Americans have no great confidence in the press, despite the freedom it enjoys, the New York Times journalist, Mr Anthony Lewis, said last night.
After the great legal battles over many years for press freedom, journalists are held in low regard by the public, alongside members of Congress. Mr Lewis said it was not just that the public was unhappy with journalists, the press was not very happy about itself.
Speaking at the annual RTE/ UCD Broadcasting, Society and the Law lecture on the subject "Law and the Press: A Deadly Embrace", Mr Lewis said the American press was in "soulsearching mood, deepened in recent days by the competitive rush to print rumours about the President and a backlash of conscience about that behaviour".
What had gone wrong with the profession? he asked. He suggested one problem was that some journalists suffered from "hubris, a self-importance that is unjustified and unbecoming". This stemmed from appearing on television, with its pervasive impact.
Reporters, and not just television journalists, had become famous for being on television. There was nothing wrong with this, "but the fact that television makes your face recognisable does not make you a philosopher king".
Earlier, he said he would prefer to talk of the press rather than the media, as that word had a "dread connotation" and had come to mean not journalism, but "infotainment".
American television is involved in a "competition in vulgarity" and of local news featuring crime, fires and tragedy and of taking events of no importance and breathlessly dramatising them.
Crime had declined but because of what appears on local TV news, Americans are convinced that the menace of crime is growing. Politicians play on people's fears by giving the US the longest, harshest sentences in the world.
News had declined into "infotainment", where hyperbolic, partisan characters "spew out their version of events. The newest menace is the person who puts his words out on the Internet, without editing or responsibility, and thereby proclaims himself a journalist. One such character, named Matt Drudge, has been the source of some of the ugliest rumours about President Clinton."
There was also an overdone posture of aggression towards politicians and healthy scepticism had turned to cynicism. Investigative journalism had become attack journalism.
Earlier, he described some landmarks that had determined the relationship between the press and the law in the US. Journalists in the US enjoyed extraordinary freedom: freedom to be harsh on the powerful, to disclose secrets and even to make mistakes. Those freedoms had been won over many decades of judges interpreting the language of the First Amendment, applying it to new needs and conditions in the light of experience.
The press had hardly been grateful for this. If the press loses a case in court, it can get very angry. He cited one adverse case in the Supreme Court. An editor wrote that it had the potential of "totally inhibiting the press to a degree seldom seen outside a dictatorial or fascist country". The decision, he said, had no such effect.
"The truth is that the press is not always the good guy, not in the US any more than in other countries and sometimes the press should be held to account."
The press is not a perfect institution in the US any more than in other countries. Jefferson and Madison had no illusion about editorial perfection in their day. "They just believed that some abuse of freedom was a price worth paying for the press's great function of speaking truth to power; speaking without shackles, without fear.
"We all know of times when the press has risen above the ordinary vanities of life, above the comfortable routine, and shown great courage in exposing wrong. There is the great example here in Dublin: the heartbreaking example of Veronica Guerin, who lost her life as a result of her campaign to expose the drug trade."
The US is said to be the most legalised of countries. Without the pervasive influence of law, a diverse society in a diverse continent could not have held together. "But I think it is also true that a democratic political system could not function in our vast country without the press: a press committed to its highest purpose." The pace of events, the shrinking world, the dangers of technological change all demanded more from journalism. The American system was dependent on both the law and the press. They were essential to each other.