing the dangers to freedom which exist today, he went on: 'And all these hazards are faced by a middle class that, either through comparative affluence, weariness, or disgust, has thrown in its hand or lost sight of its respon- sibilities.' This self-conscious assumption that it is the educated middle class who are the custo- dians of society is, as I say, a nineteenth-century one, It is not necessarily the worse for that. But it is interesting to notice the premises from which Sir William Haley begins.

What, then, did he say? As I have said, I am not sure that I have taken his points correctly, but I will try. It seems to me that they can be reduced to two main propositions.

First, the function of the press is vital to 'the preservation'of the rights of every indi- vidual citizen against the usurpations of every form of authority, the ensuring of efficient and beneficent administration and of good govern- ment, and the defence of society against those forces that would corrupt it.' The performance of this function 'depends upon certain freedoms and conventions' particular to journalists. Secondly, the hostility to the press which has been revealed during the past few weeks, although it may have been invited by 'the real offences' of some sections- of it, is only part of the general ignorance, complacency and apathy' with which people today confront the increasing curtailment of liberty in this country. In the rather shrill words of the headline to the article: IT IS HAPPENING HERE.

So far, it would seem, so good (except for an important reservation, to which I will conic, about the freedoms and conventions of journal- ism). But where do we go from here'? Sir William Haley does not consider particular cases — although freedom is • a matter of particular cases----and therefore makes no attempt to con- sider the very ticklish points raised in Mr.

Michael Lipton's letter to the Spectator last week. I will try to illustrate what I understand by the. function of journalism, and its inevitable consequences, from a public example in which I was involved.

In 1960, along with several other journalists, I was hauled before a one-man judicial inquiry in Nyasaland, to justify the reports which some of us had cabled about the behaviour of the Nyasaland police towards a crowd of shouting Africans in Blantyre. The inquiry was conducted by a colonial judge, whose career and home had been made in Nyasaland. It was not surprising, therefore, that he dealt with some of us vcrY roughly indeed.

The fact is that both he and we were right. He represented the prevailing attitudes and stan- dards in Nyasaland, and it is only in the light of such attitudes and standards that a judge can usefully 'interpret the law. We, on the other hand, had reacted as citizens of the United Kingdom, used to different attitudes and stan- dards. He and we, in other words, were dis- charging separate (and conflicting) functions, and had unavoidably been moved to different responses by the same event.

To him, the fact that 'not an eggspoonful of blood' had- been spilled was enough: such are the standards of a colonial police force and judiciary—and probably must be their standards. We, however, had seen a crowd of shouting and ,dancing Africans, very much like a crowd of undergraduates on Boat Race night, handled. with, we thought, unnecessary severity. Where did the truth lie"? It lay in both attitudes.

It is this vital point—that there is no objec- tive truth to be discovered by journalists—which the Spectator and Mr. Lipton raised last week, in their different ways, and which The Times has ignored in both its leading articles.

Yet this'is theOub of the matter. If one argues the case for journalism as Sir William Haley and the Chairman of the Press Council have been arguing it, one invites the dire retort that the press must prove that what it purports to discover is true: true, that is, by standards other than those which a journalist should properly consider. This is what happened in the Blantyre Inquiry, and in the Vassall Tribunal.

You cannot prove that you think a police force behaved with unnecessary brutality: e'en THE SPECTATOR. MARCH 22, 1 9 6 3 in this country, where there are common stan- dards about this, it has again and again been shown how difficult it is to know whether the police handling of a crowd was justified. Simi- larly, you cannot prove whether there has been gross neglect in the Admiralty in the matter of security or not : I doubt whether even the report 0. f the Tribunal will be able to do this; a Journalist certainly cannot. In a very important sense, journalism is a wholly unjustifiable activity. Once it finds itself in, or puts itself into, the position of having to justify its activities, its claims will almost certainly appear to collapse. This is why I think the question of the revela- tion of sources is largely an irrelevance. How- ever good the sources, the claims of journalism to discover some objective truth would always be disputed by authority on the simple ground that it is in a pOsition to know more of the objective truth. Certainly, to claim particular freedoms or conventions' for journalists is to Invite a double retort: from authority, that it cannot allow special claims to prevail against those of the safety of the State; and from the Public, that journalists would thereby be pro- tected in any unbridled licence. BY pitching the claims of journalism in the i language which he uses, Sir William Haley in fact asks for journalism to be judged by the same standards as authority : by its usefulness to the community. But this is precisely the one claim it can never prove. It must be eight years now since I first protested here against the idea that the press is the Fourth Estate. It is both much less and much more than that. In fact, we have reached the nub, not only of the question of the freedom of the press, but of the wider question of freedom generally, which The Times has raised. Freedom (or, rather, the spirit of freedom) is declining in this country, and will continue to decline, largely as the result of democracy, a result which men like Maine, Lecky and Stephens foresaw. But it is also declining be- cause of the growth over the last century of the pernicious idea that people (and, therefore, Institutions) are to be judged and rewarded according to their usefulness to the community. I know no one who more sedulously spreads

idea dea than the editor of The Times in his moral addresses to the nation.

.1 claim the right to life, liberty and the pur- suit of happiness, whether I am useful or not. NC other claim is worth making. The press, too, the State and the community cannot dispute:

its ts uselessness.

'Sorry, I haven't any.small change.'