A free press will make mistakes

Establishing a press council seems such a neat solution. Every time the press is believed to have acted unethically, some politician will demand that one be set up.

It was raised again two weeks ago at a conference on media ethics and the marketplace at the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin. The editor of the Sunday Business Post, Damien Kiberd, said he favoured a press council with teeth.

He spoke of a fall in standards and cited a number of examples, among them the controversy over the Taoiseach and Ms Celia Larkin; and a Sunday Tribune interview with a man who said he was going to commit suicide, which paper did nothing about. He also mentioned an interview with Mr Tom Gilmartin which, he said, the interviewee had been assured would not be used but was, and the paying of witnesses in defamation actions, as happened in the Sunday Times/"Slab" Murphy libel case.

We could all add to that list. There was the Star photograph of a body floating in the Liffey and the picture of a man murdered in his car in Dublin, published by both The Irish Times and the Irish Independ- ent. We might go back to the coverage of the controversy surrounding Mr Emmet Stagg a few years ago, or the inclusion of the family of Chris De Burgh in stories about his relationship with a nanny. And our list of newspaper horror stories could easily include how the media covered issues relating to refugees and asylum-seekers.

We could also draw up another list, of course. This would include stories which led to tribunals or unearthed scandals. The media published the facts about clerical child abuse. The media discovered that businessmen were willing to give large donations to politicians, and that people were evading tax through offshore accounts. If people within the establishment are feeling increasingly nervous, it is probably because they fear exposure in the media.

What has been the response to massive changes in our newspaper culture? Those in power seem to want a press council that will regulate media which they believe are invading the privacy of ordinary people, while they ignore the need to scrutinise those in power.

Once things were formulated in a different way. The question then was of reform of the libel laws. The newspaper industry suggested, as a quid pro quo and to placate nervous politicians, that it would put in place a system of voluntary regulation, a press ombudsman, similar to the Swedish model. This was one of the recommendations in a report from the newspaper industry in June 1996.

The report made three recommendations relating to this discussion: that a newspaper ombudsman, funded by the newspaper industry, be appointed; that there be legal immunity for the ombudsman exercising the functions of his office; that extensive changes in the law of libel be introduced as a matter of urgency.

The suggestion relating to libel was first proposed by the Law Reform Commission back in 1991.

Nearly three years on, not one of those recommendations has been implemented. Reform of the libel laws is so far down the Government's priority list that there is now no hope of any change under this Government. One might also ask what has happened to the promised legislation giving protection to journalists wishing to safeguard anonymous sources. Both parties in government promised this when the journalist Susan O'Keeffe was charged with contempt at the beef tribunal for refusing to name her sources.

The debate should not be about a press council but about the place and role of the media in a democratic society, taking into account developments in the UK and Europe, and especially the sort of judgments being delivered by the European Court of Human Rights regarding press freedom and freedom of expression.

Many of the examples cited as proof of falling standards could not be dealt with by the quasi-judicial process that a press council implies - not without interfering with freedom of expression. One might not like what is published, but that does not make it wrong. Rather than put in place another layer of regulation, to be administered by a press council, it might be time to loosen control of the press and at the same time address ethical questions with a degree of subtlety.

The libel laws might be the most restrictive as far as the media is concerned, but there is also the Official Secrets Act, which has still to be rescinded. Also there are those anomalies in the law designed to ensure secrecy. Why were vocational education committees, the Garda, and the office of the President excluded from the Freedom of Information Act? And why are local authorities allowed to get away with holding meetings "in committee" in order to make decisions about health, the environment, and planning behind closed doors?

It would be an interesting exercise to see how a truly free press would operate before suggesting further restrictions. A free press will make mistakes. The press works at speed: its job is to bring the news to readers as quickly as possible. Bad judgments will be made, and wrong decisions taken in the middle of the night cannot be undone when the newspaper is to be on the streets within hours. A flawed press, however, is better than a controlled one.

Any discussions about the future of the media should begin with asking how we ensure the survival of a free press - one free from monopoly and political and commercial pressure, and one free from legal restrictions.

Indeed, given the pressures on journalists producing newspapers and news bulletins, we should marvel that things are not worse.

Michael Foley lectures in journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology and is a media commentator.