Challenges to Journalism by Tom Felle

Challenges to Journalism

Inaugural Adjunct Professorial Lecture by Geraldine Kennedy 27th February, 2013 It is a great pleasure for me to be invited to give an inaugural lecture as adjunct Professor of Journalism in the University of Limerick this evening. I must apologise to you all for having had to cancel this event

last October. I was in hospital with a health issue that, thankfully, turned out to be less serious than it might have been. And then, to compound matters, I had the ‘flu last week. I am so pleased to be here and given that I am a person who always turns up on time on the day, I have to offer you a double apology. Thank you for being here! Your respected Head of Journalism, Tom Felle, told me to pick my own topic for this lecture. I was going to talk about the regulation of the media, a matter in which I had to develop a keen interest because of some of the things that happened throughout my journalistic career. There was phone -‐tapping and the establishment of the constitutional right to privacy in communications in the 1980s; and the right to protect journalistic sources, which is unfinished business,

currently before the European Court of Human Rights. I was chairman of the Press Freedom Committee of the National Newspapers’ of Ireland (NNI) when the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrats Coalition became the Government to make the final decision to address what was regarded by the newspaper industry as the draconian Defamation Act of 1961. I was personally involved with representatives of all the different interest groups in the Press Industry Steering Committee – including the NUJ, the journalists in the field for whom standards were being set down -‐ in the negotiations to establish the Office of Press Ombudsman and the Press Council and see off the Government’s proposed Privacy Bill, 2006, full details of which were published at that time. Then, when so much is happening in the media world today, I thought that this might be an unduly narrow

focus for a public lecture from a person who has spent a lifetime in journalism -‐ with the exception of that very valuable and educational break of two-‐and-‐ a-‐half years as a member of the Dail between 1987-‐ 1989. You might well ask what is my starting position for this lecture? This is it. To say that one is a “traditional journalist” today is like admitting to some kind of questionable behavior. You could almost be asked to apologise for it. To admit to being prepared to read a 2,000-‐word article on a topic of interest – rather than bite size bullet points, the headlines of everything, surrounded by plenty of white space – is almost a crime. I am concerned that this is the current concept of journalism because I believe it is before its time.

There is a generation of journalists today who have rarely gone into the field to do a story; who value celebrity before anything else. Most of their research is done in front of a computer screen. They google. They don’t get to know people. And getting to know people, their personalities, judgments, prejudices and priorities has been invaluable to me in my career. And it can only happen in a small country like Ireland. (Give example) I would be advising journalism students today, as always, that whatever the future of newspapers – (I don’t like the word “print”) – the only reason for being a journalist is to report fairly and independently, to give both sides of the story, to separate fact from comment and to put in place a rigorous verification process. This genre of journalism will always be required in a democratic society.

Yet, there is evidence that it is disappearing with the dash for deadlines on different platforms. I am firmly of the view that the media is under a greater threat of regulation now than ever before because of the confluence of different issues forcing themselves on to the legislative agenda at the one time. There’s monopoly, ownership and competition, on the one hand; the editorial standards exposed for all to see in the Fr Reynolds and Sean Gallagher cases in RTE; the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry into phone-‐hacking in UK newspapers (the inquiry was very impressed by the Irish Press Council model and invited the Press Ombudsman, Prof John Horgan, to come before it to explain it); the new Charter for Journalists over-‐riding the authority of editors in Independent News and Media (INM) following the Denis O’Brien defamation case; and, of course, the big question as to whether social media should, or could, be regulated. And, as always, there is the issue of privacy.

Before going into all of that, I must say that I have seen how journalism has changed over the past 40 years and, believe it or not, it has been mostly for the public good. You might be surprised that I would say that. Readers and citizens are now more informed than ever before: about politics when they go out to vote, the law, consumer rights, social issues. Less stuff is swept under the carpet. I suppose that every former Editor would say that things are not what they used to be; they never are in any sphere in society. There is no doubt that there has been a dramatic change in the principles, practice and delivery of journalism in that period. There has also been a decline in standards. But, in this most challenging environment, I would not be as pessimistic about the life span of newspapers as many of my peers. Granted, young

people live their lives online; it is difficult, if not impossible, to attract them to buy – to pay for – a newspaper. But, just look at the composition of the population. On mature reflection, to borrow that wonderful phrase used by the senior Brian Lenihan some years ago, there will still be a demand from readers for good journalism for some years to come. You might argue that the latest circulation figures for all newspapers contradict this theory. I would argue that there is still a very substantial sub-‐section of Irish society that is interested in news, more information, to allow them to make up their own minds about current affairs. They want more than headlines on an iphone. They are now probably the over 45s, if not the over 50s, generation. The big question facing newspapers, unlike any other period in their history, is how do they prolong their life by catering for existing readers as the younger generation has migrated to the screen? I think that we live in a time when it is extremely difficult to cover different audiences –

young and old -‐ in the newspaper. The interests of one isolate the other. I am saying this because the advent of television – single channel RTE – in the 1960s was supposed to change the concept of news and threaten the future of newspapers. This was complemented by the arrival of a totally new phenomenon in Irish politics in the 1970s: the communications industry, the Government spokesman, the PR persons, the spin-‐doctors and the sound bite. There were good developments as well. We were beginning about then to move beyond what John Healy, the Irish Times columnist from Mayo, reported so well:

the Ireland of the squinting windows. Journalism was changing and opening up Irish society. This was a difficult time requiring courageous journalism. I remember the late Dick Walsh, political editor of The Irish Times, recounting stories to me as a cub reporter in the early 1970s about what really, really happened, as he witnessed it, in the Arms Crisis; what the relationships really were in the second last single party Fianna Fail government. Dick, who hailed from Cratloe, just a few miles away, could talk for Ireland but I remember sitting there, in my early 20’s, marveling at the personal insights he could bring to major events in the history of modern Ireland. You would not always agree with his conclusions, but he was there. That was – and is – the great privilege of the journalist: to observe, at first hand, big and small events in the history of a nation as they are taking

place; to produce the first draft of that history, however imperfect, for citizens on the day. In order to do that, you have to be physically there, not monitoring events online. At a time when trust has been lost in almost all institutions in this State – politics, the church, banks, lawyers – do journalists have any authority an, if so, from where do they derive it? Journalists like to think that press freedom is all about them. But, it is not. It is about the public’s right to know; their right as citizens. The freedom of expression, enshrined in the Constitution just over 75 years ago, is your freedom and we, as journalists, exist to serve your right to know in a democratic society. That has always been my philosophy during a lifetime in journalism. When I became Editor of The Irish Times in 2002, I vowed that I would articulate it: because journalists live in a deadline-‐driven

environment every single working day where they rarely have the time to think about their role in society. But, good journalists know it instinctively. (Many issues came across my desk which required a public explanation, like the rationale for publishing and protecting the source of the Colm Keena story about the payment of sums of money to then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, while he was Minister for Finance; the articles by Frank McDonald and Kathy Sheridan about the big builders in the Celtic Tiger years, and equally interesting, what happened to them; and, the series which broke through new borders which I took great pride in publishing, Carl O’Brien’s Stories of Suicide.) The freedom of the press is one of those simple phrases that cover a world of complexities. As we all know, it is an essential cornerstone of democracy, a major component of the external vigilance that is essential to political and economic freedom. It is among the first items for removal on the agenda of

every authoritarian government and it also under more or less permanent pressure from a variety of other, less obvious, more obscure sources. But, in order to protect the freedom of the press, it must be defensible on public rather than commercial interest grounds. And now, I turn to the issue of the regulation of media standards. My predecessor, Douglas Gageby, got involved in a committee and campaign to change the Defamation Act, 1961, on his retirement in the mid-‐1980s. It was a coincidence that I ended up as Editor of The Irish Times when the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrats Government moved to amend the Act in the mid-‐ 2000s. And it is a further coincidence that the defence of fair and honest

opinion in that Defamation Act was tested for the first time in the Denis O’Brien case a fortnight ago. That was the old defence of fair comment. I was very conscious that the introduction of a new Defamation Bill after 45 years would be a defining moment in Irish journalism. The new regulatory regime for the practice of the profession would set the template for journalism for perhaps the next half century. The old law on libel had curtailed legitimate media and public scrutiny of many of the issues being examined by costly tribunals in the previous decade or more. So the proposed Defamation Bill was welcome for many reasons. I will mention that it would limit the “gagging writ” by requiring the plaintiff to swear a verifying affidavit setting out their case; it would allow a newspaper to publish an apology without admission of liability; and, most importantly in my view, it would introduce a new

defence of “fair and reasonable publication” in defamation cases which would allow media organizations to publish stories of public importance for the public benefit if they can be shown to have been investigated thoroughly and done in good faith – defence has not yet been tested in the courts. The quid pro quo for these changes was the establishment of an independent Press Ombudsman and Press Council of Ireland financed by the media industry. I firmly supported the setting up of these offices – with or without changes in defamation – to give citizens a forum of complaint and redress against the media. I believed that it would be overwhelmingly in the interests of journalists and their standing in the community that an agreed Code of Standards could be adjudicated upon by an independent Press Council, the majority of whose members are from outside the media industry.

(As an aside, I was interested in Mr Denis O’Brien’s reported view of the Press Council in his recent court case. It was never intended that the establishment of the Office of Press Ombudsman and the Press Council would affect, not to mention replace, the individual’s right to have recourse to the law in a defamation action). The proposals for the new Defamation Bill, 2006, were published in the wake of the Liam Lawlor story. It marked a tipping point in Irish journalism. It galvanised the then Government into the position that there would be no change in the libel laws without the passage of privacy legislation. The Privacy Bill, 2006, was published which, luckily in one respect, was so draconian that it would make it impossible for any serious matter of public interest to be investigated properly, never mind being brought to publication. The proposals, if enacted, would have had a chilling effect on good journalism.

Let me give you one example. It would be the modus operandi in The Irish Times to seek both sides of the story before publication. The businessman, politician or whomsoever would know that a story was being investigated. It would have been open to that person to stoop the investigation in its tracks, take an injunction in the courts in private to prevent publication on grounds of invasion of privacy. The newspaper would be compelled to justify the investigation of a story before I had even been decided to publish it. This Bill had many consequences, unintended by Ministers, and was withdrawn. That is not to say, however, that the regulation of privacy will not be put on the table again. Privacy is seen by most people outside of the newspaper industry as one of the big issues in journalism today, especially with the advent of social media. Privacy is

inextricably tied up in the whole public debate about declining standards in the media. Before I conclude, I have to say something about some of the public controversies surrounding the practice of journalism. I particularly regret the lapse of editorial standards in RTE in the Fr Reynolds case and mishandling of Sean Gallagher in the final Prime Time debate in the presidential election. I believe in public service broadcasting. These mistakes are indefensible. They have damaged RTE. The only thing that can be said in mitigation of the Fr Reynolds and Sean Gallagher cases is that they occurred because of systemic failures. These can be put right. These controversies are a far cry from the phone-‐ hacking scandal in British newspapers leading to the public enquiry by Lord Justice Leveson. The Press Ombudsman, Professor John Horgan, gave interesting

evidence about the Irish model of press regulation to that enquiry. I would not agree with the Leveson recommendations that the Press Council should be able to investigate actions which raise the issue of possible criminal behaviour and impose fines on editors. These are serious matters to be addressed in other fora. To conclude. It must be a difficult time to be an editor of serious journalism. The threat to the independence of editors is greater today than at any other time in the history of newspapers and broadcasting. There is regulation of a legal and other nature; there are the competing commercial interests to grow readers/audiences to survive; there are the advertising auctions between

media outlets; and, there are the multiplicity of internet and other platforms “stealing” stories from expensive conventional newsrooms which have big editorial budgets and making them available to recipients for nothing. (As an aside, this business model is utterly unsustainable). And, arising from the Denis O’Brien libel case, there is the most serious attempt to infringe the editorial authority of INM editors. There is another challenge to the guardian of editorial interests in this new environment where there is less time for the Editor to be an Editor. He/she is seen more as the head of the production floor, spewing out content on whatever platforms are the vogue of the moment, engaging more and more in general management, human resources, circulation and marketing, and how to make money on the website. There is less and less time for the Editor to do his/her real job to keep informed about news: politics, business, sociology, trends in society to ensure that

his/her newspaper is constantly engaged in a conversation with its community. If this could be done by market research, there would never have been an unsuccessful newspaper anywhere in the world. A new definition of news is emerging, as it did after the advent of television in the 1960s, but this time it is designed to suit its producers for cost reasons rather than its recipients. This will affect all of your careers in journalism. And it could cause the killing off of newspapers before their time is fully out.