The Press Council should be the last body to suppress minority or dissenting opinions for the sake of collegiality, writes JOHN HORGAN.
LAST YEAR a panel of distinguished persons invited me to become a founding member of the new Press Council of Ireland. This followed advertisements in the papers requesting expressions of interest to which I had responded, and the invitation was for me a great honour.
I looked forward to participating in a project that had long been close to my heart. I believed that the Irish print media industry was genuinely interested in having a truly independent forum that, while upholding the freedom of the press, would hear complaints about breaches of good journalistic standards in an open and transparent way.
A code of conduct had already been prepared by the Press Industry Code Committee. This code is an excellent piece of work that carefully took a middle course between the dangers of over-prescription and vagueness.
The Press Ombudsman and the Press Council will have some latitude but little difficulty in interpreting and applying it.
My experience in voluntary dispute resolution, gained over 12 years in the Labour Court and a lifelong career in industrial relations was, I believed, the principal contribution I brought to the table, and I understood that this was the main reason I was chosen.
Therefore, in the absence of any other proposals, I took the initiative last January to circulate to my colleagues a draft set of procedures which I suggested might form the basis for a discussion as to how we might go about making our decisions.
I felt it was important to agree on the ground rules of our procedure before hearing any cases because, if there were to be any difficulties, it would be better that they be sorted out in the abstract rather than settled in the context of a particular case.
One proposal was that all members of the Press Council would strive to reach unanimity when deciding whether or not a particular publication had breached a provision of the code of conduct. However, I also suggested that when such unanimity was not possible, those members who found themselves in the minority should be allowed to record their dissenting views along with the majority decision.
I imagined that this would be accepted by the Press Council. It seemed obvious to me that we should allow for the expression of minority views. But it was not to be.
There are precedents on both sides of the argument. The Supreme Court, for example, usually has a multiplicity of views in ordinary cases, but is prohibited from expressing them in cases where the constitutionality of a Bill is being decided.
The Labour Court is prohibited by law from disclosing even the existence of minority views but the procedures of the Employment Appeals Tribunal require that minority views be recorded in its decisions.
Similarly, press councils in some other countries appear to act only by consensus, but others have no difficulty in being open and frank in revealing how they reach their decisions.
For example, the New Zealand Press Council in a decision in Case Number 1060: Trina Stevens against Woman's Day, states: "A majority of the Press Council upheld the complaint, with a minority view being expressed in the dissent below."
The finding names the members in the majority, along with those who held the dissenting view.
In Case Number 768: C Hall against Northland Age, involving politically incorrect jokes, the finding states openly that while the majority did not uphold the complaint, "the complaint was vigorously debated within the council and a minority view is offered by those who favoured an upheld complaint, the chairman, Sir John Jeffries, Sandra Goodchild, Dinah Dolbel and Denis McLean".
This, I thought, was the model that the new Irish Press Council should follow. The Press Council of Ireland will now be making determinations based on interpretations of the code of conduct and it will be important that it builds up a body of case law on which the industry and public can rely. It will also be subject to judicial review.
It appears to me that it would be greatly fortified in developing its jurisprudence if the members were permitted to express alternative judgments while acknowledging that the majority determines the case.
Experience also shows that where a minority is entitled to express an opinion, it is, curiously, much less likely to feel the need to avail of the facility.
The dynamic of a group discussion in which all members have to stand up and be counted encourages responsible and rational decision-making. There is nowhere for irrational or prejudiced thinking to hide in such an open system.
The onus on justifying secrecy under the guise of confidentiality rightly lies with those who propose it and not with those who oppose it.
Having been inadequately debated at a previous meeting, the matter finally came to a head at the most recent meeting of the Press Council on April 18th last, coincidentally the 120th anniversary of the publication by the Times of the Pigott forgeries.
I had indicated in advance of the meeting that I would be proposing a compromise document arising from the previous discussion but which still contained a provision that allowed the members to express minority views.
When my proposal was put to the meeting it was not seconded, and was not therefore discussed.
When the merits of the first substantive cases came up for discussion I excused myself from the meeting and resigned by letter to the chairman two days later.
My views are conventional, orthodox and liberal and I believe passionately in a free press. I have no reason to believe that I would be continuously at odds with the other members of the council, all of whom I highly respect, and I accept that they all have unquestioned reputations for integrity.
The new Press Council needs to establish its credibility, and it does nothing to achieve that by holding up a facade of unanimity where such may not exist. This was a unique opportunity to demonstrate exemplary openness and transparency. The Press Council above all should be the last one to suppress minority or dissenting opinions for the sake of collegiality.
Articles 45 and 49 of the Human Rights Convention provides that judges in the European Court of Human Rights, when they are not unanimous, are "entitled to deliver a separate opinion".
This entitlement was what I wanted for members of the Press Council, and it was for the lack of it that I resigned.
I was also concerned with the excessive confidentiality with which the Ombudsman and Press Council were proposing to conduct their business. It seemed to me that the restrictions that were being placed on the reporting of the business of the Press Council come close to collusion in withholding information from the public.
I disagreed with that. These limitations might and hopefully will be overcome in time, but only by resigning could I make clear my objection to the repression of dissenting views - as this in itself is a minority view.
I am making public the reasons for my resignation after only nine months because I feel that it is a matter of legitimate public interest that justifies the setting aside of the convention of confidentiality surrounding the business of the Press Council. I know that many people of integrity will honestly disagree with the stance I have taken and they may well be right.
I am, however, encouraged by John Waters's recent opinion piece in this paper, Cowen era could see end of the tyranny of consensus, and the declaration of John Stuart Mill in his essay On Liberty: "The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
John Horgan is a former chairman of the Labour Court and is currently an independent human resource consultant and a postgraduate student of history at NUIG.