In a press council, owners, professionals and citizens should get togetherto better social communication, writes
Media are constantly campaigning to get, keep, increase their freedom. Very well, but on two conditions. The first is that freedom be conceived as a means to an end, the end being good public service. The second is that freedom be conceived as freedom also from Big Business, not just from Big Government.
That is why some State regulation is needed. Just look over the Atlantic to see what follows almost total deregulation. A few profit-obsessed conglomerates churn out infotainment (preferably a blend of sex, celebrity and violence) and conservative propaganda.
To keep State interference to a minimum, some advocate "self-regulation". That does not work. Media people normally close ranks against critics and rarely bite each other. What does work is "media accountability": the crucial difference is that the public is involved.
Many means exist of making media responsible and responsive. I have counted 80 such non-governmental "media accountability systems" or MAS (for a list of them, see www.press councils.org). MAS are democratic, all being initiated and operated by the profession or by the public, not by the government or its bureaucracy.
They show extreme diversity. MAS include individuals (like an ombudsman), structured groups (like a TV viewers' association), single documents (like a critical report), small media (like journalism reviews) and processes, short (like an ethical audit) or long (like a university education).
Some are internal to media, some are created and managed outside the media and some involve the co-operation of media and non-media people. They function at local, regional, national or international level, or at all four levels (like press councils). The effect they produce can be immediate (like an internal memo) or short-term (like an awareness session) or long-term (like communication research).
Not only are MAS flexible, but they complement each other, since they do not operate in the same time-frames: a correction-box has an immediate effect whereas a university education takes years. While none is sufficient, all are useful - and, importantly, all of them have proved harmless.
The best-known of all MAS is the press council (PC), a voluntary body that fields complaints from citizens against the media, examines whether they are justified and then publishes its opinion. No charge for filing a complaint. No punishment for a guilty newspaper except publicity. Most democracies now have a press council. In the future, it could become the best of MAS , because it is a permanent autonomous institution, entirely devoted to improving the news media.
It is capable of using several paths to reach its goal other than adjudicating complaints. It is capable of adapting to various contexts at every level of society. Mainly, it is the only MAS that gathers and represents all major actors of social communication: the people who own the power to inform, those who possess the talent to inform and those who have the right to be informed.
That said, a press council is always controversial. Some consider it as a ploy to dissuade a parliament from setting up a special press tribunal and as an inexpensive means to avoid being taken to court by irate citizens.
Others see a press council as a first step towards State control of news media, which is absurd: the point of a press council (and of other MAS) is to improve the news service without state intervention. Admittedly, there are statutory PCs in three democracies, but they apparently manage to stay independent.
The Danish one benefits from an age-old democratic environment. The one in India is original as it is mainly media people that use it to complain against officials. The one in Lithuania is too young to be fairly evaluated.
In a press council, owners, professionals and citizens get together to improve social communication. Thus they send a signal. What the existence of a press council implies counts as much as what the press council does. It implies that it is no longer normal that somebody use a news medium at will just because he/she owns it or possesses political power.
Owners acknowledge that their employees have a major say in production and journalists acknowledge that media-users also have a right to make their views heard.
So, by nature, a press council is capable of much: fight for press freedom, monitor the media, spot dangerous trends, inform the public about the media, warn them about threats to media quality, initiate complaints, take an interest in training and research, help develop other media accountability systems. Regrettably, most often it devotes itself exclusively to processing grievances.
In that function, independent councils are often accused of having no teeth. Actually, a press council has a tooth, just one: the publication of its adjudications. Apparently that tooth can cause intense pain. Media people hate to see their errors exposed. Remember the rabid reaction of the daily rags against the former British Press Council.
A press council can be efficient but on three conditions. One is that it be kept on its toes: the parliament must turn an eye upon it from time to time and make ugly noises about setting up a statutory control commission.
The second condition is that a press council have money. Otherwise it cannot operate fast and visibly. Even if it limits itself to examining complaints, it needs the support of public opinion; so the man/woman in the street needs to be aware of its existence.
Alas, it too often is not the case even in nations which have had a council for 30 years or more. Here again the State can help. In a democracy, subsidies can be granted with no strings attached. Thus the Finnish press council gets 50 per cent of its income and the German press council gets 30 per cent. The rest can come from unions, associations, foundations and mainly from media owners.
There is, in my view, a third condition. The purpose of a press council cannot be just to give a few offended individuals a possibility to obtain redress from the media, without the expense of suing, nor can its purpose just be to help media avoid expensive libel or privacy suits. The purpose is to improve media service to the public. Such service is becoming more and more important for all.
A national press council must not be expected to do it alone, even if assisted by regional and local ones. But if an environment allows a press council to flourish, then all other media accountability systems can also operate. So a press council should encourage the development of them.
Most people do not realise that today many MAS have a function which did not exist some years ago. They have become a normal part of media life, like correction boxes, letters to the editor, codes of ethics, university-level training, regular pages or programmes devoted to media, readership surveys, media users' associations etc. Media now pay far more attention to the public than they used to, which is as it should be.
Most people do not realise either that news media, while not good enough, are better nowadays than they ever were, but they still need to be improved. Owners must understand that quality pays, on a long-term basis. Journalists need to conquer, preserve, increase their independence: this they can do through professional solidarity and with the support of the public. Lastly, the public must agree to contribute to the improvement of news media. It must be encouraged to assume the task.
That is what a genuine press council is about. It would be extremely regrettable if over-strict libel laws kept one from being established in Ireland.
• Claude-Jean Bertrand is author of Media Ethics and Accountability Systems and An Arsenal For Democracy: Media Accountability Systems