Loose Talk II

The press we deserve?

Rose Galt

I love my daily paper. On the odd occasion when I come downstairs in the morning and it's not there, I feel bereft and have been known to breach all the rules of green living by jumping in the car and driving the half mile to the nearest supermarket to buy it. Yes, I also read the same newspaper updated by the minute on-line and dip into others, but nothing for me can compare with a real paper that I can curl up with on the couch or take on the bus.
     However I appear to be part of a shrinking market as the newspaper industry faces constant decline. Between October 2007 and October 2008 every daily in the UK saw sales fall from percentages ranging from a massive 16.29% (Independent) to 0.51% (Financial Times) with even the best-selling Sun down by 2.12%. The reasons for the decline are many – 24-hour TV news, freesheets like the Metro, the explosion in the life-style magazine market. What is much more pertinent is how the proprietors respond. There are the obvious ploys like lowering the cover price to increase volume in sales and advertising or raising it with crossed fingers. My fear is that they will become ever more sleazy and titillating, ever more undeserving of the very name of newspaper.
     Many years ago I was ambushed by a local tabloid with the result that an embarrassing and highly inaccurate story accompanied by a photograph appeared on the front page. I admit that I was young and naïve and tricked into saying things that were totally misinterpreted. It was extremely distressing to my family and others and I still have nightmares about it. Maybe that has something to do with my reaction to the Max Mosley case.
     Given the distasteful political associations of his name and my total lack of interest in F1 racing, I would never have thought that I would cheer a Mosley victory. But when he won his libel action against the News of the World last July, I did just that. The paper had published secretly filmed photographs of what it called 'a Nazi-themed sex orgy' and had seen its case collapse when its principal witness withdrew. Irrespective of my personal views about his sexual predilections, I admired Mosley for his courage in raising the action, well aware of the publicity the case would generate and the distress it would cause his family. Last week the whole question of the rights of the tabloid press to invade the privacy of individuals in pursuit of higher sales was raised again by Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, in a speech to the Society of Editors in which he defended the right of papers like his to pry virtually without restraint into the lives of private citizens in order to sell more copies.
     I have no way of knowing how his remarks were received by his audience. I would like to think, however, that some of them were appalled. Besides referring to 'that wretched Human Rights Act' he defended the rights of journalists illicitly to obtain personal information such as ex-directory telephone numbers or gas bills, vilified the judge in the Mosley case and, unbelievably, referred to 'the age-old freedom of newspapers to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places'. Note that word 'moral'. This is the man whose paper last year savaged Faye Turney for selling her story of her captivity in Iran to the press, accusing her among other things of being a bad mother (The Mail's default position is misogyny). What it failed to reveal was that it had bid for her story only to be outbid by the Sun. He also seems to think that it is the role of the law to regulate civilised behaviour, as defined presumably by the Daily Mail but certainly excluding what Dacre sees as perverted and depraved. I think you probably have to go back over 350 years to Cromwell's Commonwealth to see the law's function so described.
     Amid Dacre’s nauseating moral rectitude – he is fond of words like 'depraved', 'perverted' and 'insidiously' – is his real motive. With a frankness verging on the disingenuous he said: 'if mass-circulation newspapers don't have the freedom to write about scandal, I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulation'. So there it is. The circulation decline can be halted only by reporting what editors define as 'scandal' in as lurid a way as possible. There has always been a concept of 'public interest' in matters of privacy and publicity, as failed injunction attempts attest. If a government minister is dipping his fingers in the public till, that merits being exposed. But Dacre and many of his fellow-editors appear to see no real distinction between 'the public interest' and 'that which interests the public'. As recent libel payouts and prominently printed apologies in high profile cases show, there is not even the excuse of accuracy to compensate for the hurt caused to the victims in the circulation wars.
     Freedom of the press is a sine qua non of a democratic society, a constantly quoted bulwark against tyranny. But such freedom should not be taken to embrace the right to publish half-truths, innuendo and downright lies about private lives, particularly if they significantly harm others. Perhaps Dacre should be using his influence as head of the Society of Editors' ethics committee to encourage the development of a national press that engenders pride rather than shame.