Keeper Of The Keys

The establishment this year of the Press Council of Ireland is being described as one of the most significant developments in the history of print media in this country.

The purpose of the new office is to provide citizens with a forum to resolve complaints against the media. However, the office is also dedicated to encouraging the highest standards of journalism and ethics, as well as defending the freedom of the press. In pursuit of this objective, a Code of Practice has been formulated, which is still very much a work in progress. And a Press Ombudsman, Dr. John Horgan, has been appointed, who – in theory at least – will be the first port of call for people who have complaints.
One of the big battlegrounds is likely to be the issue of the right to privacy. Just how important is that right?
“It is stated in the Code that there may be certain circumstances where the right of privacy may come second to the public interest,” John Horgan observes. “But it’s very easy to confuse these two things: something that’s in the public interest and something that the public might be interested in, you know? The public might be intensely interested in somebody else’s private life – particularly the private life of a public person – but it’s not necessarily in the public interest to disclose details of that person’s private life.
“Journalists need to be more conscious of the fact that the people who read them and the people about whom they write about are not just ciphers on the page,” he adds. “They are real people with feelings and families and issues. And perhaps the reputation of newspapers and of journalists is not as high as some journalists and editors feel that it is. I said in my speech to the NUJ in Tullamore, just before Christmas, that journalists would be wise not to overestimate the affection in which they are held! But they do perform a very necessary social function – at times, a political function as well.
“Equally, people on the outside – people who don’t know anything about journalism – need to know more about the extraordinary difficulty in producing daily newspapers. The intense time-pressures. The huge risks of getting things wrong. Mistakes are made so often – generally as the result of these time-pressures and constraints, rather than any bias or any particular attitude by a particular journalist to a particular individual, public or private.”

DOG EAT DOG
What about the issue of harassment by the media? It’s a subject that Horgan appears to have some interesting views on.
“In relation to harassment the PCC in Britain now have a policy, which is quite interesting, that if anybody feels that they are being unduly harassed – before anything is published – if they contact the Press Council then the Press Council, without making an actual decision, can let the newspapers know that this particular person wants to be left alone and that they think it’s a reasonable request. And by and large, the papers will pull their people off.
“One of the difficulties is that no individual reporter or photographer wants to leave a scene, or what they think is a news scene, if they feel that everybody else is going to stay there, and they are not going to get the story and everybody else is. But if everybody pulls back at the same time…
“Something like that does happen, I think, from time to time here in Ireland, in relation to suicides, which can be very traumatic for families and individuals concerned. Where things like taste and intrusion and privacy are concerned there are areas in which journalists and newspapers operate quite effectively and are respectful of people’s rights – without having to have strict rules and laws saying, ‘You must do that; or you musn’t do that’.”
Would Horgan agree that, while the PCI can focus on standards, they can’t control issues of taste?
“That’s true. We do exclude taste. The simplest way of look at it is that bad taste is – whether you like it or not – unfortunately a part of the price you pay for free press. It’s something that you just have to grin and bear.”
The phones have been ringing non-stop, says Horgan, since the PCI opened their office in Dublin’s Westmoreland Street back in January.
“We’ve got a lot of calls. I sometimes think that half the people in Ireland think we can solve all the problems of the media; and the other half think we can solve none of them (laughs)! When we have a bit of a track record people will be able to see what we can do and what we can’t do. “But I think there is an expectation out there that we will be able to contribute to the emergence of best professional practise in journalism.”
But the Press Council of Ireland has no real powers to impose fines or punishments?
“It’s a fair criticism, but it’s made by people who aren’t perhaps up to speed on the way newspapers work and the way journalists feel about their work. If I or the Press Council come to a decision that a newspaper has done something wrong and we publish that decision then not only does the newspaper itself have to publish it, but it goes on our website and another newspaper is free to publish it and comment on it,” Horgan states. “There is a fair amount of dog eat dog out there and newspapers are not above taking great pleasure from the misfortunes of their competitors. I get a strong sense from editors and journalists that they do want to avoid this level of criticism – and if they feel that it’s real, then it is real.”

FINANCIAL CLOUT
Citing the Broadcast Complaints Commission’s average of 350 complaints a year, Horgan believes that the PCI will receive “somewhere between 400 to 600” complaints this year. But he points out that not all of them will be formalised.
“In Britain, for example, they have three or four thousand complaints a year. Most of them are resolved by conciliation, which is a very important and not yet a clearly understood part of our work. We want to bring newspapers and complainants to a situation where it doesn’t have to go to judgment. In Britain they only make determinations on 30 or 40 cases. So, I’d be surprised if there are more than – I don’t know, I’m picking a figure out of the air now – 20 determinations. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an awful lot of other work going on behind the scenes.”
What is Horgan’s view on the theory that the standards of journalism has deteriorated in recent years, particularly since the emergence of the Irish editions of British tabloids?
“People have been complaining about declining standards of the press since the printing press was invented and they started printing the Bible! Certainly competition has hotted up in the print media and there is no doubt that occasionally competition results in people doing things that they shouldn’t do. But it’s not confined to any particular kind of newspaper.”
The Defamation Bill is almost near completion and this, according to Horgan, will make a “huge difference” to the newspaper industry.
“At the moment, under the old law, if a newspaper apologises – the person to whom they apologise can then simply go to court and say, ‘Give me my money’. Generally speaking, a newspaper will not publish an apology now unless they get a letter from the solicitor of the person who’s complaining about them, saying that if they publish an apology that will be the end of the matter,” Horgan points out.
“Now, under the Defamation Bill, a paper can apologise and if a person goes to court the apology can be used not to increase the amount of damages but, in fact, reduce them because the court will see that the paper recognised it made a mistake.”
Presumably newspapers will be hoping that the introduction of the PCI will help to reduce the number of cases going through the courts.
“I don’t know whether it will or not. Anybody who comes to us – the decision might go for them or against them – they still have the right to go to court afterwards, but I would hope that common sense would see to it that our procedures, which will be far quicker than any court, will be totally free both to the newspapers and to the complainants. It will be a better way of solving at least some of the problems.
“There will always be big issues for some complainants that will think, ‘There’s no point in going there. There has been so much defamation done to my reputation that substantial damages are the only possible thing that I could possibly accept’. So, if that’s what they think, they won’t come to us at all. But for people who are less certain of winning, or who don’t want the risk of going to court, or don’t have the financial clout, our procedures could be very useful. There are lots of ways in which newspapers can meet complainants halfway – a newspaper could agree to publish a letter; an editor could write privately to a complainant to explain what happened; they could publish an article by the complainant.
“Newspapers are a very flexible institutions and once they realise that they have a lot of flexibility in terms of meeting complainants I think a lot of complainants will be solved more easily.”