Press and People

By JO GRIMOND, MP Tye first thing the press needs is a good Press Officer. The Little Tweedledee Bowling Club could not have conducted its Public Rela- tions worse than Mr. Cadbury did when presiding over the death of the News Chronicle. As for the image of the Press Council left on the public mind after the excursion in pursuit of four-letter words, it must have made the Athenceum rock with laughter—especially topped off by the letter sent to the Spectator (seriously?) by the Editor of the News of the World.

Perhaps a good Press Officer would persuade even those blushing primroses, the Press Establishment Barons. to conquer their shyness. Lord Beaverbrook has strong views about many things including about how a newspaper should be run. Could he not, even now, be persuaded to plUck up a little courage and submit his views to criticism and argument in the House of Lords? And how about Lord Rothermere and other peers of the press? How interesting it would be to hear their views on their obligations to the public, on restrictive practices, on pornography, or the invasion of privacy and indeed on the conduct of free press in general. And how even more interesting to see how they stood up in reasonable argument.

The shyness of press owners whose papers are always exhorting people to be thick-skinned extends beyond the House of Lords. We are fre- quently and sententiously told that the public have a right to know about the personal affairs of important people—or indeed unimportant. But there is a veil drawn over the lives, loves, vices and 'virtues of most of the Press Establish- ment.

Let me say at once, however, that up-and- coming pressmen like Mr. Roy Thomson are made of sterner stuff. He has appeared on TV, not to talk about past history but current take- overs—and a very good appearance too. Lord Arran, too, should take a bow for piping up in the Lords. I hope that these developments may be the beginning of a time when the press takes itself slightly less seriously and takes the public rather more into its confidence.

Having, quite rightly, debunked the politicians, the popular press is itself the last refuge of pom-' posity. There is the ridiculous tradition that no paper should ever laugh at itself or admit that it is wrong. There is the convention that dog should not even admit the existence of dog, far Less eat it (now being honoured in the breach, occasionally, I am glad to say). But I am being less than just to the press as a whole. The less serious a paper is the more seriously it takes its pronouncements. It is 04 more popular press which longs for the days of the `Thunderer.' As for the old Thunderer itself, its leading articles are sometimes as tentative as the small-talk of a country Aunt at a Beatnik party.

The press as a whole gets a worse reputation than it deserves because of the curiously bad public relations of some papers and their owners. And because of the humbug some papers talk. Most people have a friendly feeling towards their favourite newspapers and would like to be taken into their confidence. It is difficult to be- lieve that over restrictive practices and other press matters this has always been done.

Another difficulty in discussing the press is the changing attitude to politics. The whole argu- ment about the 'freedom of the press' is bound up with politics—and with the ordinary person's right to say what he likes about political matters: but there isn't the interest now in strictly political issues that there once was. And the danger is not that a press which criticises the general policies of the Government will be suppressed by censor- ship. The dangers are from amalgamations inside the press itself from the willing acceptance of hand-outs and the treatment of politics as a horse-race in which the only interest is in who will win.

What, then, should the Press Commission consider?

It must recognise that much of the press is entertainment. This has nothing whatever to do with Free Speech or the Areopagitica. There is no 'right' to make public entertainment out of the misfortunes of people who have no other claim to fame than that they are unfortunate. There is no 'right' to make profit out of porno- graphy. There is no 'right' to blow up the intrinsically unimportant or distort the news for the sake of a headline.

But, having said this, let the Commission also recognise that we all like to be entertained by the press. And the serious cases where the news- paper press oversteps the limits are not so very numerous. As far as people who are in public life are concerned, they must accept that a good part of their lives must be public and it certainly may be of importance to know whom they see and how they spend their time. We have no Con- fidential, thank goodness. And in my experience 99 per cent. of, say, lobby correspondents are scrupulously careful to respect both confidences and privacy. Don't let us pretend that most people dislike publicity. If anyone thinks that, let him read Cyril Ray's column last week. What would be ideal, of course, would be to choose exactly the sort of publicity—but that is expect- ing rather much.

There is a case for having some body which considers infringement of privacy and the re- porting of violent crime and sex. Here again, while certainly the main outline of charges and trials should be known to the public, it seems most extraordinary that certain current cases can be reported in full, whatever the tendency to deprave, while the name of a doctor who is alleged to have neglected a patient cannot be re- ported at all. There may (in addition to a stronger Press Council) be a case for a narrow and simple law protecting privacy. But the main sanction should be reasonable public opinion. If we are serious about education and a civilised society those who purvey doubtful forms of en- tertainment through the press should get the same treatment in public esteem as those who do it in other ways.

Hut the Commission must then get on to the heart of the matter. How well is the public served by the press? How serious is the present tendency towards monopoly? How do we stand over news and views and the important question of news about views?

We hear the most hair-raising accounts of restrictive practices enforced by the unions and connived at by the bigger owners. Are they true? If they are, here right away is something which is clearly against the public interest and is lead- ing to monopoly. What happened over the Lon- don evening, papers is at least suspicious. It is said that the Star was never allowed to run its new machinery at full speed. It was not very long after its death that the other two evening papers went up to 3d.

I don't accept that news and views are a com- modity like any other, but even if they were, we are waking up to the need to protect the con-. sumer in all sorts of ways. One obvious way is to take the lid off the secrets of newspaper pro- duction. Let us at least see whether it is efficient and if it is concerned about its obligations to the public. The press doesn't tell us nearly enough about itself.

Then, let the newspapers look ahead. The old type of daily newspaper owner who used his paper as a weapon is on the way out. The new type of ownership either prefers a much more diluted attitude in its leading articles or leaves views largely to the editor. The new danger, if there is one, is not undue influence for extreme views but that the majority of papers may simply swing with the popular tide. There was a hint of that over Suez.

Some people seem content to contemplate the absorption of most of the press by two or three big groups, if these groups are faceless. I am not so content. I don't believe an unprejudiced press is possible even if it were desirable. It isn't even possible over the straightest news. Someone has got to pick and present it. There is no clean break between news and views. The danger is that we shall get a predominantly conservative press, running on a low common denominator of out- look and chary of any new ideas. This danger is accentuated by various other developments. There is the threat to the genuinely local paper controlled by some local personality with his own views who gets most of his views from his own staff. There is the growing use of the hand- out, the agency and one correspondent for a whole group of papers.

To my mind, variety is the soul of the press. I don't want a soulless press. At present the situation is just all right but not much more. Al- ready the openings for serious journalists are insufficient. Ultimately the main interest of the public is that there should be lots of good, well- infol med, well-written journalism. It is serious for the public if a premium is put on the flashy, the gimmicky and the ill-informed. The Elected Squares (2) What can be done? As I have said, I do not accept that any interference with the press will be the thin end of the wedge. On the contrary, I believe that there is a public interest both in seeing that no one gets hurt in the hunt for enter- tainment and also in reporting of different news and views.

A lot could be done by a change in outlook (which to some extent is discernible) in the atti- tude of the press about itself. Here the weekly newspapers are doing a good job (and could do an even better one) both by 'reviewing' the daily press and by picking up causes, e.g., capital punishment or insanity or particular instances of injustice. I wish that either the weeklies or the Sundays would find room for a Lippmann who would treat politics rather less in terms of per- sonalities. I would like to see an exposition of what is behind the splits in the Labour Party— or how justified Lord Salisbury may be in his criticisms.

But over and above what the best of the press can achieve by itself there should be a permanent press, radio and TV Council with a far better secretariat than the present Press Council and, if not entirely made up of laymen, at least with a lay majority. Its main function would be to probe and publicise. If, however, the present trends go on and variety grows less and less then it might well be authorised to give some financial support to a particular weekly paper in danger of extinction or assist diversification in the whole industry. With our experience of the Arts Council and the University Grants Com- mittee we are learning to give public money without too ,many strings. I would hope even so that it would not be necessary. But rather, for instance, than see the Spectator, the New States- man and Time and Tide merged into one amorphous weekly, I would risk a grant of public money to each or any.

But it would be difficult kir such a body either to support a daily or found a new news- paper or magazine. So new ideas might still get no publicity. Here the answer is to keep plenty of competition over TV and radio and to ensure, that new ideas have more than their fair share of the air. So keep the hands of the party machines off political broadcasting and allow Scottish or Welsh Nationalists, Unilateralists- what-you-will—a fair chance. This too would be a job for a watch-dog Council.

Such a Council might also recommend any steps which would help to maintain a variety in the press in general, e.g., legislation against re- strictive practices, or some subsidy on newsprint or even one of the ingenious schemes for a re- gulatory tax on advertising.

I reiterate that I do not think any of these aids are necessary now. But I do believe that some 'such Council should be set up now, before the situation gets too bad, and probably if it is set LIP now its mere presence and the publicity it will give will in itself be most salutary. After all, has not the press long told us that nothing is a better check to bad habits than to have them made public?