AND ANOTHER THING
S.S. Major: full speed ahead towards the media iceberg
PAUL JOHNSON
his year the Government will have to legislate to curb the excesses of the media, which have reached a level of depravity the public will no longer tolerate. Ministers approach the subject in fear and confusion. On the one hand, they loathe the tabloids, and some of the broadsheets, with a pas- sion the ordinary citizen does not share, based as it is on a well justified terror that journalistic exposure of their countless iniquities will cost them their jobs and eventually their seats. On the other, they need some support from the largely conser- vative press to stay in office at all. This schizophrenia is reflected in the behaviour of John Major. Although threatening the press with cataracts and hurricanes while among his cronies in the privacy of Down- ing Street, at the same time he oozes charm and hospitality to media magnates and allows his acolytes to hint that shining baubles are on offer to those who keep their writers under control.
This strategy will not work; and I suspect that when it produces legislation, the Major regime — not so much a banana skin gov- ernment as a banana republic one — will make as big a mess of it as it seems to do of everything else. It, and Sir David Calcutt, it seems, confuse two quite separate abuses. One is the use of bugs, phone tapping, long-range lenses and other devices to obtain information and photos of the grand and powerful. Some of these are already unlawful; and if the law needs strengthen- ing and expanding, then strengthened and expanded it must be, but in such a way that it applies to all offenders, including govern- ment itself.
The second abuse is quite different and much more important. Something must be done to tackle the journalist who, using perfectly lawful techniques invades the pri- vacy of individuals, high and low, by making public details of their lives which are of no concern to anyone else. If the facts are true, or mostly true, the individual has no redress, under the present law, even though publication may ruin his marriage, wreck his family life and cause him and those close to him intense unhappiness which will last for years. This is the real evil that needs to be addressed.
By confusing these two quite distinct malpractices, and concentrating on the first, Calcutt, with the government follow- ing clumsily and self-interestedly in his wake, will end up with a bill which will get
the worst of all possible worlds. It will antagonise the media, leave the public dis- satisfied and contemptuous, and the real victims of abuse unprotected. In short it will not work. Indeed, I am not even sure it will get through parliament at all, and if it does, the mangling it will receive in Com- mittee and in the House of Lords is likely to reduce it from a dog's breakfast to what General de Gaulle called a chien-en-lit.
Such a bill must inevitably be an attempt to 'reform' the media — that is, impose special penalties on a restricted category of persons and institutions, who belong to a particular profession. That runs against the whole spirit of English jurisprudence which treats all citizens as equal before the law and legislates for the community as a whole. A bill which singles out editors and journalists for punishments applying to no one else sticks in the craw of our judicial system. Matters will be made worse if, as at present intended, the bill incorporates a charter of journalistic standards. This will come oddly from a Prime Minister who ignored his own ridiculous Citizen's Char- ter over Maastricht, just as King John broke MHgna Carta almost immediately he had signed it.
Since English jurisprudence prefers to be universalist, great use is made of self-regu- lation. Thus the General Medical Council controls the doctors, the Law Society the solicitors, the Bar Council the barristers and so on. But, you may say, the press has repeatedly failed to regulate itself. The Press Council was a flop, and the Press Complaints Commission has merely made itself ridiculous. Rumours that the pro- posed bill will 'strengthen' the PCC by `laicising' it merely make me smile cynical- ly. All the attempts to introduce lay super- vision of the excesses of television have ended in ignominy. As for the proposal to have a state quasi-judicial body, with pow- ers to fine and jail editors, that is a formula for post-publication censorship of the most obnoxious kind. I have no doubt it appeals strongly to certain members of the Cabinet — though they would like pre-publication censorship even better. But that is merely an additional reason for getting rid of them. It should be borne in mind that, greatly as the public dislike journalists, they are beginning to despise politicians even more and the Cabinet, with its Titanic com- plex, most of all.
The true solution is simple, fair and fully in the tradition of English justice. We have laws to protect the individual's body from murder and injury; his property from theft and trespass; his good name from false defamation. What we now need is a law to protect his privacy from unwarranted inva- sion. The law would be universalist. It would give redress to all, from the Queen to the unemployed. It would be aimed at all — not just the media, but all the snoopers, official and unofficial, who seek to pene- trate our private domain without justifica- tion. Such a law would be primarily civil: that is, infringement of it would be a tort, to be redressed by financial damages. But it would have a criminal provision, in the most extreme cases, which would permit the courts to fine and even imprison fla- grant offenders. The law would permit a defence of public interest which would pro- tect both the Government and the media when they behave responsibly. It would be up to the jury to decide whether the claim that the accused acted pro bono public° was valid or cynical; and it is hard to imagine a more suitable body of men and women who are better judges of where the public inter- est lies. To sum up: we have here a solution to a difficult problem which is both simple and equitable — one reason, I fear, that this Government which seems to labour under the curse of Cain, will not adopt it. Instead, it will head straight for the iceberg, all engines full throttle.
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